Village Gamer

Calgary-based Dissolve is a new stock video marketplace created to simplify the stock video purchase experience. Launching in beta, the venture is backed by $5 million in funding from several former co-founders of Veer and iStockphoto, with participation from iNovia Capital, Dissolve challenges leaders like Getty Images on quality and price. An average HD clip at Dissolve costs $5, where the exact same clip can sell for as much as $450 on Getty Images.

Dissolve’s leadership team comes with deep stock business experience and creative credibility. It includes creative director Sheldon Popiel and brand director Jon Parker, Veer co-founders who later led creative and brand direction at Corbis. Dissolve’s president is Rupa Sandhu, former brand marketer for Veer. Dissolve CEO Patrick Lor co-founded iStockphoto and later led Fotolia North America.

“Industry reports such as B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends–North America show 70% of business-to-business marketers now use video as a content tactic,” said CEO Patrick Lor. “Dissolve will focus on creative inspiration, ease and affordability. The site will be engaging and clips will be simple to find and license. We will be curating for quality so customers won’t have to waste time searching through clips that are unusable, subpar, or simply too expensive.“

Ninety-five percent of Dissolve’s varied collection of video clips, which are all in HD, start at $5. There are also tiers of $50, $150 and $500 based upon quality and singularity. Dissolve is currently selling several clips for $5 that are being sold at Getty Images and elsewhere for up to $450. For example, this HD clip on Getty Images is priced at $450, while the same HD clip on Dissolve is priced at $5.00.

How it Works:

Dissolve emphasizes simple licensing terms and fee structure; delivering outstanding value and to customers, and fair royalty rates to suppliers. Following its tagline of “Better footage, better stories™”, Dissolve has already created a cleaner user experience and features inspirational reels by filmmakers that help even novices tell better stories. The reels feature real stories and showcase the clips used to tell them. Dissolve will:

• Provide a new pricing model that puts a huge library of great footage in the hands of customers at a fraction of the current cost (95 percent of clips will cost $5 for an HD clip)
• Redefine premium stock video in terms of quality and creativity
• Provide a more satisfying overall customer experience
• Inspire creatives and businesses to tell better stories with showreels, educational articles and guest posts on the Dissolve blog at Tumblr.

Dissolve features the work of select artists and agencies at competitive rates. Dissolve also offers an equipment loaner program to select artists, including use of a RED camera. For more information on contributing, contact products@dissolve.com.

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