For everyone who communicates with their audience via social media, video content is shown to be amazing for getting your message across. If you are not a professional filmmaker or you don’t have much time for shooting cool videos yourself, there is a number of website platforms where you can use the footage of your colleagues for free.
One of the coolest platforms we’ll recommend is Videezy – one of the largest base of stock videos you can use free of charge. They made it easy for you to discover what you like by searching the keywords or choosing the category of the video. They also offer their pre-made after effects templates for easy editing. These guys are perfect if, for example, you are creating a Thanksgiving / Christmas greeting video; something simple that you need done quickly.
Ignite Motion is a web platform where you can find motion backgrounds for your video, for commercial use. Their community develops animated videos which are perfect for presentations in the sphere of technology, science, ecology, etc.
Another safe space for discovering animated videos is Motion Elements, where you can find variety of videos, but also images, GIFs and audio clips. They require a tag back to their website if you are using their content, but they also offer exclusive videos which you can purchase. They add new stock clips every week.
For example, Production Crate functions in a way that they require you to make an account, in order to use their content. Free accounts are allowed to download five videos per day, while besides videos the website gives you access to some special effects, templates and audio for editing. They ask you to link your video back to them, although legally they don’t specify this.
Unlike Production Crate, Motion Backgrounds gives you full access to all of their background stock videos, where you can download as many as you want and they will not ask you for any credits, so this can relax most of us.
Stock Footage 4 Free, as the name says it, leads you to number of free stock videos which you can use commercially. They would also ask you to create an account, but there are no obligations which come with it. They add new content several times a week and sort it under various categories for simple search.
One of the websites that is no longer operating is Fancy Footage Club, which retired leaving a storage full of free stock videos for downloading. Their database is still open for use, although their terms of use are no longer existing, so the question of licensing is not quite transparent.
Clip Canvas offers a couple of hundred free stock footage, and a lot more available for purchase. For their videos you will not have to sign anyone.
Somewhat different model of management is created by Open Footage, which allows you to download lower quality of videos for free, while high resolution is only available for buyers. They are licensed under Creative Commons licenses, which is a type of copyright license to allow the content to be distributed under certain terms free of charge.
One of more famous websites for stock footage is Videvo, which lets you use their content while asking you to give them a thumbs up on social media. They also have three different types of licencing, which you should read carefully to avoid confusion on which content is which.
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Even though Pixabay is famous for their stock of photography, they also offer a large database of free stock videos. And just like Pixabay, Pexels Videos are a big resource of free images and videos. Both of these platforms are licensed under Creative Commons licenses.
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We’ve listed some trustworthy websites where you can discover and download for free, footage for your commercial video – marketing campaign, presentation, website promotion. Some honorable mentions to this list would be Cute Stock Footage, which require credit to their website, Motion Places, where you would need to subscribe to download videos, and Vidsplay, thw website offering you vectors, images, videos, templates, mockups and much more, while in return you would be asked to credit their website when using their material.
We have discovered that some of these websites give you absolute freedom to how you choose to use their materials, while other as you to subscribe, create an account or purchase higher quality video. Some of the best known websites choose to use A Creative Commons license, which regulates the way someone uses the content, even if it’s for free. There are different types of licenses and a set of rules which apply under these regulations. However, since this is a wide and complex topic, we will explore more about Creative Commons license in our next blog post.
Stay tuned to colourlovers.com!
About the author:
Nina Petrov is an activist, poet, performer and mathematician. She communicates with the world mostly through words, movement and equations, but sometimes also by speaking very loudly. The only truth she could say about herself is that she keeps changing every day, never stops learning and interacting with her surroundings.