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

film A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

footage In filmmaking and video production, footage is raw, unedited material as originally filmed by a movie camera or recorded by a digital video camera, which typically must be film editing, edited to create a motion picture, digital video, video cli ...

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 a ...

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 standards ...

. 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,

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

, 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. (stylized as gettyimages) is a visual media company and supplier of stock images, editorial photography, video, and music for business and consumers, with a library of over 477 million assets. It targets three mark ...

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, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...

-winning film ''

Forrest Gump ''Forrest Gump'' is a 1994 American comedy-drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis. An adaptation of the Forrest Gump (novel), 1986 novel by Winston Groom, the screenplay of the film is written by Eric Roth. It stars Tom Hanks in the title rol ...

'' used stock footage extensively, modified with

computer-generated imagery Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is a specific-technology or application of computer graphics for creating or improving images in Digital art, art, Publishing, printed media, Training simulation, simulators, videos and video games. These images ...

to portray the lead character meeting such historic figures such as

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the first Roman Catholic and youngest person elected p ...

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...

, and

John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer-songwriter, musician and activist. He gained global fame as the founder, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. Lennon's ...

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 Star Trek: The Original Series, series of the same name and became a worldwide Popular culture, pop-culture Cultural influence of ...

'' 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 from a screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Di ...

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

Hitman Contract killing (also known as murder-for-hire) is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or people. It involves an illegal agreement which includes some form of compensation, moneta ...

'', '' 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. It is the fifth and longest novel in the ''Harry Potter'' series. It follows Harry Potter's struggles through his fifth year at Hogwart ...

'', ''

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 Hallo ...

'' '' & 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 Win ...

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

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'' long wall") is a series of fortifications in China. They were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against vario ...

Easter Island Easter Island (, ; , ) 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 renowned for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, ...

, or

French Polynesia French Polynesia ( ; ; ) is an overseas collectivity of France and its sole #Governance, overseas country. It comprises 121 geographically dispersed islands and atolls stretching over more than in the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean. The t ...

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 material ...

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 to some degree. Film and video produc ...

'' 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 ''

Power Rangers ''Power Rangers'' is an American media franchise created by Haim Saban, Shuki Levy and Shotaro Ishinomori built around a live-action superhero television series, based on the Japanese tokusatsu franchise ''Super Sentai''. It is currently ow ...

'' or '' 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, writer, and producer. He is known for his leading man roles in comedy films and for his work as a television producer. Ferrell received various accolades, including ...

as a

San Diego San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...

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 (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

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 h ...

activities, or to supplement content in

natural history Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

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 sound ( All-Talking) 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 ...

'' are preserved as stock footage in ''Winner Take All''. If not for its use as 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 reality television TV format, format 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 s ...

''. 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 canne ...

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 and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

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 Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a visual-effects and post-production technique for compositing (layering) two or more images or video streams together based on colour hues ( chroma range). The technique has been used in many fie ...

backdrop. When the green is keyed out during

post-production Post-production, also known simply as post, 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 indivi ...

, 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 to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

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 agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

, 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 or ...

. Stock footage comes from myriad 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; also standard definition or SD) is a television system that uses a resolution that is not considered to be either high-definition television, high or enhanced definition. ''Standard'' refers to offering a ...

(SD), in 4:3 aspect ratio. Next came a higher resolution format,

High Definition High definition or HD may refer to: Visual technologies *Blu-ray Disc, the universal optical High Definition disc format *HD Photo, former name for the JPEG XR image file format *HDV, format for recording high-definition video onto magnetic tap ...

(HD), with a 16:9 aspect ratio, which is closer to cinema widescreen formats, which has now been advanced by

Ultra-high-definition television Ultra-high-definition television (also known as Ultra HD television, Ultra HD, UHDTV, UHD and Super Hi-Vision) today includes 4K resolution#Resolutions, 4K UHD and 8K resolution#Resolutions, 8K UHD, which are two digital video formats with an ...

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

(VR) and

360-degree video 360-degree videos, also known as surround video, or immersive videos or spherical videos, are video recordings where a view in every direction is recorded at the same time, shot using an omnidirectional camera or a collection of cameras. The term ...

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. Nota ...

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: aud ...

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

non-linear editing system Non-linear editing (NLE) 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 speciali ...

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

Libraries

Notable stock footage libraries and archives include: * 123RF *

Adobe Stock Adobe Creative Cloud is a set of applications and services from Adobe 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 and als ...

* Al Jazeera Creative Commons *

Alamy Alamy Limited (d/b/a alamy) is a British privately owned stock photography agency launched in September 1999. It is an online supplier of stock images, videos, and other image material. Their content comes from agencies and independent photograp ...

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...

* BBC: BBC Motion Gallery (1961–) and

backstage.bbc.co.uk backstage.bbc.co.uk is the brand name (and URL) of the BBC's developer network which operated between May 2005 and December 2010. Purpose Launched partly as a response to the Graf Review of bbc.co.uk, the aims of backstage.bbc.co.uk are to ...

(2005–2010) * Can Stock Photo * CNN Collection (fmr. CNN ImageSource, from the

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

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

Dailymotion Dailymotion is a French online video platform, online video sharing platform owned by Canal+ S.A., Canal+. Prior to 2024, the company was owned by Vivendi. North American launch partners included Vice Media, Bloomberg L.P., Bloomberg, and Hears ...

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

* Film Archives, Inc. *

Flickr Flickr ( ) is an image hosting service, image and Online video platform, 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 previously a co ...

* FootageBank * Footagevault * Fotosearch * Framepool *

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

iStock iStock is an online royalty free, international microstock photography provider based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. History The company was founded by Bruce Livingstone in May 2000, as iStockphoto, a free stock imagery website supported by L ...

ITN Source Independent Television News (ITN) is a UK-based media production and broadcast journalism company. ITN is based in London, with bureaux and offices in Beijing, Brussels, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, New York, Paris, Sydney and Washington, D.C. ITN ...

* NASA Images * Nautilus Productions *

NBCUniversal Archives NBCUniversal Media, LLC (abbreviated as NBCU and doing business as NBCUniversal or Comcast NBCUniversal since 2013) is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate that is a subsidiary of Comcast and headquartered at 30 R ...

NHNZ NHNZ Worldwide (formerly Natural History New Zealand and also known as NHNZ) is a New Zealand–based television production house. It works and co-produces with multiple major global broadcasters: Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Discovery Sci ...

* Nimia * Oddball Films * Pexels * Pixabay * Pond5 * Producers Library Service *

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

* Science Photo Library *

Shutterstock Shutterstock, Inc. is an American provider of stock photography, stock footage, stock music, and editing tools; it is headquartered in New York. Founded in 2002 by programmer and photographer Jon Oringer, Shutterstock maintains a library of ar ...

* Stocksy United *

Vimeo Vimeo ( ) is an American Online video platform, video hosting, sharing, and services provider founded in 2004 and headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices and operates on a ...

Visual China Group Visual China Group Co., Ltd. (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 Chi ...