Historical found footage is often used in documentary films as a source of primary information, giving the viewer a more comprehensive understanding of the subject matter. Director and cinematographer
Ken Burns used archival footage in his films. Baseball (1994), his documentary television series for PBS, incorporates historical footage accompanied by original music or actors reading relevant written documents.
Often fictional films
imitate this style in order to increase their authenticity, especially the mockumentary genre. In the dramatized and embellished pseudo-documentary film F For Fake (1973), director
Orson Welles borrows all shots of main subject
Elmyr de Hory from a BBC documentary,[1] rather than fabricating the footage himself.
Stuart Cooper's Overlord uses stock footage of the landing on Normandy during
World War II to increase realism. The footage was obtained from the
Imperial War Museum in the
UK.[2] Other parts of the film were shot by Cooper, but using old World War II-era film stock with World War II-era
lenses.
Music video and VJing
A certain style of
music video makes extensive use of found footage, mostly found on TV, like news, documentaries, old (and odd) films etc. The forefather of found footage music videos was artist
Bruce Conner who screened Cosmic Ray in 1961.[3] Prominent examples are videos of bands such as
Public Enemy and
Coldcut. The latter also project video material during their stage show, which includes live mixing of video footage. Artists such as Vicki Bennett, also known as
People Like Us, or the video artist Kasumi with the film Shockwaves, use
Creative Commons archives such as the
Prelinger Archives.[4]