Rick Ray: How to Build an Archive

Whilst shooting independent documentaries around the world, Rick Ray quickly learned that it can be more economical to sell the individual shots themselves over the whole project – enter DVarchive

Rick Ray

He started out with his own collection at first, building up his flip book of the world around us – ‘when you take all those individual shots and you start to market them and licence them independently, you find hundreds, if not thousands, of people who are interested in that content and want to use it for their own purposes’.

‘With the guidance of a mentor showing him the ways around contracts and stock footage negotiations, Rick continued to shoot film all over the world with ‘an emphasis on beauty and interest’ which would contribute to DVarchive.’

It was a bit later that Rick got interested in the archival side of stock content, finding that older footage can have great value and most people find the licensing complicated. 

Rick recounts his experience meeting and interviewing the Dalai Lama for his movie 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama (2006), ironically finding it harder to attain stock footage of his life for the documentary than setting up the meeting itself. Although there was footage available in various archives, it was a costly extensive process full of paperwork.

‘My passion came from more of a practical point of view: how can we make this easy and efficient for people all over the world who simply need this content and want to be able to use it now?’

He began searching through the National Archives and the Library of Congress with his research team (when the government creates or acquires something, it becomes generally public domain upon creation or acquisition), then finding footage in the public domain (which means its older than 95 years) or with unrenewed copyright. From there, they find what would be interesting and of value to add to their collection which is then prepped in their labs in LA and categorised to be easily found with metadata. Since many of the shots are so noisy, they have to be cleaned up, restored, and sometimes colorised.

Many clients are researchers, but Rick explains that interest comes in far and wide, in the likes of TV shows, documentaries, and even bands, having produced content for Coldplay and Bruce Springstein. He even shared that two opposing political parties used his stock footage back to back in TV commercials!

‘My wife and I will be watching a Netflix documentary or something, and it really takes you right out of it to be sitting on the couch and see a clip that you produced but is now in a major film. It’s really kind of cool. We’ll high five, but it definitely takes you out of the experience of watching movies…It’s even weirder when it’s your for a subject that you don’t necessarily agree with, and this is one of the things that we face in stock footage: you really don’t have control over how your footage might be interpreted or how it might be used.’

Rick shares his concerns about AI in regards to stock footage and how quickly it can mock up images and clips from nothing, questioning the ethics of the practice behind this. By mocking up a decent scene in a few moments, it has cut out the need for an entire production team, actors, designers and marketers, with often no concerns about copyrights or other rights. ‘For all of us in the audience as we watched that, it felt like the end.’ Who’s data had been feeding this AI? How could anyone be compensated? He acknowledges that this change is inevitable and that there is hope for protections, but warrants the need for consumers to ask about ethically sourced content forAI.

Before archives, Rick was more often than not solo travelling the world with a camera: ‘I lived in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand, I hitchhiked across New Zealand, I lived on and travelled between remote islands on fishing boats.’ Work came all over the place, providing for National Geographic and various documentaries.

Whilst he has visited many scenic corners of the world, Rick has also put himself on the front lines of some of the bloodiest wars in recent decades, from the likes of Myanmar, Syria and, most recently, Ukraine.

‘I go where there’s an interesting story to tell. Its not just a place I go to have a glass of wine and watch a sunset, I go where my skill set is useful in these situations. I know how to travel light and inconspicuously. I know how to tell stories and film them that in a compelling way.  I find shooting stock of that topic has tremendous value as well to the world.’

In Ukraine, he obtained a press pass from the Ukrainian military that allowed him to go past the checkpoints where he ventured into the subrubs of Kyiv after Russia had pulled out. When asked if he felt fear in these moments, Rick muses that ‘your fear disappears because you are possessed with a sense of purposeful action that helps you simply forget that there are dangers that could take your life at any moment.’