Video stock footage might be used occasionally in a final edited piece, if at all. But sometimes stock footage is the main footage. Sometimes the stock footage dictates the action as opposed to the other way around. Sometimes rather than inserting the stock footage to look like it is part of the original production, producers do the opposite. They write the script and shoot their shots to go with stock footage scene they want to use. Interesting right?
Suppose a producer locates a piece of stock footage online, say at FreeStockFootage.com. Suppose that footage is of someone getting off the bus at night. It’s just a random person getting off a random bus. But what is that person’s story. No one knows. This is where the producer’s imagination is allowed to frolic.
Maybe the person getting off the bus just got off work and is now trudging home to an unhappy situation. Maybe he doesn’t know whether or not his girlfriend will be there when he walks in the door of his apartment. Maybe the couple had a fight the night before that involved dishes being thrown. Even though the man doesn’t know what to expect he still he gets off the bus and trudges home. That’s one possible storyline.
Or another possible storyline is maybe the person getting off the bus committed a murder just moments earlier at a liquor store about a mile down the bus route and jumped on the Metro as a his de facto getaway car. Maybe he robbed and shot the clerk and three customers who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe he had a hundred dollar a day heroin habit and felt like the heroin itch that he had absolutely needed to be scratched. Maybe he hadn’t planned on killing anyone, just brought his gun to make everyone more cooperative, but one of the customers had a concealed carry license and decided this was his day to be a hero.
Obviously, the possible storylines of a man getting off a bus is endless. It’s not that hard to develop an entire movie from a single random scene. In fact, many have done just that.