Where to get raw footage for my students?

Question

I am teaching a video editing class and I need to find some raw footage for them to edit. I have some projects that came with the class but they are old and not very good. One project uses footage of a bank robbery that I now learned is for a short film called, "The Heist," but we are missing some of the footage and I cannot seem to find it anywhere online (or hardly any information about it). I do not need the highest quality footage but I do need complete projects, so the students can look at all the different shots and cut them down into finished products (commercials, music videos, corporate videos, short films, TV shows, anything and everything I can find). Any thoughts or help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

I too would be interested in getting my hands on what you are looking for.  And have tried. And I work on movies, tv shows, commercials as a grip... on crews....so you would think it would be fairly easy for me to find ...  After more than a year of keeping my eyes peeled for stuff I still haven't been able to get material like that.
I'll mention what I've found out as it might help narrow your own search down.
First off you're not looking for "raw" footage... raw is a type of video format and when I read this thread title that's what I thought you were looking for...
There is some raw footage samples at this link ...and a few "shots" that can be edited together ( like same scene , 2 camera angles )...but nothing near as long as you are looking for....
However, the footage is like from a red camera or prosumer cameras...I only used a couple clips from red camera from this link...and didnt check out all the stuff thats there...so you'd have to check it out yourself...
http://groups.adobe.com/assets/CreativeSuite5/CS5-Demo-Assets/
AECS 5_ Demo Assets_ final zip is the one I used...
within that zip file I used a couple clips of a guy running while explosions happen on either side of him...that you can "edit"... short though.  you might find more stuff to use.
what you're looking for is "scripted" material ( could be MOS ( no sound ) --and probably would be if pro stuff )
pro stuff has sound mixed separately from the camera, and slates ( clappers ) are used in each shot to sync the sound later.
If you do manage to find "dailies" from a tv show or movie, commercial, etc... that would most likely be on DVD and the quality for editing and export would not be the best cause its aleady mpeg 2 - dvd compression for viewing....
If you want the original stuff it would have to be on hard drive or tape.... which isn't going to happen.
DVD dailies given by productions to the director of photography and some others on the crews are given BACK to production in most cases, and everyone signs secrecy clauses and all that stuff, so sharing that stuff with anyone is a clear violation of not only that contract but also the copyright laws.
So getting dailies is not a very promising and likely scenario.....
With maybe one exception... if you are an accredited school and you write to the producers of a TV show you MIGHT be able to get samples of very old show dailies or dailies from a show that has been cancelled a long time ago ( no more likelihood of marketing in a secondary market )  But as you know, DVD's are still sold now for old Hawaii Five-O TV shows...so this route for you is probably going to require you and your students sign some sort of copyright stuff etc just to "play" with the stuff...
You can see how getting material like you would like to have ( and me too ! ) is very hard to come by....good luck and if you find any source please post it here as I would also like to find that sort of stuff...even if it is just DVD stuff.
good luck