Archive footage from your granny’s attic

For Kenneth’s 40th, I put together some video footage we had kicking about from 2006:

We shot it on a MiniDV camera. It was the consumer home video solution of the early 2000’s. It was digital video stored on analogue tape and was pretty much the last home video solution before phones took over. It came out at an aspect ratio of 720x480, so its better than an iPhone 3, but not as good as an iPhone 4.

Archive Footage

Archive footage is a key component of film making. There’s a huge market for buying stock footage and archive footage for making documentaries and films. It can also be really useful for music videos. There’s wonderful collections of old film footage in archives such as the BFI, but it’s really expensive to use legally. If anyone wants to pay the dollar, here’s Glasgow in the 1900’s:

The alternative to this is to trawl your relative’s attics for the family’s home movies. There could be a gold mine of badly shot weddings, birthdays and holidays which could form a great backbone of a music video. So what can you expect to find?

A short history of home movies

8mm, 16mm, Cinefilm

The ability to record film portably and affordably by amateur consumers has actually existed since the 1920’s. From the 1920’s until the 1970’s this took place on various film reels(first 16mm and then 8mm and then super-8). A film would be loaded into a camera and it would spin round really fast to record lots of pictures. You’d then send it off for developing and they’d send you back a film reel. You’d play the film reel back on a projector. Rudimentary editing could take place by literally slicing the film and taping it onto a different bit.

The results didn’t usually feature audio, the cameras and projectors could require an engineering degree to maintain and early on it was an expensive hobby. They were however really popular, and from the 50’s/60’s onwards, your family didn't need to be aristocracy to own one.

8mm camera, developed film and the projector for playing it back.

If you can find these reels in a loft or track down the distant uncle who was an enthusiast, then there could be some great material on them. Accessing the content is a bit trickier though. Working projectors are few and far between(the rubber bits will have turned to mush in the loft), so it might be a case of sending off a film reel for digital conversion without really know what’s on it. If you can get a projector working then it’s a case of filming the playback with a modern camera in the correct settings(we can help with this)

VHS/Betamax and Video Recorders

In the mid-70’s things got much easier. Video cassettes removed the requirement for development. The recording and playback was taking place on the same medium and VHS players were far less temperamental than projectors. You could do basic editing on the video cameras and editing suites could be as simple as one VHS player feeding another recorder.

Prices came down and by the 80’s the sight of an enthusiast relative at weddings with a camera the size of a small suitcase on their shoulder became commonplace.

Cameras got smaller by making smaller tapes(see minDV above) and then the consumer medium gradually changed to DVD’s, but in general this generation of archive footage is easier to find because the person that shot it is more likely to still be alive.

In terms of accessing the content, it’s pretty easy. VHS players are still out there and working and DVD drives are still easy enough to find for the next few years.

Ask your parents and grandparents and see what you can find. Your high school flute recital could be a wonderful juxtaposition in your death metal bands next video :)

Sidenote: uncopyrighted archive and stock footage

It’s a complicated field of study that moves into copyright law pretty quickly, but if footage is old enough(and for another few reasons) some professionally shot footage is out of copyright. A good place to start is here. There’s a wealth of silent film footage which is ‘Probably’ okay to use.

Footage which is copyright free in one country might not be copyright free in another. It can also be copyright free for non-commercial use, but you could be hit by a big bill once you it’s getting played regularly on telly.

Another sidenote: Your granny’s old photos

I hate making videos out of photo montages, but there are some cases when it can be an interesting component of a video. Your relatives will almost certainly have boxes of old photographs. These are worth having a look for for inspiration and to give a video a vintage feel.

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