Meaning & use
raw footage
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountable
Film or video material exactly as it was recorded, before anything has been trimmed, corrected or put in order.
Grammar: No plural and no a: we have hours of raw footage, not raw footages.
Patterns
- raw footage of something
- hours of raw footage
The editor sorted through ten hours of raw footage to make a three-minute trailer.
The news channel released raw footage of the flood before adding commentary.
Raw footage often contains shaky shots and long silences.
Common combinations
- hours of raw footage
- The documentary began as hours of raw footage.
- review raw footage
- The director reviewed the raw footage that evening.
- release raw footage
- The police released raw footage of the incident.
- unedited raw footage
- Unedited raw footage can run to terabytes.
- cut raw footage down
- They cut the raw footage down to a short film.
Synonyms and how they differ
- rushes
- Rushes is a British film term for the first prints of a day's shooting, so it is narrower and more technical than raw footage.
- unedited footage
- Unedited footage stresses only that it has not been cut, while raw footage also suggests it has had no color or sound work.
- dailies
- Dailies is the American film-industry word for each day's filmed material viewed by the crew.
Opposites
Word family
Practice
The documentary team had only one week to edit the ____ they had shot in the mountains.
Choose one answer.
Raw footage is the unedited material still to be worked on. Finished film, final cut and trailer are already edited, so they cannot be what is being edited.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “raw footage”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.