Archive footage from library or stock vendor — aerials, traffic, landscapes. Faster than location shoot, but verify matching color and continuity.
You need an aerial shot of the Manhattan skyline but don't have the budget for a helicopter day. Or a quick traffic scene in Tokyo, even though your crew is based in Berlin. This is where professionals turn to stock shots — pre-made, licensable footage from archives or stock footage providers that you can directly integrate into your project. This not only saves shooting days but often significant costs for permits, locations, and equipment.
The practice is pragmatic: you research databases (Getty Images, Pond5, Shutterstock, also specialized archives like Greenpeace material or NASA footage), find the right shot, check the licensing — whether editorial, commercial, or time-limited — and book the download quality you need. 2K or 4K, depending on project requirements. Most providers offer metadata: recording date, location, camera specs. This is important for continuity checks and color grading: a stock shot from 2015, shot on RED, has different sensor characteristics than your current Arri footage.
Authenticity is the key. A generic stock shot of the Manhattan skyline works for montages, transitions, establishing shots — without close-ups or characters in the foreground. But beware: clips seen too often (the cliché "drone spin over a big city") can quickly look cheap. Good editors make a difference: color correction, speed ramping, or a white balance that matches the rest of your material can transform a generic stock shot into a cohesive image. Sometimes, cropping the shot, zooming in, or using only 3-4 seconds instead of the full length is enough.
In feature films, you'll almost always see stock shots in montages (traffic, street scenes, weather establishing shots), sometimes also in TV productions with tight budgets. Documentaries have it easier — archive material is expected by nature. For fiction, the golden rule is: make it invisible. The viewer shouldn't realize you've edited in a pre-purchased shot. For this, you need overlapping motion, good color matching, and the right edit position — not too dominant, not too marginal.