Making 6-figures a year from Stock footage with Chuck Fishbein.

Episode Transcription

Den Lennie (2s):
G’day, guys! It’s Den Lennie here, host of the How to Scale a Video Business podcast with this episode 190. Now today I’m switching things up a little bit and I’ve got a fantastic interview is with Chuck Fishbein from duckyou.com. Now, Chuck is a veteran of a video of business with over thirty five years working as a director, photography, educator and editor but alone with his wife, Sarah owns and operates Crazy Duck Productions a small video production company with a pretty large footprint in the commercial for the industry.

Den Lennie (40s):
Now, Chuck is also built, a very, very impressive business creating stock footage exclusively for Getty images has the images that appeared in feature films, commercials, music, videos, and documentaries worldwide. And I have this phenomenal conversation with Chuck about how he is actually built a very sustainable revenue stream from stock footage and in talking six figure plus a year or so, I want to ask Chuck or what it was that he was doing that was different. And how are you can take her away some lessons from a how to build the post-op for you to library and actually create content that people actually want to buy.

Den Lennie (1m 21s):
You reveal some really fascinating insights into why he’s been so successful and is not what you think is gonna be. So dive in to this episode, I hope that you really enjoy it. It was a fantastic conversation and there’s some quite cool stuff you mentioned about big band. He might of heard it as well. So check us episode out guys. So Chuck it’s really great to finally get a chance to talk to you. I have been an admirer of your work through the, what you’ve done for Sony for a number of years. And, but also you, you post such a beautiful work on Facebook with your stock imagery. And we got chatting about that. No one in, so I’d love for you to share a little bit about your background and then we’ll get into talking about Stock and how, how that worked out for you guys.

Chuck Fishbein (2m 6s):
All right. I started as a photographer. I started it, it actually in a fashion photography assisting a world famous photographer, Richard Avedon at one time, and then just moved into my own business. And at one point, or in, in the seventies, I got asked to work with an Irish band at where the, the label president said, listen, I’ll pay you for these photos, but a, I want you to shit, the music video as well. And I’m like, okay, you know, and I’d never done that before. And I was scared to death and a, so I went out and, and bought a, a used super eight camera and a bundle of film just shot away.

Chuck Fishbein (2m 53s):
And then I looked the editor’s there in Ireland and in a place called when in the land, they just saved. But, but, but at the same time, they thought I was the most creative person in the world because my stuff was such trash that it happened to be art, you know, so, but once I started doing that, I, the bug caught me it and I nearly went out of business nearly through a successful business to become a, a filmmaker. And then he took me about three years of just banging my head against the wall until it finally happened. And then after that, I did a search again with a connections from Ireland. I did Oh, for tour’s with you too.

Chuck Fishbein (3m 36s):
And work with a host of artists’ a one around the world with the Garth Brooks. I mean, it just a lot of different, a different types of stuff. Everything from pharmaceutical launches to camera launches for Sony. So a in that, in between and all that I can just to give you a quick background, a, my wife and I we’re on vacation in the Western of R S Island. And being that, that it became my second home. And we we’re taking pictures of the world in the ocean and birds and things as you do when you’re on vacation.

Chuck Fishbein (4m 17s):
And I said, you know, if, if we were a firm here and we came back to New York, we’d be shooting or threads out, or, you know, we were just be photographing everything in filming everything, but we were there and which is taken for granted. And we’ve looked at each other. We were like, duh, where we should be doing with this hand. And as soon as he got home for a vacation, I started doing it. And I, he, I did it with the only camera that I had, which was that mini DV camera in the early sone, a one 50 PD, one 50 or something like that. Anyway, just shot and shot and shot. And, and I used to love to just cruise around the city after a day’s work, cruise around the city at night, and I’d Mount the camera or on the car, or it just get out record the sounds and th and the look of New York, because I’m passionate about the city.

Chuck Fishbein (5m 11s):
Yeah. I just love Manhattan. And with you, he showed some images to a, I think after a while I advanced to it, then he likes that one and a half is the time we knew we had it. It was a few new stock agencies. Shutterstock was very new and there was a few others. And my wife was looking at my wife, Sarah was, was showing the work to a couple of different people and checking out the scene. And, you know, they were like, Shutterstock was very interested in what we had and this, Oh, this is a good stuff. We’d have to see it. And she just took the initiative to call it a Getty and say a, Hey, these people are really interested.

Chuck Fishbein (5m 55s):
A thought, you might be interested in seeing this. And they were like, we’d like to meet with you tomorrow. And, and, and we went in there and they were just like, well, we would really like an exclusive on you. You, you can give all your junk to pawn five and Shutterstock, but we, we want you’re good stuff. Right. And then it grew from there, you know, a better, better shots, better cameras. But the one thing I learned was to always be filming what I enjoyed filming, not what I thought, people I want to see

Den Lennie (6m 33s):
Yeah. So when, when, when was that meeting with Getty?

Chuck Fishbein (6m 37s):
That was now nine years ago, and it’s been a wonderful relationship, a getting a taste that a huge chunk up to a percentage of your work, but it’s worth it. In fact, you know, if your working with them it’s worth it because they do that work for you. They, they do that leg, the legwork they’re advertising for you. They have researchers who go in there and if a client is looking for a specific shot, they will go through the work for the client and, and suggest to them and things. And they also have lawyers that if you have somebody who, you know, you’ve heard of errors and omissions insurance, well, they have to know where they have a lawyer that we’ll cover.

Chuck Fishbein (7m 28s):
You have figure it out. You know, we, we had a, a, a photo once at a construction site in, it was beautiful, all that steamrollers or pay to, or putting down to the pavement in a hot waves coming up a, on all of the yellow construction gear. And the, a, it was used enough in Obama at a, for president Obama and the construction company was a staunch Republican. So he just did it just a way, my pictures going to go and this, you know, and this ad, but that the lawyers to care of that there are like, Nope, you can’t do that Jack, but anywhere else you could have, you could have a choice whether they had the ground’s or not, you could’ve been faced with, you know, a fortune worth of a litigation just to prove yourself innocent.

Den Lennie (8m 18s):
Yeah. So a, a lot of filmmakers, dream of shooting stock, and, and, and they often see as a, Hey, I’ll just buy biggest resolution camera. I can get for a while. It was like, I’m going to buy a red so I can go and shoot stock. And then the justification for buying a brand was to go and shoot stock. And I know literally hundreds of filmmakers who have tried to shoot stock, throw it up too, some relate Getty and never make a cent. So why do you think it is that you’ve been sort of successful shooting stock where so many fail?

Chuck Fishbein (8m 54s):
Well, I’ve heard the same thing as well. I mean, I have lots of friends through, through Sony and just through the industry who, who, every time we meet, they’re like, Oh, you know, they’re shooting great shows. They’re shooting reality shows. And they’re out there doing exploration shows for BBC or CNN, and then go, I got all the stuff and I’m like, Oh, well, you should, you should sell a stock, you know, to do, is it yours? In some cases, it is yours to use it. But if you’ve worked for a client for, with a client that has the work for hire, well, the stuff belongs to them. But if, but I’ve been working for myself now a, for 35 years or so, everything that I, you know, I make that arrangement that any work that we do, a, the right to belong to us.

Chuck Fishbein (9m 47s):
I mean, certainly when it comes to a, and just a digressive that when it comes to clients where we’re shooting interviews or things like that, I’m not going to use that anywhere. And they can have at all, you know, it’s there, it just take it, it, but, you know, when it comes to the B role, a that’s where the value is, is in the payroll then to now just go ahead.

Den Lennie (10m 11s):
But it just, it sounds like it, when you’ve done a very early on as recognize that that the Bureau is, it is an asset, you can then use again. And that’s really smart because most of us who grew up in a freelance cameraman just assumed that the clients’ hiring you then the, or in the footage, but you’ve been very smart, I guess, which is a, a, a layover or from your work is a photographer about calling the rights and, and what a smart move all those years ago to say, any project we shoot you’ll have a license to use, but we are on the rights. And, and I don’t imagine how many people have done that.

Chuck Fishbein (10m 49s):
We, that that is something we, we state right at the beginning. And at most folks are happy with it. Like we’re not giving them any restriction on their footage other than taking what we’ve created and repurposing it for another project. Then we want them to pay us again, because now they’re, it’s a new project. We know we work. Most of our productions buy the project or not, you know, but referring to something that you said in your book, most of our clients are our relations. We’ve been working with them for years to, we’ve been working with them, almost word of mouth, because when you do good work and you have a good client relationship and your there to bail them out when you need it, and you’re not nickel and diming them every time they need a, a, an exchange or in the old days next year, or dub, or they need a, a transfer, whatever you have friends, and, and they are there working with you there, or just as happy to help you as you are to help them.

Chuck Fishbein (11m 51s):
And when I go on in the assignment, I go there with the intention of doing, doing the project for my client. I make sure I get what I need, but it doesn’t hurt also, Hey, turn the camera this way. I, if I have five minutes right at that time and enjoy myself, I I’m in this business because I enjoy it. I love looking through the camera a I enjoy it, the gear as much as creating it. In fact, sometimes my motivation for, for creating is I got to pay for this stuff. Now that I know that I bought, and I met her, I had to make money with it. So, but I really enjoy it. So it’s not painful to go and shoot Stock.

Chuck Fishbein (12m 34s):
But having said that he comes to the rub. Once you do that, once you’ve created all of this imagery, you’d have to catalog and you have two break it down to make it usable. And then when I say usable, it it’s gotta be stocked that people want, or, or that doesn’t already exist. You know, if I’m heading for North of it and the Arctic circle, and, and, and I’ve done that, I’m on a project or two, I’ll go in and look at what already exists in stock. And, and I’m not gonna shoot that out again. I may shoot at it for my project because it’s just a classic shot, you know, but, but I’ll say it like, but nobody’s done this, or nobody’s done that a central park in New York.

Chuck Fishbein (13m 23s):
Cause you know, big, gigantic park a and you would just think that because it’s New York city a, because there’s so many cinematographers here that it was covered to death, you know, like why would you bother shooting there? And I looked, and I had a lot of images in central park and, and I looked it up and it was about 14 in Guinea and they were really dated. So a Sarah and my wife and I, we went out there, we’d gone out they’re in the summer, in the snow. And in, in any kinds of weather where you repeat shot’s we purposely do shots from exactly the same position so that we can sell a transition from a, a, and I’ll get in to this more.

Chuck Fishbein (14m 12s):
When it, when I say that, you know, there’s no secrets here, the secret is doing it. A, there are no secrets in your book, them they’re there all. And it’s all, it’s all common sense. But if you don’t do it, if you go like, yeah, that makes sense. That’s, that’s a good thing to do. You don’t do it, then it’s not going to get done. And you can say, well, that wasn’t a very good book, but, but you have to do it. So getting back to my point, when you’re, let’s say you, you filmed me or image you then have two catalog it a in your own drive and your own system, a and then when you submit it to Getty or any of the StockX agencies, you have the key word it, how do you have to key word it in ways that it makes sense so that people are looking for you’re shot.

Chuck Fishbein (15m 3s):
Well, find it. And you have to think more than this is a pretty shot of a tree. You have to look at it, a shot of a tree and say, what else could this represents? You could say this tree all by itself, says isolation. This tree says depression. This tree, he says, solitude is it says, strength a these, these, you know, it, it, it’s a metaphor for maybe 50 different things. And when people come into stock agents who is looking for something, they’ll say, I’m looking for a, a warm squeezy feeling or something. And they’ll talk in those terms.

Chuck Fishbein (15m 43s):
So you have two, you have to not only put it in a logical language, but you also have to put in a language that other people might be using like an emotive language.

Den Lennie (15m 54s):
Well, that’s right, isn’t it, you’re, you’re very much, you’ve got to pick yourself in the viewer and the consumer’s position to understand what it is they’re looking to try and illustrate. And, and it sounds a lot like you have a very distilled process for a shooting star. And I think where a lot of filmmakers, perhaps listening to this show, mate, the missing a beat is their going out and shooting at a picture. The image, I loved what you said. They’re about research in what already exists and coming out with different ways to shoot that are going back to exactly with them. So it really, really smart thing. Tell me, do you, do you ever get to, do does get to he ever say it to you?

Den Lennie (16m 36s):
Hey, Chuck, we need some footage of central park on a stormy day at four in the afternoon. Can you go in and to Do you have a commission on you to do stuff?

Chuck Fishbein (16m 44s):
They have, they have done that on a few occasions, but they have some Stringer’s that has been working closer with him, to be honest for them for a longer time. And that they tend to use, you know, some, some more immediate a shooters. I’m a, my collection is one of the largest of, of, of New York city with Getti. We, we have close to a 10,000 clips online with them, but it’s, it’s re you know, I’ve had other stock agencies contact me and say, could you go do that, but not so much giddy.

Den Lennie (17m 19s):
And, and, and in terms of like revenues and you don’t feel it, you have to have to divulge a specific numbers, but how long does it take to start seeing an income that was predictable? I mean, is it a kind of like a royalty thing there? Where are you? You get checks every month of certain shot’s that get used again and again, how does that whole side of things work?

Chuck Fishbein (17m 41s):
Yeah, then it took it, it took a while a T to build that out. It took about four of us, about three or four years. And what we with, even with, let me back up there for a second. So at first it was better than it was. So we’ve had to work harder that may explain that a as pond five in Shutterstock and all of these other companies grew and they have millions of photos and they take anything from, from a cell phone, pictures to two pixel, a vision, Toi cameras. I mean, the I’ll just throw out anything on their side and they don’t always work with you.

Chuck Fishbein (18m 23s):
You may end up at the back of the line with your image is because they just keep throwing more content on more context. And often I found with them that they, they don’t always, they only update you if you’re selling. So if you’re the hot shot, you know, there’s like this, a couple of shots of like times square with all of the logos, blurred out a so there’s no trademark issues. It’s awful shock. Cause everything was just a blurry out. But its been used in a, a thousand documentaries already in it. You know that there’s another one or two people walking down like fifth Avenue or a telephoto shop.

Chuck Fishbein (19m 5s):
And I’ll get to that moment because there’s trademarks in royalties and things. But I totally lost my train of thought. We knew it.

Den Lennie (19m 18s):
Or the question was a ride. How, how you generally get the

Chuck Fishbein (19m 23s):
What? Sorry. Cause backup where it, where my thought was. Oh, but because of this date, a Shutterstock has cut they’re fees. And now that they’re on a quantity basis so that you have, it used to be like, you’ve got a 50, 50 or 60 40, or you got the 40 or, and now they’ve cut it. So they have so many people and they’re, they want to make more money that now you only start at like 18%. And if you sell a whole lot, you go into another tier and make more a but in general with Getty, at Tufts in a while to, to, to grow. But it wasn’t for that long, but it was supplying imagery in the way that it needed that people needed to to see it again.

Chuck Fishbein (20m 8s):
And I’ll get into that in a moment, as far as fees, we made an excess of a, a a hundred thousand a year in stock and it’s pretty consistent. It’s making money while you sleep, which is always good. And it’s not like that, you know, some, some months that could be a 3000, it could be 8,000. It could be 10,000 depending on what we’ve sold and how it’s being used because there’s different kinds of stock. And you have to consider that I’m and I’ll get into that next. I think that’s an important to us for shooters to know a and so, yeah, so it’s been probably, I’m proud of it.

Chuck Fishbein (20m 49s):
We, you know, where we are in the business to make money. And, but I also in a, in a position where I’m at at T to enjoy what I’m doing and have fun. So this gets back to the system’s part. You know, it, isn’t always fun to sit there and knock out all that Keef key, you know, framing at that key, a key working and logging this stuff in uploading it, it it’s like a endless process sometimes, but I set time aside for that, I’ve made it tried to make it into a fun event for myself, a has that suggested occasionally he’ll sit there with the glass of wine and, and some good music and just have fun with it or appreciating my own work, looking at my, where I, you know, at the same time, then I’m uploading it.

Chuck Fishbein (21m 40s):
I’m evaluating what I’ve done. I’m comparing it to the work that I’ve done it in the past. I’m feeling good about it or, or not feeling good about it and saying, Oh, this is a weekend three. You know, and sometimes I’d just toss it out and say, this, this doesn’t deserve to be uploaded. Or, you know, I’m not, I’m not looking to put it up the trash or, and, and, and one of the things that I’d like to do is to shoot clip’s in a bundle because I want my work to be used in documentaries. I want my work to be as the commercials and I want to be used in feature films and it does get used there. So in order to do that, I have to shoot in codecs with cameras or, or with the cameras that have codecs that are worthy of that, that it’s a deep in a file.

Chuck Fishbein (22m 26s):
I’m not shooting with a Go-Pro eventually when my phone, I’m not going to be with my new seven S T a beautiful camera. It does amazing things that I’ll be shooting with a, at a 55 or even the we’ll get to me beautiful imagery in this new, Epic six. It was just killing it. Then it’s lightweight. I love that. I’m so it’s important to two, you know, of course I I’ve been a Sony Shutter for years, but just read cameras that are fabulous. A very were not a, I can’t even afford them, but all these years of shooting, but, but you know, I’m looking for portability and quality at the same time.

Chuck Fishbein (23m 5s):
But my point was, when I shoot, if I want my work to be a viewed by these, the types of organization, two sets of productions, I had to shoot like a cinematographer. You know, when I’m out there, what is it if I’m making the movies? So if I’m shooting at the corner of a 59th street to Columbus circle in Manhattan, 59th and an eighth Avenue, I’ll do my master or establishing shot, or I’ll do it in several variations. I may do it in slow-mo. I may do it in a regular speed. And then all shoot cutaways have the same way you wouldn’t need cutaways, closeups of a sign of a close ups of a, a pedestrian’s feet walking across a crosswalk, the wheels have a car going buy the same way.

Chuck Fishbein (23m 52s):
Or I would, I would hope is a scene. Or if I was, in fact, I was filming in for a commercial. I want to get all of those cutaways in closeups. So I have stuff to work with them in the edit. I didn’t want to go back and say, Oh, this is a great shot. Now, can we go back into the stock agency and see if we can find a closeup of a, of a tire spinning M or a taxi sine a, I want to be the one to supply that. And so I do that. I shoot in that way. I shoot it in that vain. And I think that that way when I shoot,

Den Lennie (24m 24s):
So you’re actually making it easier for a consumer of stock who is sitting in a production company in London or Sydney, or a Hong Kong to go I’m in a row. It’s like looking at it, a set rushes. So that’s a really smart tip. And, and another question I have is how, presumably you don’t grade the footage because do you, do you show everything in a log and supply at and log, is, is that the way that the, the M a N

Chuck Fishbein (24m 51s):
I have, because I have to supply everything in Provo is HQ, but that’s, that’s their normal, you don’t S you don’t supply stuff in rah. You don’t supply stuff in LA. I’ve had them come back and say, do you have the original log footage of this weak preferred color it from the, from the launch? And I can, I do. And I had three copies of everything and different locations because the August, you know, a cliche, it is, it’s not, when you’re a drives go, you know, it’s in that if they will go it’s when, so you do have to backup your stuff because it’s you’re income. It’s my income, because lots of my clients, my clients, where are you on the scene is drive.

Chuck Fishbein (25m 35s):
So ah.

Den Lennie (25m 36s):
And in terms of what a great in a loop, because we know with lots of color grading being so subjective, there are so many ways in which you can create a file. How, or what have you found to be the most consistent, easiest to get through gets it, or is it just a simple req seven to nine face correction? Or how, how do you tend to give it away?

Chuck Fishbein (25m 58s):
Much, you know, I worked with or worked with several musicians, famous bass players, and one guy at T M Stephens is amazing base player. And he’s cause he does all of the slap base and stuff. I, so what do you do? And you go in to the studio. He says, I make my sound as neutral as possible because I don’t want to overpower or anything. I didn’t want to persuade the, the way the song’s going to be. I want them to tell you, you know, I want to get the feel for what’s happening. So I make my imagery as neutral as possible. I do grade it, I grade it so that its properly exposed or it’s not overly, or, you know, there have been times that I don’t have to buy a stock projects to stuff that I I need.

Chuck Fishbein (26m 46s):
And th the garbage that I had to shuffle through two, get it. And you are, you’re finding, you know, a crushed blacks and, and saturated and over a sharpened to images and things. Now I have to give them stuff that they can say, all right, this is the look of our film. Can we take this image and match it and make it fit in our film? Because it’s so specialized is useless to them. You know, so I’m not out there unless, unless I have an attire, you know, once or twice, I put out a series of images that had a certain look like an old time book, and that I’ve done about to release the series of full-time black and white, a imagery have New York city of two, which was just going back through my own catalog, finding things that work well in black and white and not just draining out the, the color, but making them look like old, black and white, he, you know, making the proper gamma in the right kind of contrasts to make it look like he was shot in the fifties or sixties back of a wine.

Chuck Fishbein (27m 47s):
And that it has a, a really cool look too. It, and somebody who is looking for that, here’s the, a whole set for them. A so that’s when I do a specialty, but otherwise make it as neutral and as moldable as possible.

Den Lennie (28m 4s):
And then in terms of, resolution’s obviously technology’s always evolving and no we’re looking at it ki in 12 K in, you know, we’re both in a generation where we, we we’re standard definition SD and, and to 16 by nine and them, and to HD at that age and a transition to remember when I first came in, people going on at no point in a shooting HD, presumably you’ve shopped in many formats for the last 10 years. And what point did you start to deliver everything in 4k? And is there any call to go into higher resolutions? R is for K is still a very salable M resolution.

Chuck Fishbein (28m 41s):
As soon as 4k came out, we began to shoot everything in 4k. That was, it, it, it was no turning back. Same thing happened when HD came in, you know, as soon as it came in, even though people, some of the studios or some of the broadcast company, that’s the stations where we were sending work to, they didn’t have HD yet. And some still don’t. I mean, some, some website’s still work on SD a, but I should in a best resolution possible, you know, that, you know, another adage or that, you know, garbage in, garbage out, you want it, or whether it’s going to end up on a phone being seen or, or on a big screen, I want the best image I can, I have not had a call for eight K a I have yet.

Chuck Fishbein (29m 30s):
I’ve only done four projects that were actually released in 4k as far as using my stock, but it’s there it’s, I have not had a call for eight K so a not for a while. I think for K I’ll be up to, to use that for quite some time

Den Lennie (29m 52s):
To get it, to tell you where you’re stuff ends up. Is that a bit of a kind of you, you happen to upon a sample was the most unusual film that you’ve had stock in for example.

Chuck Fishbein (30m 5s):
We, it shows a week at a monthly readout of a what the, where, or the image has used, who bought and what it was, what it was used for sometimes, but not all the time, you know, but what we’ll see that, Oh, this was bought by CBS or this was bought by X production company. If it was a, I had a bunch of images of my daughter that I shot, and she was just sort of lounging in a tree, a, she loves to climb trees. And she was, there was a very solid face staring at the camera. And I posted this ad.

Chuck Fishbein (30m 45s):
And again, we used a, you know, a alone, we use a divorce, we use depression and we used the ADHD. We use all these other keywords that could relate to this type of image. And in a pharmaceutical company, he picked it up and they had to sign her up with the temporary, a sag, AFTRA, a release, how did she still gets Czechs? It is wonderful. It, it was a very high paying, a high paying gig. Do you, I, was there anything really unique? You know, no. I mean, it’s, our stuff has been used in shows from a law in order to, to you, you know, it, doesn’t independent films and, and lots of, lots of commercials.

Den Lennie (31m 32s):
It is. Is there any umm, image or a sequence that has really, you know what, the 80 20 principle where it often you not 80% have the money will come from 20% at the stock? Is, is there any particular shot’s or a footage or a series that have just been used more than, than anything else?

Chuck Fishbein (31m 51s):
That’s the strangest thing. I mean, I tend to shoot a lot of, I love the sun rising over a Manhattan, a from the jerseys side of that, to the river. And I like moon rises over a mountain that I’ve been chasing the moon over Manhattan for, for 10 years. And it’s, it’s fun in those, those shots tend to sell well, but that’s not that they’re not our best sellers. It, it never know what’s going to sell. We’ve sold pictures of a windmill, wind generators, a boardwalk at an amusement park, a it’s all over the place.

Chuck Fishbein (32m 32s):
It it’s never like, okay, I’m going to really invest in shooting sunrise them because they’re the, the, the, the, you know, the winning thing know. And as soon as you do that, then pictures of kids holding balloons, a suddenly the, the big seller ore tug boats last, or last year or two years’ ago, a, a news agency in a parish. I forgot her name out of here because it, how did you hear a, what, 40 or images of boats around in Manhattan, tugboats police, boats, oil tankers, a, you know, he never, no, you never know, but it, but I do.

Chuck Fishbein (33m 16s):
I want to say the things that will sell better than others, there’s two different kinds of stock. There’s there’s editorial stock. Well, this is actually several by is the editorial stock and there’s advertizing stock or a commercial stock. A obviously, if you’re gone to do something for a commercial, just as in the photograph, you have to have the rights. If you have people in that photo, you have to have their permission or else you’ll get your, but suit off or, and, or your clients just don’t use it without, without permission when you’re using something for a documentary and you have a crowd of people, a you’ll get away with it.

Chuck Fishbein (33m 60s):
But if you single out one person, you may need they’re really or release from them. The same thing with the buildings in Manhattan, you’ve all seen the New York skyline. A but if you focus in on the empire state building or the Chrysler building, or one to many buildings in, in the city there or trademarked, and you have to get their permission to use them. So you have to have, you have to have like three or four buildings in an image. Umm, so that you are not saying I’m, you know, cause, cause you didn’t want to say like if you, if you’re doing something for on a dinner etcetera in, or, or some it Tylenol kind of you’re sharing the empire state, building it in the background.

Chuck Fishbein (34m 44s):
And there going to say, I know were not endorsing Tylenol or you know, you have to pay us to endorse this cause you’re using our image to endorse this. So if you use all of the like five buildings, then you’re saying this city is a skyline and, and your not asking any one of those buildings, a same thing with the crowd of people. Obviously we have 500 people that a rally or you know, or a concert or doing this, you know, but he, he tried to get the backs of their heads for the most part, because that will allow you to get by without a release. Now having said that, getting really is not that, that, that is a difficult and in most favorable say fine.

Chuck Fishbein (35m 31s):
But even if you like one of the things that we do when, when there’s like a, if I have a, a house or a, that is accessible to me, accessible, meaning I have permission for the owner to you use it a or at some points where I know it, it really is. It’s not gonna matter. I may show scene in several different types of the year. And, and, and this is a very popular thing that a lot of people don’t realize can be profitable. A they like, let’s say it’s a farm on a country road and you, you you’ve done a beautiful part of it. So we revisit it in the winter when it’s covered in snow, revisit it in the spring, revisited it in the fall, tried to put your tripod in nearly the same place or come back with a drawing or an image that you could load into your viewfinder and some cameras that you can do that and shoot it because then a film or a television station or, or, you know, a sit-com we can use it as an establishing shot a passage of time.

Chuck Fishbein (36m 38s):
Time-lapse there’s this as well. It’s like the son going down in the sun coming up, this is a very popular pictures, have stars. Gosh, everybody is done pictures of Starz. You know, at first there was a knockout in it. Wasn’t like, Oh wow, look at those Constellation’s. Now there are 60 billion shots of consolation, 60 billion shots with drones. Umm, you know, it’s what you do with it. What did you just using your drone and the big wide shot or a few years back fell bloomed did some amazing shots. I think that was part of his one question or wonder last or whatever it was. And we followed some, some kid down in a, a long runway out into the water and it was so well done in some tasteful again, you’ve got to look at it, you’ve got to create, you’ve got to make stuff, his mouth water and, and you go like, Oh wow, look at it.

Chuck Fishbein (37m 33s):
That that’s a knockout or you know, but then you’d have to have stuff. Then we’ll also work with him. So you can make a complete it because if you’re a, that the organ is organization that is buying your footage doesn’t yeah. Isn’t as good as a, you, you know that they’re going to need a series of things because otherwise to give, to have this one video for a shot and then you’re going to go back to their Trek. You know,

Den Lennie (37m 59s):
This is fascinating. I’m sure we can talk for hours. If anybody wants to find that a bit more about where can the land more about you in? And we wanted to,

Chuck Fishbein (38m 9s):
Oh, my website is a duckyou.com. I’m do you seek K-12 at UW? We, for that name was given Vecchio is given to us buy a very Mullen U2. It, it was or actually crazy. That was, but that’s a whole other story, but that, that we can say some of my work fair. And

Den Lennie (38m 39s):
It’s a pretty cool story to end on that. That’s a Larry Mullen from YouTube names and your a company. And I’m sure there’s a whole other story with YouTube. Or maybe save that for another time.

Chuck Fishbein (38m 51s):
Yeah. Have the sense for that one that

Den Lennie (38m 56s):
Chuck, thank you so much. It’s been fascinating. Hearing your insights. Thanks for being so gracious with your time, Ask yourself, this has owning your own video business in everything you dreamed it would be when you first got started. It might be hard to admit, but think about whether you are genuinely achieving everything that you set out too. When you made that decision to grab the camera and go it alone, are you really are working less or are you really earning more? And are you really in control? Chances are you’re bloody good at what you do, but you’re having to work out like a dog 70 plus hours a week, whether it’s filming, editing, marketing, or any of the other jobs that come with being the big boss of you’re on video company.

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