When it comes to human resources or creative assets, contribution to purpose and value is a key metric when it comes to evaluating what you have. It is important to not let the perfect get in the way of the good enough when it comes to creative assets, but the same warning for team members applies to creative assets: mediocre, tame and arbitrary assets say very little to your audience and rarely inspire action.
Without action, there is no value produced anywhere.
Regarding content assets, often times the things we have in our arsenal are good to start, but sometimes quality is lacking because when we originally created or acquired the assets, we didn’t really consider that their use would rise above the hobby or curiosity phase. They may have been the cheapest or most readily available option at the time. They may have simply been what consumer grade item was offered.
There are a number of ways to upgrade components of your content library to drive enthusiasm, education and confidence.
If you are not in the creative media space, you may not be aware of some of the advances that have been made over the past few years in quality content creation and management.
First, there are a number of resources that provide commercially licensed content subpacks in the realms of fonts, still images, stock images and footage and vector icons and design elements. These can be had at discounts of nearly 90% and introduce you to quality design styles from creative professionals who usually have high quality content collections, content subscription services and commissioned work opportunities.
Second, the number of free use assets or assets governed by liberal creative commons licensing terms is increasing. Much of this material may be shots or 3d models or other materials that the artist considers b-reel content, but good enough to release in exchange of getting portfolio exposure. Many of these artists are available for commission work.
Third, if you have content that is legacy analog content – film negative, film slides, transparencies, and so on – the ability to digitize these media with high fidelity has gotten cheaper over the years and is now within reach of prosumer grade hardware. The skills don’t come with the hardware, but the technology is available to breath new life into some of this content.
Fourth, if you have digital media that you have captured with an old phone or a low resolution device, artificial intelligence tools are available to expand dynamic range of those images as if they were shot digitally on more modern equipment, as well as recover details and even convincingly upscale images to higher resolutions by allowing artificial intelligence algorithms to calculate and produce details for your images that were not there in the originals. Colorizing images, color swaps, replacement and repair – all of the technologies have advanced as a rapid pace thanks to artificial intelligence training.
Fifth, if you are dealing with commercial products that use standardized packaging it is possible to render convincing product images and composite those materials into footage shot on site. Pretty much any shape or material can be convincingly rendered by someone in the trade in a way that will engage visitors – and within certain limitations it works great to promote product that you are anticipating but is pre-release.
Lastly, if none of the content options above will replace the need for custom on-site content creation via photography or videography, the options here have gotten better, smaller and cooler – cooler lighting, smaller rigs, cameras and rail setups allow high quality results to be captured with less.
The bottom line is that it is worth looking at your asset inventory and ask questions about restoration, upscaling, transformation and other options before committing to a completely new media collection. The right content curation partner or media specialist can help breathe new life into your existing media collection while also offering suggestions to fill in gaps.
Looking for advice on media content you have but aren�t sure how to apply to a project? We provide a broad spectrum of media manipulation and creation services, including acquisition services if you are in the San Antonio area. Give us a call or a chat and tell us what you are looking for.
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