Just watched Lucy, an otherwise serviceable scifi action brought down by use of goofy stock footage intercuts.
The finale of BSG reboot featured similar use of stock footage that just looked goofy and will only serve in the future to horribly date what was an otherwise pretty timeless scifi show.
Why does anyone use stock footage?
…because it’s cheap, and a lot of people—audiences and producers—don’t give a damn.
(And believe me, I share your pain—I’m an aviation enthusiast. “That’s footage of an F-4, not a MiG-29, you ignorant churls!”)
[Painfully obvious military training stock footage]
[Martian enters the control room]
Crow T. Robot as the Martian: “Wow! there is a ton of stock footage out there!” [on earth]
Rather than ruining a scene, I find it quite enjoyable to see something like a 727 taking off and a 737 landing.
How does it ruin a film?
The flip-side of this is that if you like 1950’s scifi films and 1950’s-60’s aviation (like me) you tend to get a lot of nice footage of that era’s jets popping up all the time.
Most of the time it’s a minor distraction but occasionally it can pull you out of a film: The Hunt for Red October had a particularly bad stock-footage moment when a ‘damaged’ F-14 Tomcat transformed into a Korean War vintage F9F Panther just before crashing onto the deck of an aircraft carrier.
It is a kind of fourth wall breakage, a rude interruption to remind the audience hey you’re not observing some alternate reality but instead watching a movie cuz here is some video of your reality that doesn’t fit in with the movie or show.
I guess this could work in a comedy where there is no fourth wall, OR if the footage is incorporated into the movie like a character watching it on a screen. But usually it serves no purpose but to look goofy and cheap and break the spell.
It always pulls me out of the movie. Especially when they use stock footage of equipment that is different than the stuff used in the movie. The aforementioned Red October footage, for example. Or German soldiers in a WW2 movie carrying Springfield 03’s.
Never saw this show or movie you’re talking about, but can you describe what the shots were that you believe were stock that ruined it?
You’ll find that there are a lot of people here who disagree with you that Lucy was otherwise a good movie:
Well, in Lucy the use of stock footage (if I’m thinking of the wright stuff) was part of a style choice, a very different thing than cutting away to a stock establishing shot of Istanbul to convey “our characters are now in Istanbul” or a random airplane landing at an airport to convey "our characters have now landed at their destination.
And, sharing more pain,
"That’s footage of Douglas SBDs, not Aichi D3As, you ignorant churls!
I never said good, it is an ok scifi action movie, pretty much the definition of B movie fine time waster. And I agree the 10% of your brain, Morgan Freeman scientist character telling an audience humans using more than that will allow levitation is DUMB.
But the silly cuts to stock footage didn’t help it at all.
You’re talking about that stock footage that opens almost every movie ever made about Pearl Harbor, right? :dubious:
I think the use of stock footage had no effect on my opinion of the film at all.
Yep, and many others, unfortunately.
And then there is the footage of Dauntlesses, followed by Vindicators, then back to Dauntlesses. (I’m looking at you, Midway!)
I guess the answer is threefold.
First, in a lot of shows/movies, they’ll use stock footage for montages of events; IIRC, that’s what we saw in BSG’s finale- a montage of robots and stuff. Makes sense to use stock footage here.
Second, you have the “Hunt for Red October” situation, where they clearly used stock footage of a plane crashing onto an aircraft carrier to avoid having to make a big effects scene out of something that was a plot point, but not worth the money to actually set up the special effects to do right. I mean, other than a bit more accuracy, it wouldn’t have added much of anything to the movie, and Fred Thompson would have said the exact same lines, and the movie would have gone on just like it did. This is true of just about any movie/show that wants to convey a point without breaking the bank to do so.
Interesting (to me, anyway) use of stock footage in a TV show - in the series Mike Hammer, Private Eye they filmed a number of sequences of the main character walking down the street, walking up stairs, walking up to a door, etc. Then they used these scenes over and over extensively in each episode with voice-over. Consequently, they only needed to shoot the few scenes with other characters and dialog for each episode. Way to make a cheap TV show.
One of which turns into a Hellcat (which wasn’t even in service then) right before crashing and breaking in half on the carrier deck.
Speaking of stock footage that’s been used everywhere, that is.
The original, actual BSG reused the same few SFX shots so often that they basically became stock footage. “Oh look, Starbuck destroyed a Cylon using Shot #4.”