Where do you buy films?

I usually acquire home movies collections, making deals with the filmmakers themselves or with their heirs.

What film transfer system do you use?

I scan films with FilmFabriek HDS+. Then I restore them with Davinci Studio and its plug in Neat Video. This sofware gives the best results you can have in cleaning dirt, colour correction and stabilizing.

How big is your project?

At the moment I have about 2000 home movies, and they are growing week after week.

I have a Youtube channel with 120k+ subscribers and tens of millions views. With this site or with my side project thearchivefootage.com I've already had hundreds of customers, including TV shows and documentary productions broadcasted by Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV, BBC, Fox News.

Why do I have to choose your footage instead of other footage I can find on Youtube?

The quality of the video you're buying on this site is perfectly compatible with professional productions, due to the quality of the equipment used and the restoration job.

You will have a Regular license, with rights to use the video worldwide, all media and in perpetuity.

Beside this the fact that the footage is created by scanning unreleased home movies gives you the chance to use for the first time videos never used by other productions.

Why do I have to choose your footage instead of the footage of your professional competitors?

Because most archive collections do not have this user-friendly site where you can easily find what you need and download it in one minute.

On footagefopro.com you don't need to use a contact form to ask for a quote and wait days for an answer: there is a single price that is the same for all the videos, a single kind of license and no quality surprises.

What's the resolution, format and codec of the video I will download?

The video is a .mov, resolution 1920x1080, codec h.264.

How many frames per second do your footage have?

Even if 8 and 16 mm films used to be shot at 16 or 18 frames per second, I use a state of the art software interpolation technique to transform them into 25 frames per second, like no one else does (the other companies add repeated frames to achieve today's number of frames per second).

Do you always have a document signed by the original filmmaker where they declared they sold you the copyright of their films?

As my footage was shot from the 1930s to the 1990s, most of the time the filmmakers passed. So it is not possible to always have their signed documents.

But please don't worry, it's something well known in the historical footage industry. Please, read this:

Practically speaking, however, in the case of orphaned, unidentified home movies, the old adage that “possession is nine-tenths of the law” could probably be stretched to 99-100th’s, because it is so unlikely that the re-use of such footage would be noticed or challenged by someone with a valid and verifiable claim of ownership. This means that home movies may be re-used in new projects in relative safety; even so, documentarians who wish to use orphaned home movie materials may encounter objections from the legal counsel or clearance specialists who prefer to have evidence of explicit rights clearance, which may be impossible to acquire.

From http://www.centerforhomemovies.org

I own the only phisical copy of the films. Beside this, if 99% of the law is not enough for you,  and you want to be 100% risk free you can use the digital copy of the footage you can buy in this site with the Fair Use right (please read the Best Practices in Fair Use statement for documentary filmmakers created by The Center for Media and Social Impact).

Where can I use the footage I'm buying in this website?

You can use the footage for editing your project that you can distribute everywhere in the world with every broadcasting system (TV, VOD, OTT, YouTube).

What you can't do is sell the footage to someone else to allow him to use it in his own project.

Why are home movies the perfect media to tell your story?

Home movies represent real life.

Regular historical footage bought from other archives was made by a professional filmmaker and their crew, so it can not show how people actually lived their lives, as they knew they were in front of a TV camera.

In my footage restored from home movies you can watch men with flared pants walking in the streets of Paris in the 1970s or women with Doris Day style hair waiting for the green light in New York in the 1960s as they really were, without them even realizing that the small thing held by that tourist was actually a camera.

Why do I have to be sure to use my credit card on this site?

You don't have to trust me, you have to trust Paypal and Stripe, where you'll be redirected after clicking the “Buy now” button on single videos pages.

By the way, it's quite a strange plan for a hacker to buy and restore thousands of films to cheat somebody.

Mine is a self financed project, can I have a discount?

I'm sorry I would really love to help you, but it's very expensive to buy the films and the equipment to restore them.

Try to understand myself: I'm working on this project 7 days a week and my only goal is to save as many films as I can, to preserve history. Unfortunately I need the budget to do it.

I just need a few seconds of one of your films, can I have just that part?

No, I only sell the whole video (by the way, it costs a little bit more than a few seconds of footage you can find on Pond5).

Do you have more footage besides that I found on this website?

I use to buy films almost every week, so I always have a queue of videos that my team didn't have the time to publish yet. You can always contact me to know If I have what you need.

Beside this, you can find some unreleased segments of footage on my spin off project, thearchivefootage.com.

How do I download the video I buy?

After the payment the download of the file will start automatically. The video you'll have is exactly the same you watched on the page, but with no music and no watermark.

Can I have the invoice for the purchase?

Yes! Please, contact me and give me your Company name, address and, if possible, your TAX id. I'll issue the document within the next working day.

By the way, what's your name?

My name is Daniele Carrer, I founded this archive and, as you can hear, I'm in love with this job.