How to Be a Resourceful Filmmaker and Get B-Roll That Can Sell

One surprise people new to videography are in for is just how much footage you need for today's standard of ordinary video. As a result, getting B-roll and clips for transitions is crucial. Here's how to be more resourceful when you're out with your camera.

The value of this video is twofold. Firstly, it's teaching you to be more resourceful and capture more footage when you're out and about with your camera. However, it is also teaching you how to maximize potential profits from selling stock footage. A huge portion of content creators either don't want to, or don't have time to shoot the filler footage required to tell a story in their video; they would rather buy it from a stock site. This is where you can really cash in. A recent video on the topic estimated that you may only make $50 per year, which seems like a low return. However, if you're shooting these clips as you go about your other work, and you're uploading hundreds of these clips per year, you can see how it can generate a nice extra revenue stream, all while giving you a fuller library of footage to draw upon, for free.

Do you have any tips for being more resourceful while out with your camera? Leave them in the comments below.

Rob Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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5 Comments

Does this poster know the amount of time that goes into tagging all the clips and uploading them? It’s huge! And the return on the time invested is negligible.

Is there still a market for 1080p B-roll or does it have to be 4k these days?

Of course.

Most stock footage (80-90%) sells at 1080p but 4k future proofs you.

Thank you!