The Many Different Ways You Can Use Royalty-Free Videos to Improve and Enhance Your Projects

The use of stock footage has never been as common as it is today, and that's chiefly for two key reasons. Firstly, there has been a massive increase in the amount of visual content produced, especially by individuals and small companies (as opposed to by the traditional studio system or advertising agencies).

The second important reason for the uptick in the amount of stock video being used is the level of quality that can be secured from many different providers. Previously there may have been a perception, albeit unfair, that using stock footage can make your overall project look a little amateurish. That is no longer the case.

Stock footage, when provided by the best providers, can be of exceptional value to your overall film or video production, and there are many ways that the addition of these can help greatly complement your original work.

Using Stock Video to Enhance Your Projects

Here are just a handful of ways where stock videos can be of great use to you.

Getting that Impossible Shot

There are many occasions where the size of one's imagination cannot be met, and as such, you need to improvise. For example, perhaps your narrative calls for a shot of a beautiful waterfall with vibrant dawn rising behind it, accentuating the majesty of the shot.

Now imagine you don't happen to be near a waterfall. This is the opportunity to use a great piece of stock video footage to greatly enhance your overall production and with a minimum of fuss.

Your budget may not rise to the paying of thousands of extras in a crowd scene, and again stock video footage will help bridge the gap between your hopes and expectations and your budget.

Fixing Mistakes from Your Shoot

Sometimes errors made in your shoot mean that you need to consider a reshoot, partly or entirely, but maybe it's easier to cut away to additional stock footage to fill the holes, so to speak.

Similarly, maybe your scene on location required weather events that you just couldn't secure naturally. Now stock footage of a rainy street scene can complete the bluff.

Great Transition and Expositional Material

Your film or video may be set in New York, but you are based in a small town hundreds or thousands of miles away. Stock footage can provide the illusion that your entire interior-based production is in fact being filmed on location.

Similarly, if you need a busy office scene but don't have the ability to replicate it, stock video footage will do that for you. It can help give your projects scale and add to the professional ambiance of your entire project.

Saving Time and Money

Many may see that the overall benefit of stock footage is the time and money it can save. Signing up for a stock footage provider isn't nearly as expensive as you might imagine, and the benefits of doing so are demonstrably plentiful.

If you can sign up with a provider that hosts a vast array of relevant material, then you can cover any shortcomings your production may have. This can actually lead to you thinking bigger simply because your access to stock video can expand the scope of your original intentions.

Swapping Out Backgrounds

Another common use of stock video footage is to swap out backgrounds. Essentially, this means using the video as something of a green screen. This is incredibly easy to achieve, especially with the better stock video providers.

You might commonly see this on YouTubers' productions as a backdrop for their home studios.

Perfect for Montages

The very nature and running time of stock videos are perfect for putting together awesomely creative montage vignettes. These can form the intro to your feature or even be made into a piece of their own, depending, of course, on the quality of the provider you use.

What is Royalty-Free Stock Footage?

The clearance of video and music material can be tricky, and there is quite a lot of red tape and jargon involved in doing so. Royalty-free videos help you cut through that red tape as well as dramatically reduce your costs.

Royalty-free essentially means that the content is free from any additional costs and licensing as you will have signed up to a subscription for a specific provider that covers all relevant expenses.

This makes life so much easier, and if you sign-up with the top providers, such as Artgrid, then there is literally no end to what you can achieve. Another reason why this works so well with the likes of Artgrid is because the content offered is produced by professional filmmakers, which means that it stands up well on its own and is even more effective as part of the overall production.

Access to a massive database provides an editor, director or producer so many options when it comes to achieving the final product they desire. When these libraries are well-segmented and organized, then just the act of looking for the right clip or video is a joy in itself.