Hello and welcome! If you do not know me, my name is Beer and I am an illustrator and microstock contributor from Thailand. I have recently started to interview interesting and successful illustrators, photographers and video stock contributors from around the world to help share knowledge and to get some insights into how they work and think.
I’m happy to announce that this is my first dual language interview which is available in English and Thai and I’m very excited it’s with the talented videographer Alessio Balza from Italy. I’m honoured to be able to share this exclusive look into the process and mindset on how Alessio and his partner Andrea run their day to day stock business and hope that it brings some knowledge and inspiration to you also. Enjoy!
*As requested by Alessio and out of respect for his privacy, we have not included a link to his portfolio but shared some of his clips throughout this blog. We have included a link to his facebook group at the end of this article.
บทสัมภาษณ์ภาษาไทย (Thai Language)
1. Hi Alessio and thank you so much for taking time out to speak with us today. Could you please give everyone reading an introduction about who you are, where you’re from and a little bit about your background?
Hello! I’m Alessio Balza and thank you so much for coming to interview me.
I am Italian and I live near Milan in Italy. I live in the countryside and I live every day with my children and my family that many of you have seen on my social media channels.
Previously I studied video design and also photography but I can say I learnt a little at school and I learnt much more by working for free for my professors and for my clients so that I could learn and experiment and do some stupid stuff without clients getting angry. On the other hand it was a free job 😉
2. I’m interested to know about your journey with Microstock and how you got started? Is this a full time setup for you or is it something that you do in addition to other work commitments? And has your work always been video focused or did you start out with photography?
I started in Microstock by purchasing a drone when few people had a drone, keep in mind that when I flew it the police at the time also took pictures of that strange flying object in the sky.
On Shutterstock at that time there were only 2000 clips available in 4k resolution so I tried to capture some video of a friend who ploughed a field with an old tractor.
This particular clip has sold all around the world and has been purchased about 2,000 times. From that point onwards I easily knew that this was a market I could seriously have fun with.
In the beginning like everyone else, I had to work very hard and have two regular jobs. It wasn’t until I arrived at a certain number of sales with my partner Andrea Delle Foglie, that we were able to open our own stock video agency, and now that is our main focus and we only do that.
We base our content and focus on emotional, authentic and romantic videos now but we also have a variation of technology, pharmaceutical and some other different videos in our portfolio. To sum it up, our portfolio is based on our evolution throughout the years working and learning with video.
3. I have seen some of the videos you posted recently showing your work, technically they are incredible! Is there a lot of preparation that goes into the production to be able to effectively communicate the story you are trying to communicate to the viewer?
First of all I am very lucky to have my wife, who almost always supports me in my projects and who also tests me as an actress with the children in front of the camera, after that there are no preparations but we move on to focus on the fundamental job of market research.
What I always suggest to improve technically is to get into the habit of keeping the camera in your hand as much as possible and the reason behind this is because the more you make mistakes, the more you learn to improve and develop new techniques, even me every day I learn something new. It does sounds like a cliché but it’s true. I also did a lot of after effects and colour correction training.
4. Here in Thailand we have a large community of people that contribute to Microstock from illustrators such as myself, photographers and videographers and some of them are very active on social media to learn and gain knowledge. If someone is keen to start with video but they have no idea where to begin, or they usually contribute another medium and would like to step into video what advice could you give them?
I really like Thai people.
They throw themselves into things and work hard, I like this mindset and also the great respect they have for those who teach them something new, it’s very admirable.
My suggestion is to focus on being creative and to be better and shoot better things than what is already available, do not just go out and shoot anything. Go out and shoot with a very specific idea or concept in mind and work hard to develop it, do not shoot the random butterflies in the garden or the cat as that market is already very saturated.
You need to be creative as unique creative ideas are needed.
5. As we all know, Microstock is becoming more and more saturated everyday with contributors and content (and of course lower royalties) and now is more important than ever to be unique and produce quality content that buyers are looking for. How do you go about finding your inspiration for a shoot and do you collaborate with a team to work on ideas and bring them to reality or is it just yourself?
As I mentioned previously, we are a team of two people, I deal with the technical artistic side while Andrea instead deals with the organisational side of the business.
The ideas and inspiration come to both of us and can appear while I do the shopping, while I watch TV or while I take a walk. Now my life is about stock and everything I do is readjusted for selling, I have a bad obsession with work.
6. I have a page and group on Facebook that I use to share knowledge to contributors and encourage them to share their work, questions and thoughts so as a community we can all improve and be better. You also have a group and I love that you have the same mindset! For me I want to help and share knowledge so I can improve and they can too. How important is it for everyone to have this mindset? and for people that are shy or scared of sharing their work because of copycats or English language ability, what would you say to them?
We are all trying to communicate and the automatic translators on social media do a good job, you almost always understand the meaning of the sentence.
Are some people afraid of being copied?
But the world of microstock is made of copies! they all copy from someone else. Look at something and ask yourself “Would I do it better?” If the answer is “yes” well…. try it and you will probably will do it better, if instead you copy someone else and you also do it badly, your content will also not sell. Another point to note when copying someone else is that you have to remember you are already way behind with market trends.
For those people who are shy to communicate I can say this: The internet is like a school class, even if you were shy you still had to go to class if you wanted to graduate and get your degree.
7. This will be probably be difficult to answer, as every shoot is different but on a typical shoot with models what kind of budget would you set yourself and how many saleable clips are you looking to come home with? Are these shared shoots with other videographers or just yourself and do you also capture still from the video footage to sell also? Do you have any advice on saving money when it comes to shoots?
It is not a difficult question on the contrary. It is a question that I would ask my partner Andrea, and I allow myself to answer for him.
For shooting with models, I tend to always find friends or relatives in the first instance and when you can’t do this, I turn to searching on facebook or instagram and can also be looking through them for whole days.
In terms of the payment we start from $100 for the neighbours and we also get to $800–1000 per day for those professional models provided by the agencies.
Before I could extract the photos from the video but now the agencies are rather fussy and we also try to raise the photographic quality so it is better to do both separately.
Instead of giving advice on how to save money with shoots, the question I would ask myself is
whether the video shoot is worth it as an investment?
8.From your experience and what you’ve learned along the way working with video, what tips and advice could you give up and coming video contributors to take their content to the next level?
Hold on and don’t give up, keep uploading new content and more and more current concepts and trends and do not shoot and submit everything hoping that it will sell, this reasoning is very difficult.
Think of it like this, you have a fruit and vegetable shop and to make constant sales you have to have a little bit of everything and the products you have must be beautiful and tasty as well as fresh.
9. There are a lot of people who don’t shoot video at night or scenes with poor lighting mainly because of the extra challenge that this brings up with high ISO. However I sense that this extra challenge means that a lot of this content has the potential to be best sellers? What advice can you give for people that want to shoot more night time video but don’t have the budget for high end professional equipment?
It is true that filming at night is more trendy and sells more today, the reason why this happens is because it is more difficult to do. It is certainly nice to have expensive and high-performance equipment with large sensors and very wide optics but all this can also be replaced by creativity, ingenuity or even basic lighting equipment.
With an $80 light, a reflective panel and a light bulb, this setup can easily handle a small night scene and using a 50mm 1.8 lens that costs from $50 and up,
it is not impossible to do.
Using a red camera it is perhaps simpler but it can also be done using the cheaper methods without too many problems.
10. Could you share with us a link to one of your favourite clips and explain a little about why its your favourite?
I chose this clip as my favourite.
I have a friend who has a dog farm and she kindly allowed me to shoot this scene in which everybody runs like crazy towards the camera and the girls really have fun running away from the dogs. Directing the dogs to run from one side to the other and coordinating with the children was a really difficult task but I am convinced that nobody has produced a similar clip, nor could I do it again as I was fortunate to do it, so I keep it in my heart.
My only regret is not having been better at keeping focus on children as the focus is a little soft.
11. Do you currently have any plans to make a course for people interested in video for microstock? Are there any plans to come to Thailand to shoot in the future and perhaps do a workshop?
I have been seeing the Thai people grow in stock footage for a few years, some are very good and they work hard and above all else they have a desire to learn but in Italy this unfortunately does not happen.
Many people have asked me to create a video course and it’s not my job but I have started writing one right now, it will be ready in about a month and a half and produced in Italian with subtitles in Thai language, I hope to live up to the expectations given that I am not so good in front of the camera.
Besides that, I have been invited to Thailand to hold workshops and of course I am honoured! As soon as the time comes I will come over to do them with real pleasure.
12. And finally what would you like to achieve in the next few years with video? More motion graphic integration perhaps?
For the next few years I’m almost certain that the stock industry will always work, perhaps the technological supports will change for example augmented realities and immersive technologies are becoming much more popular in America.
The stock videos with the implementation of motion graphics that I saw are always popular with customers but I started to move away from them a bit as I saw that there are now 3D artists that are really much better than me that produce this kind of content.
For now I am having fun with what I have and I will try to keep up with the times.
To find out more about Alessio and see some more of his incredible footage, head over to his facebook group Best contributors
