New & Unique Videos, San Diego, is one such company. New & Unique has a mostly videotape-based library, and therefore concentrates on TV and industrial clients. New & Unique routinely shoots footage around San Diego County to grow its library and address specific client needs. In doing so, the company is not only building a library that it owns rather than licenses -- it is building a library that it owns on first-generation tape. This means that, in many cases, clients get their footage on second-generation dub masters.

"Since 1991, we have been shooting our own video on Betacam SP, and we routinely take shooting trips where we combine work with a vacation and shoot video as we drive cross-country," says president Mark Schulze. "Since we are in the San Diego area, we can also run out and shoot video for many clients within a day or two of the order at a very low coast. If they want wild animals, we can go to the San Diego Zoo or the Wild Animal Park and shoot it ourselves on Betacam or digital tape. That kind of detail--of tracking down or shooting ourselves specific footage a client needs--is how we get repeat business."

Since New & Unique's library is mainly video-based and therefore services television clients, the company will eventually have to deal with the issue of upgrading its library for the looming arrival of HDTV. But even as the company will face the challenge of upgrading existing footage, it will be out shooting new footage in new formats as requried. Schulze says he and Patty Mooney, his wife and partner, are already planning a cross-country shoot of location footage with digital HD cameras.

"We are putting the trip off a year or so in the hope that HD cameras and other equipment will come down in price. But when the time is right, we'll buy or rent them and shoot sights as we drive across the entire country in a camper," he says. "The idea is to notify existing clients and advertise to new clients that we will go and get them specific footage they might need at that time, in addition to upgrading our library generally."