Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures, and file footage is

film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...

footage In filmmaking and video production, footage is raw, unedited material as originally filmed by a movie camera or recorded by a ( often special) video camera, which typically must be edited to create a motion picture, video clip, television show or ...

that can be used again in other films. Stock footage is beneficial to filmmakers as it saves shooting new material. A single piece of stock footage is called a "stock shot" or a "library shot". Stock footage may have appeared in previous productions but may also be

outtake An outtake is a portion of a work (usually a film or music recording) that is removed in the editing process and not included in the work's final, publicly released version. In the digital era, significant outtakes have been appended to CD and D ...

s or footage shot for previous productions and not used. Examples of stock footage that might be utilized are moving images of cities and landmarks, wildlife in their natural environments, and historical footage. Suppliers of stock footage may be either

rights managed Rights Managed, or RM, in photography and the stock photo industry, refers to a copyright license which, if purchased by a user, allows the one-time use of the photo as specified by the license. If the user wants to use the photo for other uses an ...

royalty-free Royalty-free (RF) material subject to copyright or other intellectual property rights may be used without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use, per each copy or volume sold or some time period of use or sales. Computer standard ...

. Many websites offer direct downloads of clips in various formats.

History

Stock footage companies began to emerge in the mid-1980s, offering clips mastered on

Betacam SP Betacam is a family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, "Betacam" singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself. All ...

, VHS, and film formats. Many of the smaller libraries that specialized in niche topics such as extreme sports, technological or cultural collections were bought out by larger concerns such as Corbis or

Getty Images Getty Images Holdings, Inc. is an American visual media company and is a supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video and music for business and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three markets— creative ...

over the next couple of decades.

Films and television

Stock footage can be used to integrate news footage or notable figures into a film. For instance, the

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

-winning film ''

Forrest Gump ''Forrest Gump'' is a 1994 American comedy-drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Eric Roth. It is based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom and stars Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson and ...

'' used stock footage extensively, modified with

computer-generated imagery Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the use of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, simulators, and visual effects in films, television programs, shorts, commercials, and videos. The images may ...

to portray the lead character meeting such historic figures such as

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

, and

John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...

News programs use film footage from their libraries when more recent images are not available. Such usage is often labeled on-screen with an indication that the footage being shown is file footage. Television and movies series also often recycle footage taken from previous installments. For instance, the ''

Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...

'' franchise kept a large collection of starships, planets, backgrounds, and explosions, which would appear on a regular basis throughout Star Trek's five series and ten films, being used with minimal alteration. That kept production costs down as models, mattes, and explosions were expensive to create. The advances in computer graphics in the late 1990s and early 2000s helped to significantly reduce the cost of Star Trek's production and allowed for a much wider variety of shots than previous model and painting-based visuals. Other films that re-used film footage from previous productions include '' Transformers: Dark of the Moon'', ''

Blade Runner ''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, and written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick' ...

'', '' Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones'', ''

Hitman Contract killing is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or persons. It involves an illegal agreement which includes some form of payment, monetary or otherwise. Either party may ...

'', '' Jaws: The Revenge'', '' Halloween II'', ''

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix ''Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix'' is a fantasy novel written by British author J. K. Rowling and the fifth novel in the ''Harry Potter'' series. It follows Harry Potter's struggles through his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witc ...

'', ''

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1'' is a 2010 fantasy film directed by David Yates from a screenplay by Steve Kloves. The film is the first of two cinematic parts based on the 2007 novel ''Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow ...

'' '' & 2'' and ''

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure ''Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure'' is a 1989 American science fiction comedy film directed by Stephen Herek and written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon. The first installment of the ''Bill & Ted'' franchise, it stars Keanu Reeves, Alex Winte ...

''. Some series, particularly those made for children, such as ''

Power Rangers ''Power Rangers'' is an entertainment and merchandising franchise built around a live-action superhero television series, based on the Japanese tokusatsu franchise ''Super Sentai''. Produced first by Saban Entertainment, second by BVS Entert ...

'' or ''

Teletubbies ''Teletubbies'' is a British children's television series created by Anne Wood and Andrew Davenport for the BBC. The programme focuses on four differently coloured characters known as the Teletubbies, named after the television screens on t ...

'', reuse footage that is shown in many episodes. Meant for a young audience, the approach increases viewers' familiarity between shows. This introduces problems such as the requirement to, for example, wear the same clothing and inconsistency can sometimes become a problem. When cleverly filmed it is possible to avoid many of these problems. Many broadcast shows use stock-footage clips as

establishing shots An establishing shot in filmmaking and television production sets up, or establishes, the context for a scene by showing the relationship between its important figures and objects. It is generally a long or extreme-long shot at the beginning of ...

of a particular city, which imply that the show is shot on location when in fact, it may be shot in a backlot studio. One or two establishing shots of an exotic location such as the

Great Wall of China The Great Wall of China (, literally "ten thousand ''li'' wall") is a series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic grou ...

Easter Island Easter Island ( rap, Rapa Nui; es, Isla de Pascua) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its nearl ...

, or

French Polynesia )Territorial motto: ( en, "Great Tahiti of the Golden Haze") , anthem = , song_type = Regional anthem , song = " Ia Ora 'O Tahiti Nui" , image_map = French Polynesia on the globe (French Polynesia centered).svg , map_alt = Location of Frenc ...

will save production companies the major costs of transporting crew and equipment to those actual locations. Stock footage is often used in commercials when there is not enough money or time for production. More often than not these commercials are political or issue-oriented in nature. Sometimes it can be used to

composite Composite or compositing may refer to: Materials * Composite material, a material that is made from several different substances ** Metal matrix composite, composed of metal and other parts ** Cermet, a composite of ceramic and metallic materials ...

moving images that create the illusion of having on-camera performers appear to be on location. The term ''

B-roll In film and television production, B-roll, B roll, B-reel or B reel is supplemental or alternative footage intercut with the main shot. The term ''A-roll'', referring to main footage, has fallen out of use. Film and video production Films and ...

'' may refer to stock footage or newly shot scenes. Stock footage that appears on television screens or monitors shown in movies or television shows is referred to as "playback". In '' Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy'', which was written by and starring

Will Ferrell John William Ferrell (; born July 16, 1967) is an American actor, comedian, and producer. He first established himself in the mid-1990s as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show '' Saturday Night Live'', where he performed from 1995 to 2 ...

as a

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

news anchor, the studio purchased archival 1970s clips from San Diego stock footage firm New & Unique Videos. The playback footage of a hurricane featured in Disney's '' Smart House'' came from the vaults of the same San Diego firm. Stock footage also appears many a time in animated series which is mostly a transition to live-action stock footage. One of the most common uses of stock footage is in documentaries. Use of stock footage allows the filmmaker to tell the story of historical events such as

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Why We Fight ''Why We Fight'' is a series of seven propaganda films produced by the US Department of War from 1942 to 1945, during World War II. It was originally written for American soldiers to help them understand why the United States was involved in the ...

'' series, to document modern

underwater archaeology Underwater archaeology is archaeology practiced underwater. As with all other branches of archaeology, it evolved from its roots in pre-history and in the classical era to include sites from the historical and industrial eras. Its acceptance has ...

activities, or to supplement content in natural history documentaries. Budgets may not be sufficient to keep a production crew on site for long-term projects, and stock footage allows the producer to pick the moments in time that are most important to the story or to give context to historical events. Several films that would otherwise be completely lost have surviving footage due to the film being used as a stock footage. For example, '' The Cat Creeps'' has some scenes preserved in the movie ''Boo'', and scenes from ''

Queen of the Night Clubs ''Queen of the Night Clubs'' is a 1929 American Pre-Code musical drama film produced and directed by Bryan Foy, distributed by Warner Bros., and starred legendary nightclub hostess Texas Guinan. The picture, which featured appearances by Eddi ...

'' are preserved as stock footage in ''Winner Take All''. If not for the use of stock footage, these films would be lost entirely. Stock footage is also used in live reality TV shows such as ''

I'm a Celebrity ''I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!'' is a British reality TV series in which a number of celebrities live together in a jungle environment for a number of weeks, competing to be crowned "King" or "Queen of the Jungle". The show was or ...

''. In the early 2020s, stock footage of

studio audience A studio audience is an audience present for the recording of all or part of a television program or radio program. The primary purpose of the studio audience is to provide applause and/or laughter to the program's soundtrack (as opposed to canned ...

applause and reactions was used in television shows in place of a live studio audience due to the then-current

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

Corporate usage

Companies throughout the world use stock footage in their video productions for in-house meetings, annual conventions, seminars, and other events. It has become popular to videotape interviews of CEOs and other VIPs using a green screen backdrop. When the green is keyed out during

post-production Post-production is part of the process of filmmaking, video production, audio production, and photography. Post-production includes all stages of production occurring after principal photography or recording individual program segments. The ...

, stock footage or stock shots are inserted, to impart a particular message.

Public domain

One of the largest producers of

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...

stock footage is the United States government. All videos produced by the United States military,

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

, and other agencies are available for use as stock footage. There are a number of companies that own the copyrights to large libraries of stock footage and charge filmmakers a fee for using it, but they rarely demand

royalties A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset o ...

. Stock footage comes from a myriad of sources including the public domain, other movies and television programs, news outlets, and purpose-shot stock footage.

Format

Evolution

With each introduction of new standard, it requires reshooting, rerendering, or rescanning the popular footage as well as new images to show the capabilities of the next standard. Betacam SP, VHS, and early digital footage was shot in

standard-definition Standard-definition television (SDTV, SD, often shortened to standard definition) is a television system which uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high or enhanced definition. "Standard" refers to it being the prevailing sp ...

(SD), in 4:3 aspect ratio. Next came a higher resolution format, High Definition (HD), with a 16:9 aspect ratio, which is closer to cinema widescreen formats. Many stock-footage companies and producers were concerned that their libraries would become irrelevant. Many companies are also including

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...

(VR) and 360-degree video footage.

Container

Popular

digital container format A container format (informally, sometimes called a wrapper) or metafile is a file format that allows multiple data streams to be embedded into a single file, usually along with metadata for identifying and further detailing those streams. Notab ...

s include MOV (

QuickTime File Format QuickTime File Format (QTFF) is a computer file format used natively by the QuickTime framework. Design The format specifies a multimedia container file that contains one or more tracks, each of which stores a particular type of data: audio, ...

) AVI, FLV, MP4, and MXF, which are commonly used in

non-linear editing system Non-linear editing is a form of offline editing for audio, video, and image editing. In offline editing, the original content is not modified in the course of editing. In non-linear editing, edits are specified and modified by specialized sof ...

applications such as Avid, Final Cut Pro, and Adobe Premiere Pro.

Libraries

Notable stock footage libraries and archives include: *

Adobe Stock Adobe Creative Cloud is a set of applications and services from Adobe Inc. that gives subscribers access to a collection of software used for graphic design, video editing, web development, photography, along with a set of mobile applications ...

* Al Jazeera Creative Commons *

Alamy Alamy (registered as Alamy Limited) is a British privately owned stock photography agency launched in September 1999. Its headquarters are in Milton Park, near Abingdon, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. It has a development and operations centre at ...

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

* BBC: BBC Motion Gallery (1961–) and backstage.bbc.co.uk (2005–2010) *

Can Stock Photo Can Stock Photo is a stock photography provider which licenses royalty-free images, photos, digital illustrations, picture clip art and footage files on behalf of photographers, illustrators, and videographers. Founded in 2004, it was one of the ...

* CNN Collection (fmr. CNN ImageSource, from the

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...

cable news broadcaster) * Corbis Motion (now through Getty Images and Visual China Group) *

Depositphotos Depositphotos is a royalty-free content marketplace with headquarters in New York, USA. The company was founded by Dmitry Sergeev in November 2009 in Kyiv, Ukraine. The Depositphotos library has over 200million files, including royalty-free stock ...

* DVArchive *

Film Archives, Inc. Film Archives, Inc. or F.I.L.M. Archives (Fast Images Lotsa Movies) is a stock footage company based in New York City. It is believed to be one of the oldest independent footage companies and has supplied footage to feature films, television, indus ...

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and professional ...

* Footagevault * Fotosearch * Framepool *

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

iStock iStock is an online royalty free, international microstock photography, micro stock photography provider based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The firm offers millions of photos, illustrations, clip art, Digital video, videos and Digital audio, aud ...

ITN Source Independent Television News (ITN) is a UK-based television production company. It is made up of two divisions: Broadcast News and ITN Productions. ITN is based in London, with bureaux and offices in Beijing, Brussels, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, N ...

NASA Images The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

Nautilus Productions Nautilus Productions LLC is an American video production, stock footage, and photography company incorporated in Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1997. The principals are producer/director Rick Allen and photographer Cindy Burnham. Nautilus specia ...

NBCUniversal Archives NBCUniversal Archives offers access to years worth of footage from NBCUniversal and its owned-and-operated stations. With headquarters in 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the Archives contain everything from rare, award-winning footage, to 3D graphics produ ...

NHNZ NHNZ, formerly Natural History New Zealand, is a New Zealand-based television production house. It works and co-produces with multiple major global broadcasters: Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery Science, A&E Television Networks, Na ...

* Nimia * Oddball Films *

Pond5 Pond5 is a New York–based online marketplace for royalty-free media. The company licenses stock footage, stock music, stock photography, sound effects, After Effects templates, and 3-D models. Pond5 is reported to have the world's largest coll ...

* Producers Library Service *

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was estab ...

* Science Photo Library *

Shutterstock Shutterstock is an American provider of stock photography, stock footage, stock music, and editing tools; it is headquartered in New York. Founded in 2003 by programmer and photographer Jon Oringer, Shutterstock maintains a library of around ...

Stocksy United Stocksy United, also referred to as Stocksy or Stocksy United Photography, is a Victoria, British Columbia based platform cooperative that accepts and provides royalty-free stock photography and stock video. Stocksy uses a curated editing a ...

Vimeo Vimeo, Inc. () is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices. Vimeo's business model is through software as ...

Visual China Group Visual China Group (VCG) is a Chinese photo and media agency. Established in 2000, it is a supplier of stock multimedia content to the commercial media industry. VCG is currently the largest stock image and media footage provider in China and thi ...