5 Sites For Free Footage And Stills
October 19, 2018
19th October 2018 by CH
We know how much time and dedication goes into creating high-quality video content.
Whether it’s corporate or commercial, stock footage and stills can be handy to have at your disposal if you can’t film exactly what you need.
Getting the perfect clip or image into your video can make all the difference – you can fill gaps and link scenes together, to be more specific with your content.
There’s plenty of online resources for downloading high-quality footage and images, but most charge a usage fee or subscription.
Which is why we’ve picked 5 of the best royalty-free sites that are free to use…
Unsplash
If you need powerful visuals, Unsplash offers a host of lifestyle photographs that cover all manner of subjects. Whether it’s fashionable shots or landscapes, Unsplash is a good call.
This site is all about photographers getting more exposure for their work. But most importantly, it’s completely free to use. Plus, they have a do-whatever-you-want (royalty-free) philosophy when it comes to using the images available. It’s a win-win.
Pixabay
Pixabay is great for 4k. You can get hold of fantastic short clips that work really well and give you the best quality to work with. There are also photos, illustrations, vector graphics and more available.
Stock Footage for Free
Stock Footage for Free is a site dedicated to getting superb stock footage to users for free. There’s footage covering everything from Construction and Energy to Nature and Animals.
Clipstill
To the untrained eye, a cinemagraph may look like a simple photograph but on closer inspection, these images are moving, with a few seconds of video mixed with an original photograph to create subtly brilliant visual content. If cinemagraphs are what you’re looking for, Clipstill is a great place to head to. They have a broad range of free content.
Pexels
Another good site for high-resolution imagery is Pexels. This is a good option when it comes to finding stills to use in your videos. All images can be used for free for commercial and non-commercial purposes, and can be edited and modified as desired.
Create great video content
We hope this has given you more options for finding footage and stills on a budget.
But if you’re not happy with what’s out there, we can help. Just say hello.
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Generative AI can easily open doors to help create bespoke, crafted content to elevate a video beyond the usual approaches. Recently we tested the latest AI tools to create vast scenic landscapes, humorous underwater worlds and visual effects shots for several campaigns. The tools have advanced a long way over the last few years and the barriers to creating believable or imaginative worlds are fading away all the time. Need an underwater disco full of dancing fish? Got it. A speaking anthropomorphic clown fish? Absolutely. The Key is Consistency It was key to ensure a good amount of consistency across each video. We created multi-angle reference sheets of characters and key objects and use node-based tools to link these, and additional brand references, to ensure the look was maintained throughout. The tools are now in a place where you can also direct and control the results much more closely. Camera moves, lens choices and lighting can be defined and adjusted to get closer to the image or video that you’re looking for and as the creative options expand, options for creativity within each shot expand infinitely.
