Having fun with free archive film clips from the Internet Archive
Video Mashups are the ultimate in creative expression and experimentation.
What is a video mashup? It's a montage or compilation of various film or video clips from various sources that are combined or “mashed” together to create a single movie. Tens of thousands of archived film clips can be downloaded and used for FREE from a non-profit website called the Internet Archive (archive.org).
Below are several examples of video mashups from the Internet Archive. As a documentary filmmaker, you can see the incredible potential and resource if you are in need of archival clips to help tell your story.
Floppy Eared Sperm Someone put old film clips of sperm with music. Imagine how you could use these clips if you were doing a documentary on pregnancy, reproduction or something where you were trying to convey the beginning of life.
False Memories Experiment Odd mix of images and sounds. Not sure of the point, but kind of mesmerizing.
Atomic Blond
Drive Train
Here's to America This is a great little music montage of all kinds of clips from American history. Everything from cowboys to soldiers to presidents to images of 1920's industry. Just shows the vast resource of materials you can find on the Internet Archive.
Heroin Is Not Fun Imagine if you were producing a documentary about drug use or American youth. This is a video mashup that uses old promotional film clips from 1950's and 1960's to comment on today's society and the dangers of drug use. These clips were pulled from the Prelinger Archives.
Soldiers This short mashup clip provides an idea of what's available around the subject of war and soldiers.
It's a Calf's Life (1:00) Doing a documentary on the food or meat industry? Here ya go. A mashup video showing the unglamorous life of a cow.
To preview thousands of original archived film clips including animation, war films, burlesque shows, concerts and news footage, visit www.archive.org.
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