Tuesday, April 7, 2009

A Sampling Gold Mine


I love movies. Of course, I have a deep appreciation for truly great films, but I also have a special place in my heart for movies that are so bad they're good (see Tommy Wiseau's "The Room" if you haven't already...), and old educational and "scare" films from the 40's, 50's, and 60's.

Enter the Prelinger Archives: a massive online archive of downloadable educational films from yesteryear. There are plenty of driver's ed scare films, 50's nuclear hysteria, stuffy corporate videos, social engineering films that tell you how to act 'properly', and now sadly ironic profiles of "cities on the rise" such as... uh... Detroit.

The best part? These films are in the public domain now meaning that they are ready to be plundered for dialogue samples without worry of infringing any copyrights. And even if you're not looking for samples, the films make for hilarious viewing. Frankly, it's a miracle our parents turned out as normal as they did.

5 comments:

nulldevice said...

Great, I think you just wrote the next three Caustic records.

Tom said...

Step 3: PROFIT!

Darren Emanuel said...

Great post! Archive.org also has a huge collection of ephemera films, documentary, anti-drug, public domain and even old home movies and found footage.

Will C. said...

I'll definitely be diving through this archive a lot in the future.

Anonymous said...

this was my secret , why you gotta tell people? :(