Stock Video Footage - The Clinton/Obama Gaff
There's an interesting footnote to the well-known Hillary Clinton ad about experience, they titled "Children", but which is commonly referred to now as the "3am phone call commercial." The short description for the commercial on YouTube reads:
On March 4th, your vote will decide who will be in the White House to pick up the phone when it rings at 3 AM.Yet, one of the children in the video is now all grown up, is 18, and is an Obama supporter.
Such is the risk of using stock imagery (whether video, or stills), securing contracts from appropriate models, and so forth. The Wonkette website reports about the (then) young girl:
(Continued after the Jump)
her family shopped her out as a little girl to be in non-POLITICS OF FEAR commercials, and that footage was then sold to the wire service Getty. That way, cheap Getty subscribers, like the Hillary Clinton campaign, could use the footage for anything -- including the POLITICS OF FEAR.Clicking the image above gets you to the MSNBC footage from NBC's Today Show where they interview the now-voting-age young woman. Visiting the YouTube link above has other interviews of her by several other outlets.
I share this story with you not as a story critical of Getty (NYSE: GYI) per se, but as one that demonstrates the risk of using stock footage, where assignment work gives you guarantees and protections. We reported last November ( Black Friday? Try, "You Get What You Pay For" Friday! , 11/27/07) about the risks of RF, and, non-exclusive RM. In fact, with RF, for example, you have little to no control over the exclusivity of an image/video clip. With RM, you can at-least secure an exclusivity license for a term. The ASMP website has several examples of how this problem became a poke in the eye for dualing companies, (Rights Managed Stock vs Royalty Free Stock - Is RF the bargain they claim?), but it stands, thus, to reason that the better solution is the commissioning of original content that has A) never been seen, B) has an exclusivity term, and C) has been properly contracted so that the subjects in the images/video don't go destroying your message.
Since Getty should have had the releases on file, due-diligence on the part of the Clinton Campaign should have taken place where they not only paid additional fees for exclusivity of the footage for a period of time, but also contacted each of the people in their stock footage to ensure they were either a Clinton supporter, or would atleast remain mum about their position for the election.
Better yet, try not going the cheap route, and shoot the footage yourself!
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3 comments:
Back in 1996, the Republican National Committee wanted to decorate the convention hall with huge blow-ups of all different images, all stock (from Image Bank); the kind of idealized images you'd see in a soda commercial.
In any event, one of my images was one of the ones chosen (a little girl playing. But the RNC had a special request: they asked all the photographers, and the models in the images, to sign release forms that stated that they fully supported Bob Dole for President, and were goingto vote for him.
As much as I needed the money (it was a big $ sale), I refused. It turned oyt that all the other photographers refused as well. And so the RNC ended up decorating the convention hall with red, white & blue stripes.
I guess this very thing was what they were trying to prevent.
Out of curiosity, I took a look at Getty Images’ licensing agreement. Similar to other stock footage houses, Getty Images requires the producer to take extra steps if the footage is used in certain contexts. For example, if the image is used for the endorsement of a product or service or in connection with an unflattering or controversial subject, the Getty Images license requires the producer to include a statement that the person is a model and is used for illustrative purposes only.
You're making a big assumption here: that anybody really (outside the belway, anyway) cares what the girl in the commercial thinks. Yes, this was briefly a minor item on the news reports, but I doubt it has any lasting effect on anything.
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