The Best Stock Video For Churches
A review of who’s got the best quality footage at the right price for your church videos.
Without fail there is something that I almost always need for every video I make for a church. Sometimes I have the time and/or budget to go out and capture it, but often times when I’m dealing with a tight deadline or heavy workload I don’t have that luxury. What am I talking about?
Lifestyle footage.
Nothing brings a video to life quite like footage of people doing everyday stuff (I know that sounds weird), but if you’ve ever set out to capture some yourself you know how hard it can be to get footage that feels authentic, looks great, and captures the emotion or idea that you had in your head. And if you’ve ever searched the web looking for stock lifestyle footage that you can use in your project you’ve probably discovered that finding footage that looks good is almost impossible and if you do find some it is crazy expensive.
Luckily I have found some new stock video resources that I have been using lately that actually have some great lifestyle footage that’s super affordable. I’m going to go over 4 resources - one that you’ve probably heard of and three up and coming sites that you may have not heard of yet.
The Gold Standard - Filmsupply
There is a reason that Filmsupply has some of the best, most aesthetically creative stock video in the world: their video clips are coming from some of the best, most creative filmmakers in the world. I love Filmsupply and everything they do, but outside of a few bigger projects that I’ve done, I usually can’t afford them. As of this writing, the cheapest clip you can purchase (if you’re a church or ministry with less than 500 employees) is $199 per clip. You can do the math and see how quickly this can add up.
If you’re a church on a tight budget, you may only want to use Filmsupply how I do - when you need one very specific clip that you can’t shoot yourself or purchase anywhere else. I have personal friends who are contributing artists on Filmsupply and I love seeing their work in projects and knowing that they’re getting paid for their hard work, I just can’t afford them for most of my church projects.
(However, I do highly recommend their blog!)
Pros:
Great website that is well organized
Full previews of every clip available before purchase
Visually stunning footage
High production value
Unique clips that you can’t shoot yourself or purchase anywhere else
Each purchase supports our fellow filmmakers
Cons:
Very expensive
My Personal Favorite - FILMPAC
I discovered FILMPAC right when they first started and I have a completely biased confession: I'm a big fan of FILMPAC. I have personally purchased their entire collection several years in a row and have used their lifestyle clips in many of my church projects over the past couple of years. I caught up with Caleb, the founder of the site, and had a good chat with him. He is a filmmaker himself and FILMPAC was formed organically out of his own need for lifestyle footage for a lot of his own projects. What started out as a single collection has blossomed into a full blown stock video company.
When looking through stock video resources online one of my biggest problems is finding footage that matches my style of shooting. For most of my projects, I’m just looking for a few shots to supplement my existing footage so it’s really important for the stock video clips that I purchase to feel like they belong in my film (although you could certainly build out full promos or sermon bumpers out of stock video). What drew me to FILMPAC was that the aesthetics and cinematography most closely resembled my own style of shooting, that and the fact that it’s incredibly affordable compared to Filmsupply.
Another thing that FILMPAC nails is its clips’ singular focus. It’s kind of hard to put words to because it’s more of a feeling thing, but let me attempt to break down my problems with stock footage and how I think FILMPAC has solved some of them….
There’s two major problems I have with stock footage:
It either feels completely unintentional (ie. somebody pulls their camera out in public and just starts filming and the result looks like home videos or local news B-roll) or it feels way too unnatural and staged (a non-athletic person who doesn’t have a drip of sweat on them training in an empty gym where there are no other people).
I have some theories on why these two situations are so common, but I won’t bore you with them, so for now I’ll just say that for the most part Caleb has done a great job of choosing people, locations, and activities that for the most part look and feel natural and unstaged and he has intentionally chosen a specific style of framing that shows just enough of a person or activity to convey a situation or feeling, but also hides parts of the environment that isn’t important to that shot and/or would give away that the footage is staged.
Now to be completely transparent, Church Film School has become an affiliate for FILMPAC which means that if you purchase any stock video collections from them by clicking their links on this website, Church Film School will receive a portion of each sale. You can also use the Church Film School coupon code "CHURCH" to get 10% off your first purchase or "CHURCH100" to get $100 off your first month/year of a membership (which will help fund this website and making new content for you.)
That being said, that’s not why I am recommending FILMPAC. Caleb is a rad guy, his content is killer, and I’ve spent my own money and paid full price on every FILMPAC purchase because I think it’s well worth it.
Pros
Consistent 4K quality downloads
Full previews of every clip available before purchase
Very affordable (“pacs” of 20 clips start at $49/mo & unlimited plans start at $99/mo)
Natural performances
Good range of ethnic and life stage diversity
Each purchase supports a fellow filmmaker
Clips come color graded and ungraded
Continually updated content library
Cons
The majority of their footage is shot in slow motion & I would prefer to have more regular speed options as well
Sometimes their older .mp4 footage doesn’t hold up to heavy color grading (but all new content is coming in higher quality)
Something To Keep Your Eye On - Storytape
If you’ve been in the church marketing & communications world for a while you’re probably familiar with Brady Shearer and Pro Church Tools. If you are not familiar, they are a young minded company that for the past several years have produced an insane amount of helpful content geared towards helping churches improve their engagement with their congregation and beyond. I would definitely check them out if you’re in a role at your church that also includes social media, email, marketing, etc.
Brady & his team is also helping churches with their own stock video resource called Story Tape.
Where other services offer clips or bundles for purchase, Story Tape makes their entire catalog available to you when you sign up for a monthly (or yearly) subscription. As of this writing they have over 25,000 clips available and have committed to adding 500 new clips every month.
I watched their launch of Story Tape very closely and even signed up for the very first month to peek behind the curtain and look at their entire catalog and I will say this: their business infrastructure, marketing & communication, and entrepreneurial spirit are all top notch and I have no doubt that Story Tape will be successful and continue to grow and improve, but their actual footage isn’t a good fit for me personally.
The style and content of the videos are just too different than what and how I shoot to work for me. As I mentioned earlier for my projects I’m usually just looking for a couple of clips to supplement my own, whereas Story Tape is really built around the idea of being able to edit entire videos using their stock videos.
I can totally see Story Tape being a great resource for getting content for sermon bumpers, background plates for motion graphic pieces, worship backgrounds, social media posts, etc.
They seem to be very proactive in getting feedback from their users, so I’m sure their video content will continue to improve, so I’d definitely recommend checking them out and keeping an eye on them for the future.
Pros
Sccess to entire collection starting as low as $99/mo
Great search/filters functionality on website
Huge catalog
Specifically designed with churches in mind
Consistent quality, everything is filmed with the same 4K camera
Clips come graded & ungraded
Lots of high quality aerial drone footage
Cons
Almost everything is slow motion
A lot of the footage feels like stock footage
Lacking ethnic and geographic diversity
The New Kids On The Block - Stockhub
To be honest I’m not even sure how I stumbled upon Stokhub, but I’m glad I did. Whereas Story Tape is full-time stock video company serving churches, Stokhub is more of a collective of church filmmakers (and a missionary pastor) who are licensing some of their footage on the side to help raise support for their ministry roles. In that sense, it is more like a Film Supply for churches where there are multiple contributors shooting with different equipment and different styles, so the quality and content is more varied.
In my communications with the Stokhub guys, they’ve told me that they’re planning to add 1,000 clips per month, so their collection of 25,000 clips should continue to growing.
Compared to the other guys, their price is incredibly low and for only $175/yr you get unlimited access to their entire catalog.
Pros:
Free previews of all clips before purchase
Lowest price out of all services @ $175/yr
Good resource for missions footage
Designed with churches in mind
Cons:
Lacking in quantity when it comes to people/lifestyle footage
Inconsistent quality with older content
Lacking ethnic and life stage diversity
In conclusion, I’d recommend checking out each of these resources and seeing if they would be a good resource that would help you in your church video projects. The beauty of these new resources is that they are very affordable so you could easily utilize all of them to supplement your upcoming projects or to create entire videos out of them.
If you know of another great resource to check out, post a link in the comments below.
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