One of the best parts of my job is when I get to work with post-production. Designing and building videos to reflect the original vision can be extremely fun, yet challenging. I have learned to take advantage of quite a few resources over the years that help me a lot during post-production. Oftentimes, you will need to add elements to a video that you don’t initially have. This could be anything from stock footage or photography to music to voice over actors. In this blog, I will share my top 5 sites that I use when I need to add these elements to a video.

SHUTTERSTOCK

https://www.shutterstock.com/home

Shutterstock is my go-to when I am in need of stock footage. They have millions of video clips, photography, and music files. I primarily use them for stock footage. Every time I am looking for something specific, Shutterstock has been able to provide.

One thing I love about this site is that when you click on a specific clip that you think might work, they also find a number of clips that are similar to the one you are looking at. This makes it extremely convenient to compare clips and determine what you might like and what you can do without.

I do have one warning on buying anything from this site, however. Like many stock footage houses, they will try to convince you to purchase more than you need, so read everything carefully before you finalize you’re purchase. Make sure to unclick ‘auto renewal’ if you only want to make a one-time purchase.

ADOBE STOCK

https://stock.adobe.com/video

This is another great media stock site with a plethora of great stock footage. This one is especially nice if you use Adobe Cloud because it is fully integrated into the Cloud platform. As soon as you download an image or footage, it automatically saves in your Cloud.

A nice feature with Adobe Stock is your ability to decide between buying a plan or just buying credits. With a plan, you get the best value out of each image or video purchased, but it will be a renewing system. Credits, on the other hand, last for one year and don’t auto-renew, but you can just use them when you need them. When you need more, you buy more. This is the better option if you don’t frequently buy stock footage or images and you know you will only be using a certain amount at one time.

PREMIUM BEAT

https://www.premiumbeat.com/

Oftentimes, when you are making a new video, you will need some music to enhance it. If you’re making a video that is going to be distributed or used for marketing, you will need to buy a license with the song. Premium Beat is a great site to find professionally produced music that isn’t going to blow your budget.

All of the music available is royalty free, meaning once you buy it, you have the right to use it as much as you need to without having to pay royalties every time it’s used.

The site is set up in a way where you can easily find the mood, genre or sound effect you are looking for. Since finding this site, I haven’t even had the desire to look for my music elsewhere.

POND5

https://www.pond5.com/

Pond5 is a great site if you’re trying to find all of your extra content in one place. It has everything from music and sound effects to stock footage and images. It even has After Effects templates.

Although I have personally found more content using the previous sites mentioned, I wanted to bring some light to Pond5. It was the very first site I learned about when I first started doing video production. It’s just so convenient to have everything you’re looking for in one site. There’s no need to be making three separate transactions from three separate sites when you can look here first. If you happen to find exactly what you’re looking for with every type of media on one site, then I’d say you’re ahead of the game!

VOICEBUNNY

https://voicebunny.com

VoiceBunny is an absolute Godsend. There are thousands of phenomenal voice actors out there and many of them can be found on this site. When you need a professional voice over to replace you having to play that technical role, I highly recommend checking out VoiceBunny.

The site is easy to use and you can quickly narrow down your options by focusing the search. Do you need a man or a woman? Younger or older? Does your video need to be in French? VoiceBunny has thousands of options to choose from so you can find the perfect match for your video. And to make things even nicer, each actor gives you their estimated cost based on the number of words in your script or by the length in time of your video.

Every time we have used a voice actor from VoiceBunny, we have received a response within a couple of days or less. It is extremely efficient when you need to get a voice over quickly.

There are so many resources out there to help you improve the quality of your videos; don’t forget to do your research and discover the ones that will help you! You may think that it will be easier and cheaper to film the extra footage or record the voice over on your own, but oftentimes it will be more time consuming and even frustrating. These sites have helped us too many times to count, and they have greatly improved the quality of our videos.

I hope you find them to be as beneficial as we do! Good luck!