Getty Images and All3Media-owned Little Dot Studios have unveiled a partnership to bring a science documentary to YouTube made entirely from Getty Images’ premium archival and stock collections. The project marks the first time a YouTube Original programme has been produced exclusively from Getty Images licensed visual content, showcasing how archives can power storytelling at scale for digital-first audiences.
Produced by Little Dot Studios, the two-part 90-minute documentary, Moons of our Solar System, will premiere on December 12 across Little Dot Studios’ YouTube science offering: Spark, Progress and Cosmic – part of the broader Little Dot Channels network, with German and Spanish language versions to follow.
Powered by Getty Images’ content, the documentary gives the audience a deeper look at the moons in our solar system and asks the question of how they got there, what makes them unique and could any of them contain signs of life?
The documentary draws exclusively from Getty Images’ online archive and is “the first of an ongoing programme commitment between the partners”.
“This collaboration with Little Dot Studios demonstrates how Getty Images’ depth of content can power premium, long-form storytelling for digital platforms”, said Paul Davis, VP media & broadcast sales at Getty Images. “By combining our entire Getty Images video collection with flexible, digital-first licensing models, we’re making it easier for producers to create high-quality programmes with speed, creative freedom, and full rights certainty. Little Dot Studios has been an outstanding partner, and we’re excited to see how YouTube audiences engage with this new approach.”
The partnership was highly collaborative throughout, according to GI and LDS. Little Dot Studios leveraged audience insights from its network to lead the creative direction. Getty Images’ research team then used these data-led insights to identify assets from its collection to bring to life Little Dot Studios’ creative vision.
Alex Hryniewicz, managing director – network social platforms at Little Dot Studios, added: “Our digital network gives us unparalleled, real-time insights into what audiences are passionate about. This partnership with Getty Images is a perfect example of how we can turn those data-led insights into premium, original programming. By combining our understanding of YouTube with Getty’s incredible, world-class archive, we can create compelling documentaries like Moons of our Solar System that are tailor-made for the platform and will resonate deeply with our viewers.”
Getty Images has an archival collection of 34 million footage clips. The collection includes contemporary, archive and creative footage, with almost 20 million 4K clips, and vast offline archives of BBC programming and NBC News.
