Sources for royalty-free stock footage?

O

organica

Guest
Does anyone know any good sources (preferably online) for royalty-free stock video footage? I'm thinking about stuff like pathé newsreels, old cartoons, anything that could be edited together in a time-collage to make interesting (satirical?) pop videos.

I'm not right up on my video copyright law, so I'm not sure what sort of stuff you can get away with cutting-&-pasting into a short film, and what people are entitled (& likely) to sue you about. Early black-&-white stuff that is out of copyright seems especially appealing, but modern royalty-free footage is also of interest to me.

Any thoughts?

Gordon k
 
I think you may be confusing 'royalty free' with 'free'.

Royalty free generally means you pay a one off fee to use the material as much as you like. With the only restriction that you cannot sell on the material. Free means free and as they say 'you get what you pay for'. IMO most free pics and suchlike are pretty crap

Good royalty free stock generally needs paying for.

Biggest source is Getty Images

They are the largest online seller of royalty free pics and video. And they do have old newsreel stuff at broadcast quality.

If you do end up buying from them, make sure you register a US address for billing as it saves you a fortune. I got some images the other day and the price in £ is nearly double that in $.

HTH

Chris
 
Cheers Chris -

Yeah, royalty-free is indeed the main consideration.
But *free* is also highly desirable - because of the quickfire collage nature of what I'm doing, if I have to pay per clip it's going to be v expensive.

In general the technical quality of the material doesn't need to be high, since the look is lo-fi, cut-up, cartoonish. What is important is that the images be simple, striking and iconic.

I've found several good free sites for stills material, but I'm still looking for a good source for free, royalty-free video...

Gordon k
 

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