Screen Magazine - Index

Screen Magazine - Screen Magazine: Vol. 29, Issue 10 - Index

The Perfect Storm
MGM Signs Exclusive Agreement To Offer High Definition
Stock Footage Through Thought Equity Motion
Compiled by Amy Wilschke
Thought Equity Motion (Denver), the world’s largest supplier
of online content licensing and management services,
and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM) have
formed an agreement which will provide producers and
media professionals around the world digital access to
stock footage from MGM’s film and television library. The
agreement calls for Thought Equity to be the official
licensing agent for stock footage from select films in the
MGM library.
“Our goal is to provide producers access to footage created
by the most talented production crews in the world,” said
Kevin Schaff, founder and CEO of Thought Equity Motion.
“Every shot in the MGM collection is unique, there’s nothing
exactly like it anywhere. This is the first time this collection is
available for licensing, and we’re providing access in high
definition and 2K scan formats. With the addition of the
MGM collection, ThoughtEquity.com represents the majority
of the licensable content in Hollywood and is the preferred
destination for feature film and television producers around
the world.”
MGM joins Thought Equity’s client list, which also includes
Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, HBO, NBC News and
National Geographic, among others. “The reason that these
companies come to us is that we’re the best in the world at
digitally mastering that content and creating accessibility to
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it,” Schaff explains. “What that means is that, when we take
a collection of content and put it in the marketplace, stock
is only one of five different things that we’ll assess the library
for and enable. Everyone else out there is really just a pure
stock footage [company] and they treat footage like they
treat photos. It makes it very difficult to use because footage
is used to tell the story, not necessarily just to illustrate one
with a photo, so when you want usable content, you want
the beginning,
the middle and
the end – you
want the whole
story so you can
cut your specific
piece out.”
The MGM
library contains
images from
over 4,000 films
and over 10,000
hours of television programs. Offering MGM’s legendary
entertainment library bolsters Thought Equity Motion’s
position as the sole destination for high-production value
entertainment content.
“Stock footage is a fairly small market, only a few million
dollars worldwide, but the repurposing market is several
billion dollars,” according to Schaff. “Right now we work
with the majority of the top studios in Hollywood, and
the majority of the mass media companies around the
world work with us and we manage about 5,000,000 hours
of their material and then make that
accessible.
Schaff adds that a “new wave” of
internet and new media is on the horizon
that these companies are preparing
for. “We’re hitting a perfect storm and
that perfect storm consists of desktop
editing equipment and computer
processing software that’s so powerful
that you can actually do some nice
editing work at home on your computer
– and that’s not to be confused with
consumer-generated content. That
in combination with what we do -
creating access to a lot of the greatest
media in the world, and then taking
those two things and starting to look at
broadband and the decentralization
of distribution, it’s clear that we’re in
the biggest disruption in entertainment
history. These companies come to us
because they’re preparing for that.
These collections are a huge part of
their competitive advantage. We don’t
really cut any corners in our refinement
and digitization process, so they know
that their libraries are ready for any kind
of use that you can possibly think of – or
can’t think of – going forward.”
//wwwthoughtequity.com/MGM