Your footage is an asset.
Is it being managed like one?
Most organisations have invested tens of thousands of dollars building trust with communities, stakeholders, and funders. The footage from those investments is sitting on a hard drive somewhere. Nobody knows what's on it, whether consent was captured, or how to find it when someone needs it.
We fix that.
The cost of unmanaged footage is invisible
- until it isn't.
The comms manager who inherited a project halfway through doesn't know what footage was captured in year one. The grant acquittal is due and nobody can find the interview with the community member from the original consultation. The new campaign is ready but nobody knows which faces were cleared for ongoing use.
These are real situations. They happen because organisations treat footage as a by-product of production rather than an asset with a lifespan.
The footage your organisation has already captured is evidence of relationships built, trust earned, and impact delivered. Without stewardship, that evidence decays into inaccessible files, unclear rights, and missed opportunities to tell an evolving story without starting from scratch.
Stewardship is not storage.
It's institutional memory made usable.
There is a fundamental difference between keeping footage and managing it. Storage means the files exist somewhere. Stewardship means you can find what you need, trust what you're looking at, use it when the moment comes, and know exactly who agreed to what.
Four things stewardship does for your organisation:
1. Organises and catalogues your archive
Raw footage is logged, tagged, described, and structured so any comms manager can find what they need years later, without calling anyone. Includes scene descriptions, key moments, speaker identification, topic tags, and consent status.
2. Manages rights and consent
Who signed what? Are releases perpetual or time-limited? Are there faces in B-roll that can't be used in a new edit without re-clearance? Organisations working with communities, vulnerable people, or contested public situations have real legal exposure if this isn't managed. This is risk mitigation, not filing.
3. Activates what you already have
Regularly reviewing your existing library to identify what can be reused, what is approaching relevance expiry, and what could serve a new purpose without a new shoot. A three-year-old stakeholder interview might be exactly right for a funding application if reframed correctly. This is what makes stewardship feel like a strategic partnership rather than a service.
4. Keeps your story current
Depending on the tier: a regular review of what needs refreshing, new edits from existing footage, and honest advisory on whether a new shoot is actually necessary or whether something in your archive can already do the job.
What this looks like in practice
Audit → Platform selection → Populated library → Active reuse
The Business Events Tasmania engagement:
Business Events Tasmania came to The Bakery with an active library from multiple productions and no clear system for accessing or deploying it. We conducted a structured assessment of available content management platforms, evaluated each against BET's specific requirements, and presented a recommendation they could move forward with confidently.
Once the platform was in place, we populated it with both newly produced content and previously shot footage from earlier Bakery engagements - catalogued, tagged, and ready to use.
BET now has an organised, accessible, strategically deployable content library. Footage that was previously buried is now findable. Existing content is being reused in new situations without requiring a new production. That is the proof of concept.
"What we had before was footage. What we have now is a library."
Marnie Craig
CEO - Business Events Tasmania
Three ways to work together
Each tier builds on the last. The right fit depends on the size of your existing library, the pace of your communications calendar, and how actively you want to draw on what you already have.
Tier 1
Archive & Protect
"Your footage is safe, organised, and findable."
For organisations with a modest library from one or two productions, and limited internal comms capacity. The priority is security, organisation, and peace of mind.
Includes:
Initial onboarding audit and library setup
Organised, tagged, cloud-hosted footage archive
Consent and rights documentation register
Annual strategic review call
Ad hoc retrieval requests within agreed turnaround
From $500/month
Tier 2
Archive & Activate
"Your footage works for you, not against you."
For organisations with ongoing content needs, an active communications calendar, or regular stakeholder engagement work. The focus is getting more from what already exists.
Includes everything in Tier 1, plus:
Quarterly strategic reuse review (what in the library can we deploy now)
Up to two remixes or repurposed edits per quarter from existing footage
Advisory on shoot decisions (new production vs. existing asset)
Priority retrieval turnaround
From $1,800/month
Tier 3
Archive, Activate & Advise
"Embedded editorial intelligence, always on."
For clients in complex, ongoing situations: large infrastructure projects, multi-year government programs, NFPs with active fundraising or acquittal cycles. The story keeps evolving and communications need to keep pace.
Includes everything in Tiers 1 and 2, plus:
Monthly strategic advisory call on content and narrative direction
Full editorial planning support for the communications calendar
Proactive identification of story opportunities in the existing archive
Priority access to new production planning (no tender, direct engagement)
Light production services included as an agreed monthly allocation
From $4,000/month
Not sure what you have?
Start with a Discovery.
Before any retainer conversation, the right first step is often a Footage Discovery, a focused engagement where we come in, look at what your organisation has actually captured over the years, and show you what you're sitting on.
Most organisations are surprised by what a Footage Discovery reveals. There's usually more than they thought. There's almost always something at risk. And there's often a hidden asset - an interview, a community moment, a piece of B-roll, that can do real work right now without a single new day of filming.
The Footage Discovery is a paid engagement. It stands completely on its own. You walk away with a clear picture of your archive: what's organised, what's exposed, what's reusable, and what the right next step looks like, whether that's a stewardship retainer or simply a better system than you have now.
Three things a Footage Discovery tells you
1: What you actually have
A structured inventory of your footage — what exists, where it lives, what format it's in, and whether it's accessible to the people who need it.
2: What's at risk
Consent gaps, unclear rights, inaccessible formats, missing documentation. If there's legal or reputational exposure in your archive, you'll know about it before it becomes a problem.
3: What's a hidden asset
Footage that could be reused, repurposed, or deployed in a new context without a new shoot. This is often the most valuable part of the conversation.
$500 - $2,000 depending on archive size.
This is built for organisations with something to protect
Footage stewardship is the right conversation for you if:
Your organisation has produced one or more productions and you don't have a clear system for accessing or deploying that footage
You work with communities, stakeholders, or vulnerable people, and consent management is a real risk you're carrying
Your communications rely on being able to demonstrate impact over time, not just announce future intentions
You're in a multi-year program, infrastructure project, or ongoing engagement where the story keeps evolving
You've produced footage with another company and inherited an archive you didn't set up
Government and infrastructure
You've invested in building relationships with communities over the life of this project. The footage is evidence of that investment. Without stewardship, the next person in that role won't know it exists.
NFP and purpose-driven organisations
Every person who agreed to be on camera trusted you with their story. Do you know where those consent forms are? Do you know what you promised them? We manage that so the answer is always yes.
Corporates with ESG commitments
Your credibility depends on being able to demonstrate what you've done over time, not just announce what you're planning. Your footage library is proof. We make it searchable and deployable.
We built this because we saw what happened without it.
We've been producing footage for organisations for over 15 years. We've watched carefully made films sit on hard drives nobody can find. We've heard from comms managers who inherited an archive they couldn't navigate. We've seen clients go back to market for a new shoot when the footage they needed was already in their possession.
Footage stewardship is the part of the production relationship most companies walk away from. We stay.
Your archive is either an asset or a liability. We can tell you which.
If you have footage and no clear system for managing it, the conversation starts with Footage Discovery.
If you're coming to the end of a production and want stewardship built in from the start, let's talk about that too.