Hey all. When devs or publishers were making screenshots or promotional videos for games back in the day, they'd often make a tape of someone playing for an extended period of time, and then a batch of screen grabs or video clips would be sourced from that original tape (think the 30 minute tape produced for Conker's Twelve Tales, uploaded and shared by RareMinion). From these lengthy play sessions would come a dozen screenshots and maybe 10 seconds of gameplay video that would be circulated by every game website and magazine. I'm wondering, is there a formal or industry-standard name for this type of tape? I figure tapes like that would be a great way of finding out about beta content for games in lieu of playable builds, but it would be an easier thing to track down if I had some widely accepted term to work with. Thanks a ton for the help.
b-roll is filler footage use to fill space where there would be only narration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-roll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_footage
What you are thinking of is called Stock Footage. As the person who posted above me linked you to, your stock footage is your primary footage that you use when making a newscast, etc. Your B-Roll on the other hand is all of your extra shots that might not necessarily fit the overall feel of your video project. The B-Roll is "filler" and the Stock Footage is your "primary".
It's called a video cassette Lol... well technically, video TAPE is the reel inside the cassette. You need to get your terminology right if you're going to go looking - although just saying video is acceptable. When you're making video footage for promotional purposes, it's not normal to call it stock footage. Stock footage is pre-shot footage of something generic - trees, trains etc. This is a promo. In the music industry, we would have called it an EPK (electronic press kit). In the Eighties and Nineties, they would probably have come on U-matic or Betacam cassette, but you sometimes saw it on VHS or even 1" C reel. You might see B-roll used sometimes, but technically that's more for documentaries than anything. Here's an EPK example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-5aeTyosrA
