Ad agencies and production companies have ample reason to invest considerable (pardon the pun) -- stock -- in stock footage. After all, the ability to peruse reams of contemporary and archival footage, that can be acquired for a production in a day and for a fraction of the price it would cost to send out a crew, would make any agency exec quick to espouse the benefits of utilizing stock footage.

But how do footage companies know what collections to acquire and what footage to shoot and represent? Boards magazine talked to several insiders at footage companies to see if they could identify any trends in creative or style based on footage currently making the jump-cut from the reel to commercials.

The consensus among most footage company experts is that footage requests are ultimately creatively-driven. Agency creatives ask for footage based on the idea played out in the storyboards. But it is also relevant to note that creative ideas are influenced by-and-large by cultural events, pop culture, trends in technology etc.

"We call it the blockbuster effect," says Anthony Perrone, director of research at FootageNow in New York. "If Twister just came out in the movies we know we're going to need tornado footage because everybody's going to be asking for it. When the movie Contact came out everybody was asking for the VLA (very large array) and close-ups of eyesÉ.Right now it's Gladiator footage and rock climbing footage [because of Mission Impossible 2]."

FootageNow recently merged with Second Line Search, a major rights, clearance and licensing company for stock footage, film, video, stills, talent and music. It is also the umbrella company for several library divisions including Action Sports Adventure. "In the world of sports, it will take a big sporting event to get people thinking a little bit differently," explains Perrone. "The US women's soccer team last year raised people's awareness to women in sports. We had all kinds of requests for the soccer team certainly, but also other female athletes." In anticipation of the 2004 Olympics in Australia, Perrone says the company is gearing up for the foreseeable requests from agencies who will no doubt be centering creative around an Olympic or sport theme. Action Sports recently released its Gold Medal Collection, a 19 volume set of stock sports cinematography covering nearly 16 hours of athletic footage. It also acquired Extreme, the most popular IMAX theater showing in history, featuring the risky world of extreme sports. Second Line has published The Worldwide Moving Image Source Book, a 1200 page encyclopedia of virtually every footage source available at Second Line. Hotshots, yet another division of Second Line, boasts The Moving Century Collection, which according to Peter Kleinman, VP of marketing at Footage Now, is used by producers and agencies as "the encyclopaedia Britannica of footage of the last century."

Another example of reality reflecting art, are the plethora of commercials that reflect the ongoing transition into a supercharged hi-tech global economy. "A few years back we didn't even know what ecommerce was," says Perrone. "And now people are requesting it. We've gone out and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to recreate ecommerce."