Stock Footage Search Tips.  Searching for stock footage.

TIPS FOR GETTING THE MOST OUT OF OUR SEARCH ENGINE

Our search engine is not case sensitive

WORD SEARCHES:

Searching for extensions and substrings - A word fragment such as “poli” will bring up politics, politicians, political as well as polite, politeness, polish and Polish, if it is followed by a star * and enclosed in quotation marks:

"poli*"

Compound Word Searches - Use quotation marks to search for compound words or phrases: "New York", "birthday cake," "justice of the peace."

"death row"

"rock music"

Phrase Searches -If you want to find an exact phrase (really nice when searching for soundbites), simply enclose the phrase in quotation marks:

"I am not a crook"

"OR" Searches - Using the word “or” (without punctuation) will yield matching results for either word:

George or Ringo

“AND" Searches -Words separated by an “and” (without any commas or other punctuation) will yield matching results for both of the words:

George and Ringo

"death row" and alcatraz

“AND NOT” Searches - If you know what you don’t want, you can exclude it by adding the words “and not” (without any commas or other punctuation):

chase and not car

Grouping Searches - If you want to search for a number of keywords and eliminate others, enclose the keywords you want in brackets and place the words you do not want outside of the brackets:

(car and chase) and not crash

(car and chase and crash) and not "keystone kops"

(George and Ringo) and not John

(pig or chicken or cow or goat) and not brown

(banana and strawberry and pineapple and mango) and not market

Zero Hits: A search that yields no results does not necessarily mean that the footage you want isn't available. Budget Films has a vast collection, only part of which has been uploaded here. If you don't see what you want, contact us to do an offline search. Then we can send you hyperlinks or media files our finds, or send you demo footage on disc or videotape.

Additionally, if you get no results, try this:

- Use synonyms. Archivists don't always use the word you think of first.

- Use plurals and singular forms of search terms in various combinatons.

The payoff: Because most people jump right in and start searching without reading the fine print, we are complimenting your professionalism and patience with a little reward. Enter the phrase “I DID GOOD” on any footage order of $300.00 or more and we’ll take $50.00 off your license fee.