Documentary Film Footage Question?

dholt wrote on 9/22/2004, 11:06 AM
I'm positive that the local news outlets did not give Michael Moore his news footage for his latest film and that a lot of what he used came from news reports. Since he used this footage to make the news media and the politicians look bad I'm sure it just wasn't given to him with their blessing. How did he get this stuff?

Let's say I was doing a documentary on the war in Iraq and wanted to use news footage taken from news crews in Iraq, where would I get this? Or I wanted war footage for a video.

This is just an example. My main question is where do you get the news type footage you see on TV and what type of permission do you have to get to use it for your projects.

I used Michael Moore and the war in Iraq for examples so lets please refrain from discussing political opinions and views of him and politics in general. Thanks
DH

Comments

Former user wrote on 9/22/2004, 11:09 AM
There are many independent news teams who are comprised of a producer and videographer. They will generally sell their footage to anybody.

You could probably contact any news agency and get names of freelancers or independents that they use.

Dave T2
stormstereo wrote on 9/22/2004, 12:13 PM
Yes, I know for certain that one Swedish journalist/videographer in Iraq was hired by Moore to get some footage. I don't know what footage though, only that a minute or so ended up in Fahrenheit.

Best/Tommy
BrianStanding wrote on 9/22/2004, 12:24 PM
Most TV networks will be happy to license their footage to you -- for a price, of course! (American network T.V. standards are about $35-$50 / second of finished material).

Some resources:

ABC News VideoSource (this is the American Broadcasting Corporation's archive): https://www.abcnewsvsource.com/vsource/html/Home.htm

BBC Archives: http://www.bbcresearchcentral.com/tv.html

BBC / CBS News Motion Gallery (downloadable moving picture images available for licensing): http://www.bbcmotiongallery.com/customer/index.jsp

ITN Archives (includes Reuters TV and Britain's Channel 4): archive.sales@itn.co.uk

Vanderbilt TV News Archive (for research purposes only; includes all ABC, CBS & NBC news broadcasts dating back to 1968, plus some C-SPAN, online catalog): http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/

If you're on a budget, here's some access to some free, public domain stuff:

Prelinger Archives (part of the fascinating Internet Archives site at www.archives.org): http://www.archive.org/movies/prelinger.php

Library of Congress: www.loc.gov

National Archives and Records Administration: http://www.archives.gov/research_room/arc/
johnmeyer wrote on 9/22/2004, 2:11 PM
Make sure you get a license. ABC is suing some of the 527s (the political groups "independently" adverstising for the Republicans and Democrats) because they used news footage in their ads, apparently without permission or license.
BrianStanding wrote on 9/22/2004, 2:22 PM
I'll be interested to see if the 527's mount a "fair use" defense, and what the courts say about it. Got any links to that story?
mhbstevens wrote on 9/22/2004, 6:10 PM
What about ripping from a satelite feed?

stormstereo wrote on 9/25/2004, 2:17 PM
About ripping a satellite feed,
I thought they took control over that. There's a documentary by Brian Springer which is well worth seeing that does exactly that. "Composed of 100% unauthorized satellite footage."
Download and read about it at http://www.illegal-art.org/video/index.html
Find Brians "Spin" there.

Best/Tommy