Can we have the raw footage?

Short answer? No.

Long answer? Read on...

StoryWorkz does not supply or sell raw footage or extra footage from a project that is not specified as part of the final deliverables.

What is raw footage?

Raw footage straight out of camera is imagery that is untouched, unedited, unstabilized, often without color grading (and thus very flat and featureless) – often not very useful to a non-editor. It is also often soundless or with sync sound (or bad sound). And it is large. The additional files for even a short video can add up to dozens of gigabytes of data.

Why you don’t want it

On a typical shoot, we may shoot long interviews, of which only a few choice moments are publish-worthy. Or, if we are shooting b-roll, we may have hundreds of clips without any apparent organization or labeling: random shots, movements, tidbits, transition shots, close ups.

What is more, short b-roll and other clips are shot with the overall project in mind, and thus are parts of a larger whole that likely don’t stand up well on their own. Their purpose is to be compiled together to tell a story.

Why we don’t share it

Just as with raw photos, which we also do not release from the studio, raw footage is a work in progress. It is like an unfinished painting or the first draft of a manuscript. It is unfinished, and we do not wish to be judged or associated with unfinished work.

The process of editing / developing raw images or footage into final form is a creative process. And StoryWorkz is hired to provide finished products, not raw materials that may end up as part of some other creative’s final product.

Further, as professionals, we have a right and, in fact, a duty to control who manipulates our raw material and to determine where it is published. Every photographer or videographer owns full copyright to their captured work, beginning from the moment they click the shutter or press the record button. If one hands over all one’s raw material, such that someone else can alter, remix, or publish it without one’s permission, one is in fact undermining and relinquishing their copyright.

Therefore, even if we were to provide a client with "all the raw footage" from a shoot, in the absence of a licensing of rights to use that material, the client could not use that footage, and would need to request approval on the use of any part of any piece of footage used in any way in any later project, or else they would be infringing on our copyright.

What do we offer?

We will always discuss at project inception what deliverables you wish to receive, and that will be indicated in your invoice and/or Statement of Work. If a client says they want “all the raw footage,” we will probe to find out the whys and wherefores. We can, in theory, offer this (normally called a “work for hire” arrangement), for a price, but in most cases that price is far more than anyone would want to pay for the work.

That said, most often people who think they want “all the raw footage” actually want something else. To that end, some of the things we can offer include:

• a “greatest clips” reel – a sequence of all the best clips from the shoot, including clips that might have been great, but which just did not make it into the cut. This can be interview quotes, best b-roll clips, etc. – excellent fodder for use on social media;
• a b-roll reel, compiling edited and balanced silent b-roll clips, that could be of use in social media or in future video projects;
• alternative edits of interviews, including uncut versions;
• long edits or earlier drafts of a film, before the final edit;
• audio only of interviews.

In all instances, these are discreet deliverables that we will develop and polish to our satisfaction before delivery. But that also means there is additional time and effort involved, and therefore additional cost. That cost will include a license for direct client use of the footage in a specified range of video projects.

Ideally, we should discuss such extended deliverables at the outset of any project and plan for them from day one, as then it will take less time to create and deliver them, resulting in a lower cost.