Sync: A spoken word says more than a thousand tapes

Thought Equity Motion launched a search tool that allows filmmakers to search for material based on the spoken word. Miguel Gonzalez spoke with CEO Kevin Schaff.

According to Schaff, the stock footage market has traditionally been limited by the lack of a deep, real time search. “The frustration for filmmakers, particularly in the documentary world, is that they have to spend a lot of time and energy to find clips online, but the selection is usually limited, or the clips are not available in full.

“Their other alternative has been to put a research request in so that someone will go through and spend days, even weeks or months looking for the right footage. The downside in taking so long to find reference tapes is that you’re usually still working off of metadata, which only brings out results based on the key topics that someone associated with the material. You don’t get the full context,” says Schaff from the company’s global headquarters in Denver, Colorado.