Indy Filmmaking: The Importance of Stock Footage

As an independant filmmaker, I know the difficulties faced when trying to make your final film look good. Let's face it, we (generally) don't have the time or money to get panoramic on location shots, or fly overs of landmarks and famous places where your movie "takes place".

This is where stock footage comes in. Stock footage allows you to get the shots you want, without hiring a pilot, or finding that special place yourself. Need a shot of nature? You got it. Need an aerial of a jungle? You got that too.

Sadly, stock footage isn't cheap, and doesn't always match your movie. If your filming on a Handycam, and you have HD stock footage, it's not gonna work, same with the vice versa.

Good stock footage can make and break the look and quality of you movie. Same goes for action movies. Indy filmmakers probably don't have the budget or resources to go buy squibs and hire pyrotechnicians. That's where stock footage of muzzle flashes and explosions come into play. With a basic effects program, and some footage, you can key in and make some pretty awesome and expensive looking effects. Here are two videos I've made, and neither would've been possible without stock footage:

In both those videos, stock footage was vital to it's creation. I used stock footage from two sources. In Daniel's Tropic Thunder, I used footage and effects from Video Copilot's Action Movie Essentials (1) and Riot Gear collections. They may seem expensive, but they are very reasonable for the quality and price.

For the city picture test, I used parts of Video Copilot's Action Movie Essentials (1) and free footage from Detonation Films. Detonation Films has a lot of very cheap stock footage perfect for action movies! All the explosions and fire you need, and a lot of it is FREE! They have quite literally just about everything you could possibly want in your movie. The only downside is you get what you pay for, and the free footage isn't always the greatest quality (Pre "Unit-K"). If you filming in HD, your probably gonna want to put some money down, and go to their HD site DetFilmsHD. Overall, there's a lot of great free and cheap stuff to find and use.

Thanks for reading!

indy filmmaking