Overview

For a range of reasons, filmmakers will sometimes utilize stock footage resources. This page outlines the school’s policies on the use of stock footage in student films. In this context, the term “stock footage” refers to any pre-existing footage that students did not create themselves during assigned production days.

As a school, our primary focus is on the creation of original work. The emphasis is therefore on students creating all the imagery for their films themselves, rather than relying on stock footage libraries. Educationally, this helps students learn the process of creating original imagery, and the labor and resources that are needed to accomplish that. This helps students better understand the value of intellectual property, as their focus is more on creating intellectual property from scratch than on “borrowing” work created by others.

The process of clearing the rights for stock footage also informs the school’s policies. Many stock footage resources have inaccurate or misleading copyright information. For example, sites may claim that footage is in the public domain when it is not. To work through all the potential copyright and licensing issues with stock footage can be a lengthy and laborious process for both students and faculty. On many of our production cycles, there either isn’t sufficient time to do this or the time could be better spent focusing on other aspects of the production.

For these reasons, use of stock footage is limited to Documentary, BTH, and MTH projects. Stock footage is not allowed on the F1, F2, F3, D1 or D2 projects.

DOC • BTH • MTH

• Stock footage is allowed.
• All stock footage needs to be cleared by the Head of Production, to ensure that we have the proper rights to use the footage.
• If stock footage is going to appear on camera during production — e.g., imagery on a television within a scene — the footage needs to be cleared before the start of principal photography. If stock footage is added during post-production, the footage needs to be clear before picture lock.
• Stock footage can only be purchased with CMPA funds. Students are not permitted to purchase stock footage with personal funds.
• Stock footage that is already owned by the CMPA, such as media that was originally shot for another FSU film, may be utilized. Please allow two weeks of turnaround on any such requests, in case the media files need to be pulled from the archive.

F1 • F2 • F3 • D1 • D2

• Stock footage is NOT allowed.
• All footage appearing on screen during the running time of these projects needs to be created by students during the assigned production days. This includes any content that needs to appear on screens within shots — e.g., a news broadcast that appears on a television within the scene. Producers will need to build time into the production schedule to create this embedded content during the assigned production days.