Meaning & use
footage
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Meanings
noununcountable
Film or video recording of events, whether used in a broadcast, a documentary, or as evidence.
Grammar: Uncountable: some footage, not a footage.
Patterns
- footage of something
- footage from something
The news showed footage of the flood.
Police studied security camera footage from the night of the robbery.
The documentary includes rare footage from the 1950s.
noununcountabletechnical
A length or amount of film, measured in feet.
Grammar: Used in film production, usually with an amount: ten minutes of footage.
Patterns
- feet of footage
The editor cut an hour of footage down to ten minutes.
They shot hundreds of feet of footage on the first day.
Only a fraction of the footage made it into the final film.
Common combinations
- security footage
- Security footage showed a man entering the shop.
- raw footage
- The editors reviewed raw footage from the shoot.
- archive footage
- The film uses archive footage of the moon landing.
- amateur footage
- Amateur footage of the storm spread online.
- footage of
- We watched footage of the match.
- release footage
- Police released footage of the suspect.
Synonyms and how they differ
- video
- Video is a single recording or the medium, whereas footage is the recorded material, often unedited.
- film
- Film can mean a whole movie or the physical material, while footage is the raw recorded material.
- recording
- Recording applies to sound as well, so it is broader than footage.
- clip
- A clip is one short piece of footage and is countable.
Word family
- foot noun
- the unit from which footage got its name
- photograph noun
- a single still image, not moving footage
- cinematography noun
- the art of filming
- videotape verb
- to record on video
Commonly confused: footage or footprint?
footage vs footprint
A footprint is a mark left by a foot, and is not a recording.
Practice
Which sentence is grammatically correct?
Choose one answer.
Footage is uncountable, so it takes some or a piece of, not a, many, or a plural ending.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “footage”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.