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S ome insensitive souls might consider stock shots as perhaps the least glam- orous form of film footage but thanks to the efforts of one British company, they’ve become an industry in their own right. For more than 30 years, Index Stock Shots, founded in 1967 and still run by Gerry Weinbren, has been a prolific independent provider of 35mm colour stock
footage. Defined officially by one source as a “film sequence... mainly used to introduce the locale... or to add atmosphere,” Weinbren would also add “mood setting, often for a title background.”
As a library for others - including corpora- tions, independent producers and cinematogra- phers - as well as a lively originator of its own material, the London-based company boasts a remarkable database which can offer footage of anything from Atlanta to Zurich, airports to Zulus.
Think aircraft wheels burning rubber, the Hollywood sign, city skylines, rush hour crowds, the Pyramids, building implosions, the Las Vegas strip, ships on rough seas, The Moon, the Taj Mahal... and you might get some slight idea of the sheer range of material available from Index.
Lasting on screen perhaps between two and five seconds, such footage has decorated endless theatrical features down the years from Local Hero, The Final Conflict, Nuns On The Run and Biggles up to, most recently, films like Spiceworld, The Truman Show, Rogue Trader, Lighthouse and The Debtors. And that’s not even counting the company’s other 80 per cent of daily international business coping with commercials, industrial, pro- mos and television.
Like so many good ideas - and this one has proved priceless - Index began out of sheer frus- tration. Raised in South Africa, Weinbren worked at the Shell Film Unit before moving over to Bristol Siddeley (as it would become) where he built on his previous work in aviation filming often han- dling the camerawork himself.
After leaving Bristol he found that people would come to him asking all sorts of questions
about aviation footage. He explains: “I knew where the footage was and felt very frustrated that I couldn’t get it to them. Film Centre, the library we used at Shell, had by now ground to a halt so I set up Index to provide the service. Aviation and industry were the original spur.” Soon his new out- fit had taken on Bristol’s material followed later by Rolls Royce, Shell and BP’s.
Among the millions of feet of film supervised today by Index is, as already indicated, a mind- boggling range. Bearing in mind its aviation back- ground, it’s perhaps no surprise that the company is keen to promote its shots of aircraft. Many air- lines are featured, as in the case of a Mike Tyson telemovie which had requested some footage of
an Eastern Airlines plane landing in Los Angeles. The fact that Eastern is now out of business pro- vided the right historical context for the sequence. In addition Index has other footage to provide generic activity deliberately without carri- er identification.
Talking of transport, Weinbren also likes to point out that over the years an archival collection has evolved naturally, almost unnoticed. In addi-
tion, there’s genuine vintage footage notably Grand Prix motor racing from 1902 to 1939.
Flanked by his long-time librarian Philip Hinds, who’s also now part owner of the company, Weinbren says: “Stock footage very often doesn’t get shot as stock footage. It’s what you take out of the production. My analogy has always been Colman’s Mustard; it’s said that Colman makes its profit from what goes down the drain and not what you eat. That’s the same with us. The stock manu- facturer makes his money from what’s left on the cutting room floor.
“We always thought there must be valuable footage, not from what the actors are doing but from the second unit which can then be saved. So we tap producers. That stuff remains their copy- right, of course. We don’t buy it or own it, simply look after and service it for them then share in the royalties. But because 35mm became more and more difficult to get, we went more and more into shooting ourselves.”
Full gate register pin cameras are employed in-house when filming specifically for the library then key footage is transferred to digital broadcast tape direct from the negative.
As a result Weinbren, sometimes accompa- nied by Hinds, is regularly whizzing around the
STOCK SHOTS
STOCK SHOTS
Photo: center: Index Stock Shots founder Gerry Weinbren
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