taking stock

A lot of what I see on television is stock footage. I know this. It is just filler because there is no other video to play for what is being said. For it's popularity, two things that I have heard of or noticed in the last couple of days show the perils of stock footage.

Recently, Hillary Clinton's campaign made news with a commercial that shows kids sleeping in bed while a phone rings. The voiceover says that something is going wrong somewhere in the world and asks the viewer to contemplate who they would want in the White House to answer the phone. The implication, of course, is that Obama is not experienced enough to handle such a situation.

What was funny about the situation is that the campaign used stock footage of the children in bed from several years ago, and one of the kids (who is now an seventeen) has spoken out that she is an Obama supporter. Probably not what the Clinton campaign hoped for.

I started thinking about stock footage as I was watching a special on global temperatures last night. Just about all of the video was of ice melting, flyovers of cold locales, and the things that people think of as causing global temperatures to increase. The documentary editor must have been short on footage, because the same videos were used multiple times.

The most humorous aspect of the documentary's use of stock footage was that the person who set it up obviously does not understand the sources of carbon emissions. Along with shots of busy highways and shots of power lines there were several stock shots of nuclear power plants. The reason to use nuclear power plants is simple. Images of nuclear power stir thoughts of pollution and nuclear waste, which a lot of people equate to carbon emissions.

In reality, nuclear power may have it's problems, but it is actually considered by many to be a part of the solution to reducing carbon emissions when it is compared with current forms of generating power. It is one of the methods, however controversial, that Canada is officially using to reduce its national carbon footprint. That video screw-up sounds minor, but it is quite a gaffe on a scientific documentary, in my opinion.

I may not be in a position where I can make a decision to use or not to use stock footage in the future. I will, however, get some enjoyment out of paying attention for it from now on.