 Honestly: Do you think we shot this photo just for this article? If you need to hire creative resources or have a tricky creative freelance assignment on hand, stock libraries can be a wonderful thing. And now that they’re online, they’re even more wonderful. You can browse through images, illustrations, video clips, music tracks, sound effects, and more, at zippy Internet speeds—and then choose, pay for (if it’s not free), and use your selection right then and there. Talk about instant gratification.
So this should be a short article, right? Not exactly. Stock images and library music have been around a lot longer than the Internet. Back in the day, the images came in bulky bound volumes as thick as phone books (does anyone even remember phone books?), while library music and sound effects, if you paid a lot of money, came in big sets of CDs (does anyone even remember CDs?). The means of distribution may have changed, but the content hasn’t. Well, let’s clarify. The content has certainly changed: The models in today’s photos aren’t wearing the shoulder pads and skinny ties of the 80s any more than today’s canned music sounds like it came from a vintage Yamaha DX7. What hasn’t changed is the feel. This is more subtle. Sure, there are some really talented photographers, illustrators, composers, and musicians out there. And the Internet has democratized the process, too: Anyone with talent and an online connection can contribute content these days; you don’t need a big name, a big studio, or a big budget. If your work is good, you’ll make money off of it. So where are we going with this? The point is that today, just as it was in the 90s, the 80s, the 70s, whatever, stock looks like stock. It’s got that glossy sameness to it that just screams “canned.” If you’ve been playing around in the world of stock assets recently, you become acutely aware of how much you’re surrounded by it all the time. Pick up an issue of Consumer Reports or a mailer from your insurance company or bank and look at any of the generic photos: A mom on the phone. A doctor consulting with a patient. Any of that stuff. It’s stock. Don’t believe us? Look at the photo caption (in a magazine, you won’t see it in an ad). It will read something like “Getty Images” or “iStock Photo” or whatever. Creative services challenge: Climbing out of the hole One of the reasons that stock assets are so successful (and ubiquitous) is that they’re very economical. You can license a photo for a heck of a lot less money than it would take to hire a photographer, a studio, models, hair and makeup people, set dressers, props, etc., etc. Plus it’s a lot faster: Click! It’s yours. But when you find yourself on a budget-constrained assignment—as in, “constrained to stock”—it can get pretty disheartening when you’re trying to make your creation, well, creative. How can it not look like that page from Consumer Reports or that credit-card ad you got in the mail? Take heart. It can be done. Even more good news: 1) It takes no extra money, and 2) it can actually be quite fun. The key is to step out of your comfort zone and really play around with these things in ways that weren’t intended. That’s where the synergy and unexpectedly creative results will come from. Here are some real-life examples from our experience; see if these get you thinking of new ways to utilize old things: The head shot We once worked on a presentation jacket with a number of inserts. On one side of the jacket’s inside was a pocket. A brochure—promising surprisingly good results to a stressful problem faced by office workers—was to be inside the pocket. This served us with a great opportunity, on a stock-photo budget. The solution? We found a ton of photos of a handsome model, posing—in tons of poses—as an office worker. He was happy, sad, shocked, relieved… almost anything you wanted. Well, we wanted to show stress—that’s what you’d see when the brochure was still in the pocket, with only the top half showing—that would change to elation: what you’d reveal as you removed the brochure from the pocket. This guy’s face would serve as the cover image, which would appear to change expression as you took out the brochure. It was surprisingly easy to execute. We found a photo of this guy looking shocked, and used that photo from about the mid-nose up. Then we found another photo of him looking elated, and used that photo from about the mid-nose down. We were nervous that the results might look dopey, or that the resulting hybrid image might fall into the dreaded “uncanny valley,” but we (and our gifted graphic artist working on this assignment) were pleasantly surprised by the results. (We also employed some filters to make the photos look more illustration-like, which helped the cause.) Turns out that the eyes of wide-eyed stress seem to suggest wide-eyed elation when they’re on a face that’s smiling. Who’da thunk? So not only did we achieve a cool effect, we achieved a cool effect that no one else had ever done before. Even better, anyone who really scrutinized the piece would’ve thought we’d commissioned an actual photo shoot with a live model. Nope. We just found lots of shots from someone else’s shoot, and relied upon our graphic artist’s impeccable Photoshop skills to do the rest. The disappearing models For another assignment, we needed to visually imply that office workers in a certain setting were going missing. Again, low budget, and stock imagery to the rescue… in an unintended way. Turns out you can find lots of images of empty offices. You can also find lots of images of office workers, silhouetted against a white seamless background. It’s then not too hard to “place” the workers into the office… and then dial down the opacity of the various workers to your liking, thus “ghosting” them as you see fit. A custom result from anything-but-custom materials. The orchestra We’ve produced lots of jingles on the ad-agency side, and love working with talented jingle artists. But sometimes you can’t afford the whole production. So we once licensed a slick piece of library music—full-blown orchestra and catchy musical hook—and then simply wrote lyrics for it. Our jingle artist brought in some singers, and we triple-tracked them and layered them over the stock music. No musicians, limited studio time. The end result was a stunner. The client was delighted. The budget was minimal. Why go it alone? If you need creative services, whether you’re budget-constrained or not, sometimes it’s best to bring in extra help. Us, for example. Contact us today and let us help you surmount that next creative challenge.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |