Stock footage can be a super useful tool for enhancing your existing footage – without breaking the bank or spending extra hours behind the camera. So let's get a movie on!
Producing a video can be a long, tedious process. Imagine you finally sit down to edit your video, only to discover you didn’t film enough B-roll or that your footage didn’t come out as expected. Add time and budget constraints into the mix, and you have a perfect recipe for one stressed-out videographer – not to mention a sub-par end product. Stock videos to the rescue!
Stock footage can be a super useful tool for enhancing your existing footage without breaking the bank or spending extra hours behind the camera – assuming you know how to use it effectively!
To help you do that, we’re taking a trip into the world of stock video to explore what they are, how they work, and how they can enhance your video projects. We’ll even go through some examples from professional video agencies to get practical insights on getting the most out of this resource. So, let’s get a movie on!
How to Enhance Your Original Footage with Stock Videos
Let’s start by breaking down some of the basics about stock videos. The term refers to high-quality, general-purpose footage that has already been filmed and produced by professionals and made available for use by anyone who licenses it.
Not only can these videos be a huge time and money saver when you’re in a pinch – but they can also give your video content more depth, color, dynamic visuals, or contextual cues through clips that would otherwise take significant time or resources to film or animate on your own. Here are some popular ways content creators are using stock videos:
- To anchor your video to specific locations: Scenery clips are a beautiful way to establish the setting and location for your video or spruce up transitions using lovely vistas.
- To include shots you lack the resources to produce yourself: Nowadays, you can capture decent-quality photos and videos with most cell phone cameras. But some high-quality clips are only possible with specific equipment like special lenses for close-ups or sweeping drone takes. Stock videos are lifesavers when you can’t afford to spend big bucks on equipment for these more elaborate shots.
- To Inject Variety To Your Content While Keeping Up With Production Volumes: Social platforms prioritize video over all other types of content, so you need to post video content regularly to stay competitive. Stock footage can add some variation to your videos while keeping things more manageable from a production perspective.
Customizing and Editing Your Videos with Stock Footage: Do’s and Don’ts
Now that we are on the same page about stock videos’ usefulness and versatility, let’s look at some best practices and mistakes to avoid when using this resource to improve your video content.
Stock Video Do’s
- Check the terms of use and licensing of any footage you plan to use. Most stock media falls under one of three categories: Rights Managed, Royalty-Free, and Extended License. Pay close attention to these categories when you pick stock videos for your project to avoid getting into trouble for incorrect use down the road.
- Customize and Brand the footage. From color correcting it to match your original clips to adding your characteristic logo or fonts, it’s essential to tweak stock videos to give your project a cohesive finish.
- Pick relevant videos that fit with your project. Don’t settle for the first passable clip you come across. Take the time to scroll and find pieces that truly match and help enhance your project’s quality and fit with the general mood of the piece.
Stock Video Don’ts
- Don’t compromise your project’s original vision to fit around a particular stock video. If it doesn’t complement your video’s voice and message, set it aside for a future project and find something that’s a better fit.
- Don’t use the same stock footage over and over. Wanting to get the most bang for your buck is entirely valid, but be sure to rotate the stock videos you use on different pieces so your audience won’t get fatigued.
- Don’t shy away from adding stock videos to your project. Keeping up with current video marketing trends means regularly posting new, high-quality content. If stock footage helps your strategy and improves your content, go for it.
Choosing the Right Stock Video for Your Project
A big part of making stock footage work lies in picking and choosing the right clip for your project and then tweaking it to fit its needs – but this process can be more of an art than a science.
The best way to make the most out of stock footage is to learn how the pros use it and draw some general principles and applications to use in your work.
1. Tailor Your Stock Footage with Animations and Overlays for a Cohesive End Product
After growing in popularity over the past decade, video explainers feature in most content marketing strategies in some shape or form. Many of them employ stock footage to keep things visually engaging or to help them carry their message across in a clear and memorable way.
For instance, this explainer video combines fully customized animations and live-action stock footage to form a compelling and entertaining end product. Notice how every piece of stock footage not only helps visualize a part of the script but is customized with animated overlays and inserts to produce a cohesive end product.
That’s one of the key hallmarks of well-used stock video: it naturally and seamlessly blends with the rest of the piece.
2. Use Stock Footage to Add Dynamic Visuals to Your Video
A video can be made much more compelling and visually engaging with the right mix of stock footage to support it, and this lyric video is a perfect example of that!
This full-length lyric music video consists almost entirely of video templates, fonts, and stock footage available on Envato Elements. While it’s rare to find a video made up mostly of stock footage and stock assets, this example does communicate a clear and vital lesson: Stock videos are an incredibly flexible tool you can adapt to many different situations, so don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment to find the best approach for your project.
Alternatively, this piece showcases a series of awesome videos from several experienced explainer companies, which are all entirely custom content. However, the intro and outro that bookend these clips are stock assets from Envato customized to align with a branded color palette. The result is a cohesive piece that feels entirely tailored from beginning to end.
3. Complement Your Video With Stock Footage that Reinforces Your Theme
Most effective product ads nowadays center around a theme that piques viewers’ attention and hooks them long enough for you to deliver your message. Stock videos can be a gold mine of footage that fits your project’s aesthetics and helps you reinforce the theme you are going for.
In this hilarious example by AT&T, they parody a horror movie trailer using stock footage to set the mood and deliver the punchline. They’ve carefully selected stock videos to ensure consistency in quality and theme to bring the whole piece together—to the point that most people would have difficulty identifying which clips are stock footage and which aren’t.
That’s another hot tip for making the most out of your stock videos: As you look for footage, keep your original vision and intent for the piece at the forefront and choose stock footage that synergizes with and reinforces that vision. While it may require more time investment, it’s an approach that will lead to a more consistent and cohesive end product.
Additional Tips to Get the Most Out of Your Stock Videos
Before signing off, let’s look at a short checklist of tips and tricks you should keep in mind when using stock footage to improve your video content.
- Choose stock footage that has a similar quality and resolution to your original footage. This way, the final video will feel cohesive, and there won’t be any abrupt changes of quality from one frame to the next to distract viewers.
- Use color grading to make the stock footage match the rest of your content and give a distinctive aesthetic feel to your finished piece with the right mood.
- Think outside the box when you’re searching through a stock video library. Try innovative search terms and scroll down to find hidden gems that wouldn’t generate generic queries. It’s worth taking the time to find footage that makes your video feel unique.
- Be strategic with your chosen stock footage. Just because it’s a handy tool doesn’t mean you should use it all the time: make sure you have a purpose to avoid your stock footage feeling disjointed or like it came out of nowhere in your video.
- Define your video’s purpose and core elements before searching for stock footage. Once you’ve got a general idea of what you want to convey, look for videos that’ll elevate and complement that message.
Navigating the World of Stock Video Libraries: Where to Find High-quality Stock Videos?
There’s no doubt that stock videos are a valuable resource and can do a lot for your video projects when used right. But how do you go about finding high-quality stock videos?
Envato Elements offers a wide range of stock media, from videos and music to templates, and sound effects – everything you could possibly need for your video projects. Their extensive stock video library includes over 4 million pieces of footage and motion graphics, most of which are 4K quality.
Enhance Your Video Project with Stock Videos Today!
Stock videos are a beneficial tool for streamlining your video production process and keeping a regular posting schedule, even when you’re loaded with other tasks. Combining stock footage with your original content, or even using it as-is, can help you step up your video strategy without breaking the bank and taking up most of your schedule.
That said, use it wisely! As helpful as stock footage can be, you should always tailor it to fit your brand, message, and video project.
