Data-Based Insights & Decision Making as a Creative

It's not difficult to track data, but effectively using it in decision-making is something else.

Since late 2015, my Filmsupply stock footage portfolio has generated 1,276 individual licensing fees. As a Contributor, that revenue gets split with me (currently 45.1%). 2020 and 2021 saw my revenues up 150-200% compared to previous years, but those two years were outliers due to COVID-19 turning live production on its head. There was a solid period in that mess where my cut of that revenue was $6-7,000/month, but those days are long gone. 2023 was a dumpster fire and my average monthly licensing revenue was roughly 47% below my 2022 numbers. So far, 2024 is looking up, but I'm hesitant to be holding my breath.

The chart below helps me feel somewhat better in terms of trying to explain the significant swings in my licensing revenue. As the U.S. Federal Funds rate decreases, it becomes cheaper to borrow money. As that rate increases, borrowing becomes more expensive, making it harder for businesses to finance their operations. That said, I wouldn't say I'm qualified as an expert in this nonsense so I'd take this chart with a grain of salt. If you've got the time, go check out Tyler Vigen's Spurious Correlation where he features charts of correlated data that actually have nothing to do with each other. "Correlation is not causation."

Having a solid understanding of this nonsense has helped me to make better-informed decisions when it comes to investing in new film projects and/or equipment likely to contribute to my stock footage portfolio.

 

Investments in Projects & Equipment

As of last month, I've made a 13% return on the actual money I've dumped into my unfinished rubber stamp project. Based on my previous data, I was confident I'd make a decent return on the licensing fees from the raw footage. My film has elements of small business ownership and the existing clips in my portfolio around a similar theme have done well in the past. I also know I'd be traveling quite a bit while making this film and I've had a good experience with drone footage of city skylines.

Keeping my fixed costs low has certainly been helpful; I own the gear I'm using and I've kept my additional crew expenses to a minimum. Still, I've had major expenses including a week-long road trip to Washington D.C., a couple NYC shoots, and a trip out to Amsterdam with a couple local crew hires. This project still hasn't been released and could honestly be a hot turd, but the reality is that it's been profitable and will continue to generate revenue via stock footage licensing.

Another example is looking at the licensing revenue generated by my DJI Mavic 2 Pro. Currently, I'm not tracking the revenue generated by each piece of gear with my client projects, but I do know what gear was used for my stock footage clips. There's been a 53% return on investment (ROI) with my Mavic 2. In April 2022, I crashed that flying chainsaw to death and I replaced it with a Mavic 3. I do have some stock footage sales connected to that new drone, but considering I don't have as many clips associated with that gear yet, I can imagine it'll be a hot minute before I see the same types of ROI via licensing fees.

 

Forecasting

As an MBA student we learned how to use different forecasting models and I've done some nonsense with my existing licensing data, but it's nothing I'd lean too heavily on. It's important to remember that it's impossible to forecast with zero error, meaning forecasts are always inherently wrong. My stock footage sales haven't been exactly stable the last few years and a level of data stability is necessary if it's being used to forecast. Still, I have a good idea of where I'm at and what to expect.

 

Cool, So Now What?

Do realize that none of this nonsense is directly related to generating additional licensing revenue but simply tracking what's already happening. It's possible to increase the search visibility and potential sales of each clip through search engine optimization (SEO) tools, but I didn't talk about adding more assets to my portfolio. Now that I'm wrapped up on my MBA, I've got the additional margin to go out and create new works that could generate additional licensing revenue.

All this nonsense is helpful in gaining insight and making data-based decisions, but at the same time, I'm fully aware of the fact I'm still a self-described "art kid" out here trying to make creative work. It's a fine line trying to convey a feeling or tell a story while still being profitable.

So we made a thing

No clue. Absolutely no clue what was going on here. I'm just diggin' the fact that I've got friends who trust me and are basically up to make stuff no matter what.

In the latter part of June, I'd bought a one-way ticket to New York City with plans to connect with friends, make stuff, and meet new people. In prepping for the trip I reached out to Olivia Abiassi to see if she'd be up to make something while I was in town.

Olivia is an actress friend of mine who I stumbled upon while casting a short film a few years ago. I say stumbled because she was actually off-camera reading the female lead's part to help with the male talent's audition video. In hearing her read I immediately knew she was the lead I was looking for. She worked her tail off for that little passion project of mine and her performance was more than I could ask for. Fast forward a couple years she's now living and working in NYC.

Normally I'll put solid time and effort into prepping for a shoot. This project was more or less thrown together during my 45-minute subway commute from Washington Heights to her apartment on the Lower East Side. There was no scout ahead of time; not even a decent concept. Just me plowing through her Instagram account and listening to a TON of Logic's "The Incredible True Story" album.

A few months ago she had posted a short clip of herself prepping for something and accidentally – and absolutely – struck gold. She's got a great sense of humor and doesn't seem to take herself very seriously. She's also got great eyes and facial expressions which absolutely deliver on camera.

This simple Instagram post opened the idea of her getting completely lost in her own world and caring less about what people around her thought. In just about everything I try to make there's a bit of me braided in somewhere. For this utterly informal short I started her off buried in her phone trying to keep up with either the nonsense of social media or the non-stop stream of the world's bad news. In putting on her headphones, she's able to escape for a bit.

From a production standpoint, the headphones were key. I sent her a playlist I'd put together during my commute, but we ended up keeping Logic's "Fade Away" on repeat and that kept her movement timing consistent. I on the other hand couldn't hear the music, gave some basic direction, and just had to keep up.

Just about every movement piece I've done recently has been shot off-speed. There's a TON of grace and forgiveness in shooting in higher frame rates, but for this piece, I wanted to challenge myself with shooting in real time and intentionally using longer takes in the edit vs. the easy out with quick pacing to hide mistakes.

The edit took a bit longer than I expected in trying to sync her movements to the music as well as the un-rehearsed and un-controllable aspects of the footage we got. There were plenty of interesting-looking shots that I just couldn't use because they didn't fit the music – not to mention the unusably soft shots I blew focus on.

We're not curing cancer or anything, but we did have a very loose storyline with a beginning, middle, and end. We honestly just wandered around the Lower East Side not far from her apartment, looking for good and interesting light. The ice cream break was intentional, but accidentally hitting someone on the subway with her purse while she was dancing wasn't. Thank God that very large man was cool as hell.

UPDATE: As per usual, the footage from this film is available for licensing over at Filmsupply. Speaking of footage licensing, here's an example of how it was used to create an actual spot. Thank goodness too because the proceeds helped me pay rent in May 2020 during the Covid-19 nonsense.

A Lighting Test

So this was a different thing. By far the most moody and stylized projects I’ve done to date versus what normally fills up my hard drives. I’ve been sitting on a couple reference images for a long time that I absolutely wanted to use but for one reason or another hadn't gotten around to shooting. The whole idea was wrapped around lighting, body structure, and direction. Well, that and my thing of always wanting to do stuff and a goal to post to my blog at least once a week this year.

In putting a treatment together – or at least a lookbook – I dug through a ton of references I’d already had stored away. I’ve also been listening to a TON of Anderson .Paak so I knew his music would be playing a major part. By the way, I'm awful at coming up with titles, so ignore the "Graceful Strength" part if you download the lookbook. This whole thing was more about a lighting test than anything proper. The footage from this film is available for licensing over at Filmsupply.

There were also the self-imposed restrictions of a simple background, using my own equipment (short a couple c-stands and apple boxes), and keeping the talent either seated or lying down. I’d love to talk about my incredible studio space with all its incredible amenities, nice leather couches, and cases of LaCroix Sparkling Water, but instead, I’ll show you my bedroom where I pushed everything up against the walls before the shoot and then reset before St. Anne the Wife got home.

Initially, another model was lined up but I reached out to someone else due to scheduling conflicts. Madison Bready is an OU student I met years ago and worked with a few times recently. Turns out Madi was absolutely the right person for the shoot. Cynthia Dreier is a makeup artist I’ve worked with on quite a few projects and she killed it in making sure Madi looked her best and kept us on track during the shoot. Did I mention Madi is an OU student because we only had like 90 minutes to do makeup and shoot everything in between her classes that afternoon. Oh, and did I mention I was super happy with what we got? Because dang…

Gear-wise, we shot with my RED Weapon Helium at 8k, 60 fps, 2:1 aspect ratio, and 15:1 compression with my Zeiss CP.2 len set (25, 35, & 50). I'd also set my white balance to 4500k to warm up the tungsten light and white backdrop – along with her skin tones and hair color. That being said, all the footage in the edit is straight out of camera; I didn't do any additional color work to the footage (or still frames). I also tried a step printing technique shooting at 8 fps and a 360° shutter angle, but it was in the last couple minutes of the shoot and I wasn’t really happy with the footage; I should’ve shot closer to 4 fps. For lighting, I set up an Arri 650 head through a couple scrims and two layers of diffusion. A bunch of black fabric hung on camera right helped control the spill. I’d roughed in the lighting setup using a styrofoam head on a light stand before the talent got there.

Post-wise, I knew the 8k files were going to be a monster. We shot about 325 GB of footage which isn’t nuts with my camera package, but honestly a pain to edit such large files. Adobe Premiere on my Mac Pro setup will handle it like a champ, but having to lower the playback resolution to 1/8 or 1/16 just to just slog through the .R3D files is like tying that champ’s arm behind his back before going into a fight. I’d worked with offline edits WAY the hell back in the days of SD footage and tape decks, but this simple YouTube tutorial pretty much changed my workflow and is keeping me from looking so longingly at those fancy Alexa Minis and their blissful 4k sensor sizes.

Music is always the hardest part for me during an edit. I promise I’m all about supporting other creatives and paying to license music, but after a genuinely solid effort I couldn’t find or afford something that fit as well – in my opinion – as this Anderson .Paak track. 99% of my edits start with a music track – especially with personal projects; It's got to feel right or else it's not worth the effort.

After I'd gotten somewhat through a rough edit (and several glasses of whiskey) I reached out to a few other creatives for feedback. Crazy thanks to those guys for the insanely solid ideas, helping me step back from how close I was to the work, and look at what I was missing.

Good grief I hope to do more of this soon.

Slow Season Busy Work

It's slow season ya'll with way more time than work. It's that time of year when I'd honestly prefer shriveling up into a wad of insecurity and self-doubt and drink coffee till things get better.

St. Anne the Wife has been around long enough to know when I need to get out and go film something. Thankfully I got out to The Farm before the January temps in Oklahoma dropped to angry Minnesota winter levels. Oh, and by "The Farm" I mean "my-parents-land-forty-five-minutes-from-Oklahoma-City."

Obviously, I'm always hoping for good light but that's harder to come by now with two young kids. Normally I'm running one kid to school around sunrise and then cooking, eating, and/or cleaning up after dinner during the evening light. My window to shoot these days feels like a relentless insult of the midday sun.

It was still that "Hey dummy, no one likes you" type of overhead light while I was out the other day. The thought was to try and shoot anything around The Farm and how it was moving with the wind. I also had a can of Atmosphere Aerosol with me, but it was too windy for it to make a difference. The footage was all shot on a 35mm CP2 between 5-8k widescreen on my RED Weapon Helium at framerates between 60-150fps.

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All the footage got edited down to its good bits in what I call a "cuttingboard" timeline/sequence. That sequence then gets copy-pasted to a new "v1" sequence and I go from there. I always end up pulling frame grabs from the footage to feed the Insta-beast and color that nonsense as I go. VSCO is my go-to photo editor on my phone, but I'm also learning to use Adobe Lightroom. There's also the idea of making custom LUTs in Lightroom and bringing them into Premiere Pro. I tried making a couple for this edit, but in the end, I went with a pre-made LUT in Premiere. The color correction and grading process is always the most intimidating part of any edit for me. I'll reference my edited stills, but those looks rarely end up being appropriate as part of a whole in the final edit.

Music is the next part of the project. Obviously, I always get the music rights for client projects, but that's not always the case for these random projects I'll put together that'll be seen by like six people. Recently I've been digging through SoundCloud for music; some let you download, others don't. It's great to find a song you like and then it'll refer you to other work you might also like. For this edit, I used "Fireworks" by Pham. I'll break the full track down into bits, normally looking to keep the total edit to around 60 seconds. Again, gotta feed that Insta-beast.

Once I get the music close to where I want it, that's when I start laying down the edit. Again, for this edit I wanted to do something with how the wind was moving the grass and trees. The footage alone wasn't enough, so I also added digital zooms and subtle rotation at times. Editing something like this is mostly gut-level for me. I'm not looking to tell a story, but I'm VERY intentional about how each clip feels and interacts with others in the timeline and how they play off the music. It's a constant process of building and releasing tension and concluding with some kind of resolution.

UPDATED: 3/18/2024

Beyond just going out to make something, these exercises produce original content and digital licensing opportunities in the form of stock footage. This project is part of my Filmsupply portfolio and is available in its own section: Field Scenery. Certainly, I'm stoked to see additional revenue from my independent projects, but it's always wild seeing how other creatives use and re-purpose your work. The video below from The Trevor Project uses one of my clips at 1:56.