It's Morning Again in.... Canada? Using Stock Video Footage? Details Matter.

Video editors increasingly have a good variety of stock video footage options at their fingertips - istockvideo, VideoBlocks, and lots of others. By-and-large these tools are fantastic. Stock footage can set a scene, provide transitional footage over rough edit points, and they can even be pivotal to telling a better story. They can save time, and can save thousands of dollars that you’d need to acquire original footage in potentially distant locations (to say nothing of offering summer footage when it's winter where you live, etc.).

There’s one big caveat to using stock footage though, and it’s unfortunately overlooked with mind-numbing frequency: as a video editor, you have to pay attention to ensure that any stock video is adding to your narrative, not ripping it to pieces.

Stock footage has to be consistent with your content, and it must be accurate. If you are appealing to an audience of prairie-based farmers, don’t use mountain footage. If you are targeting urban Canadians, don’t show palm trees swaying in the foreground of your skyscraper footage. If you are targeting German automobile enthusiasts, don’t use highway footage with American road signs (or signs written in English, for that matter).

And, if you are a politician running to be President of the United States, DO NOT USE FOOTAGE OF A CANADIAN CITY. You see the harbour in this video's opening scene? It's Vancouver, British Columbia.  

Oops. The introductory voiceover narration even says “It’s morning in America.” Too bad the sun is rising on this morning over the Great White North... and that's how this video begins.

If you think I'm being hard on the video editor, please note that the tugboat in the opening scene is flying a Maple Leaf - just in case the cityscape wasn't apparent enough.

This is basic stuff - a rookie mistake - and it is easily avoided with a bit of care, attention and foresight. How did this video editor get their job, you may ask? Do you think they'll get to keep it? And more to the point - do you think they’ll ever work in video production again? Chances are the producer was working pro bono, but that's never an excuse to deliver shoddy work.

The fact is that there’s always a market for cut-rate producers who don’t pay close attention, and who don’t really care about the story they tell. Please, just don’t be one of them.