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Films reusing footage

Started by AlkyBastard, July 05, 2011, 07:27:18 PM

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AlkyBastard

This has been doing the rounds the past week:



And not for the first time:



It doesn't bother me in the slightest; in fact I think it's quite clever; a good way of cutting back costs.[nb]It does however prove that not all of the Transformers 3 was filmed in 3D,contrary to claims.[/nb] But what other examples can you think of? Space Mutiny (of MST3K fame) used special effects footage from the Battlestar Galactica TV show. Disney used to do it all the time:


MattyHusted

wow i never really liked transformers but damn

Famous Mortimer

Ah  bugger, I was about to weigh in with the Space Mutiny one. A film, reusing footage from a TV show, a TV show from 10 years previously.

"You know a lot of people have compared this scene to the climactic chariot scene in Ben Hur. Yeah, they usually say, 'Ben Hur was really good. This movie totally sucked.'"

And this of course:

Turkish Star Wars (1982) (eng. subtitles)

which is more outright theft than re-use of footage.


AlkyBastard


Cohaagen

Pearl Harbor was horrible for anyone who knew the first thing about the navy eg. had ever lived within eyeshot of any seaport. Loads of guided missile cruisers standing in for WWI battleships and stuff. That aircraft carrier is a fucking disgrace too.

I suppose Troma's recycling of that exploding car falls into this as an intentional and still (occasionally) amusing one.

Actually, does a scene appearing twice in one film count as reusing footage?

Wagons East! Reused Scene

non capisco

I remember an episode of 'Macgyver' nicking a load of footage from 'The Italian Job'.

bomb_dog

There was a really rough kids film I saw many years ago, and having just been searching for it, I reckon it's called Andy Colby's Incredible Adventure. It would have been a video shop treat where '15's were out of reach and the rest of the half-decent PGs had been exhausted, including it's 'Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure' namesake rip-off.

Basically they took bits of older films, like Battle Beyond The Stars, and pretended that the protagonist in this film was meeting characters on the other films though either intercutting his shadowy figure, filming little bits of footage in similar surroundings, or using very bad dubbing over the old footage. (This concept was carried out much better the same year in the scene where Jonathan and Horace Pinker fight within the TV in Shocker, but of course I only saw this many years later). I remember seeing this and feeling like we'd picked a real stinker.

Just found a further page on this - there were a few films used . I don't think anyone has really tried something so cheap and nasty since.
QuoteMost of the highlights are culled from previous Roger Corman productions like Space Raiders, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom, Deathsport, Chopping Mall and Wheels of Fire. In other words, it's a feature-length "cheater," a hodgepodge of past cinematic glories. The young stars perform as well as possible under the circumstances (it's hard to be convincing while reacting to stock footage), but the film's acting honors go to Chuck Kovacic as the wigged-out villain.

Here's the trailer. It's green-screen hell.

Harpo Speaks

Quote from: waste of chops on July 05, 2011, 10:47:56 PM
Actually, does a scene appearing twice in one film count as reusing footage?

There's a bit in Jurassic Park (it's just prior to the 'Clever girl...' moment) where Ellie is running through the forest, and I think it shows her leaping over the same log twice.

Serge

Not exactly re-using footage, but in 'Reservoir Dogs', in the flashback to Mr Pink fleeing the robbery, they quite clearly run past the same set of buildings twice, so at one point it looks like Mr Pink is chasing the cops.


Jumble Cashback

#11
There's an episode of Mission: Impossible that shows the same shot of Greg Morris hanging from a pipe/railing about five times in the space of a couple of minutes.  If it were a more inoccuous shot, it wouldn't be so noticeable, but he pulls a really distinctive expression.  But hell, they recycled entire prologues, so it's to be expected.

And, on the subject of Disney...

The Sword in the Stone Cares About the Environment

The two Ian Richardson Sherlock Holmes TV films of the early 80s used footage from Billy Wilder's 'The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes' showing exterior scenes in the impressive Baker Street set built for 'Private Life'.

SteveDave

The Limey uses old footage of Terence Stamp from the 60s when he's thinking about his dead wife & his missing daughter.

AlkyBastard

Wow, Jumble Cashback, that's bloody amazing!

Chriddof

Hong Kong director Godfrey Ho was notorious for this. From his Wikipedia page:

QuoteThrough the 1980s and early 1990s Ho has created a series of martial arts films made with a "cut-and-paste" technique, which means they were created with the help of splicing various unrelated material (including the recurring motif of absurd ninja-fighting scenes, often with little or no connection with the already disjointed plot) and dubbed more-or-less together. He would film footage for one micro-budget picture, and then edit and splice the shots together in a different order, adding in footage from the various obscure or unreleased HK, Thai, Filipino and other Asian movies (martial arts films, crime films, comedies, etc.) to fill the gaps, and then dubbing over the result to create a final product. This allowed him to create several Z movies with the budget of one, though it is often difficult to discern how much of the finished product he has actually filmed himself.

Apparently all the big robot fights in Power Rangers were just lifted wholesale from some Japanese thing.

JesusAndYourBush

All the scenes with the guy in a rocket suit in "King Of The Rocket Men" were re-used lock stock and barrel for "Radar Men From The Moon", basically they just wrote a new but similar story and inserted the rocket scenes into it.  They did it again with "Zombies Of The Stratosphere".  There was a fourth serial, "Commando Cody, Sky Marshal Of The Universe" which I haven't seen, so can't confirm if they did the same trick with this, but I expect they did.

Oh and re: the Wilhelm tag.  Another oft-repeated sound effect is the crack of thunder one.  Presumably it originates from a BBC sound effects disc, probably a 78, probably released in the 1930's or something, and every fucker uses it.  It's always the same and I cringe when I hear it.  Ditto the sound effect of a baby laughing.

Marty McFly



And how about The Trail Of The Pink Panther? Clouseau footage from previous films was re-used in the form of flashbacks, combined with deleted material, to produce a 'new' Peter Sellers-starring film after Sellers' death. His widow successfully sued the producers for over $1million, claiming it diminished Sellers' reputation. I wonder if she sued Steve Martin too?




Marty McFly

Quote from: JesusAndYourBush on July 07, 2011, 02:39:17 AM
Oh and re: the Wilhelm tag.  Another oft-repeated sound effect is the crack of thunder one.  Presumably it originates from a BBC sound effects disc, probably a 78, probably released in the 1930's or something, and every fucker uses it.  It's always the same and I cringe when I hear it.  Ditto the sound effect of a baby laughing.

The owl sound effect where it hoots to the 'shave and a haircut' beat.. EVERYWHERE

non capisco

Quote from: JesusAndYourBush on July 07, 2011, 02:39:17 AM
Oh and re: the Wilhelm tag.  Another oft-repeated sound effect is the crack of thunder one.  Presumably it originates from a BBC sound effects disc, probably a 78, probably released in the 1930's or something, and every fucker uses it.  It's always the same and I cringe when I hear it.  Ditto the sound effect of a baby laughing.

There's also a generic 'city street noise' featuring the distant cry of a man hailing a cab where you can just about make out the word 'taxi'. It gets used over and over again in 'The Sting', sometimes repeatedly on a loop in one scene, and I've heard it in other films of a similar vintage. I was able to distinguish it mainly because it's used by Prince at the beginning and end of 'Lady Cab Driver' off his 1999 album which was my favourite album when I was 13 and I played it to death, so the 'taxi' voice and accompanying horn toots really jump out as a familiar noise if they're used in a Hollywood film.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: Chriddof on July 07, 2011, 12:22:55 AM
Hong Kong director Godfrey Ho was notorious for this. From his Wikipedia page:

Looking at his filmography, he seems to have supplied pound shops with virtually all their material. Time for a hunt on the flea markets this weekend, I think.

ersatz99

In 2012 the imminent destruction of the planet is causing  global mayhem. How better to depict the unrest in London than to use newsreel of the 1990's poll tax riots - you know: the one with the scaffolding poll through the police car window.

"Austin Powers - Goldmember" uses a brief clip from with Michael Caine from "Hurry Sundown" to show a younger Nigel Powers in a flashback.

"Sky captain and the World of Tomorrow" used old footage of Laurence Olivier which was manipulated by CGI for the film's villain. Apparently, if Olivier's estate had refused permission, they'd have gone with Boris Karloff instead - which would've suited the pastiche of old serials nature of the film more.

Brundle-Fly

There was a 1978 episode in the first season of The Incredible Hulk called 'Never Give A Trucker An Even Break' that extensively used footage from Speilberg's 1971 movie. Duel.  When it was first aired on ITV, loads of viewers complained because the channel had shown Duel only the week before.

Phil_A

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on July 07, 2011, 09:21:16 AM
Looking at his filmography, he seems to have supplied pound shops with virtually all their material. Time for a hunt on the flea markets this weekend, I think.

I've collected quite a few of these, and they are all utterly incomprehensible. Just look up some of the trailers on youtube to get an idea. One the most baffling is "Ninja The Protector", in which the majority of footage(some featuring an uncredited Jackie Chan) is taken from a soap opera which frequently veers into interludes of typically seventies soft porn. With ninjas appearing in between.

Another thing to watch out for in Ho's ninja films is the recurring appearances of the same actor, Richard Harrison. Harrison was paid for shooting one film with Ho, but then was quite surprised to find the footage he'd acted in turning up in a dozen other movies. I've heard it suggested that Ho may himself have been the victim of cheapskate distributors, who edited the films without his involvement, so they could bang them out as cheap filler for the western market. Be that as it may, even the films on his CV that don't contain ninjas don't really suggest that he was an undiscovered genius.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: Phil_A on July 08, 2011, 03:28:39 AM
I've collected quite a few of these, and they are all utterly incomprehensible. Just look up some of the trailers on youtube to get an idea. One the most baffling is "Ninja The Protector", in which the majority of footage(some featuring an uncredited Jackie Chan) is taken from a soap opera which frequently veers into interludes of typically seventies soft porn. With ninjas appearing in between.

Another thing to watch out for in Ho's ninja films is the recurring appearances of the same actor, Richard Harrison. Harrison was paid for shooting one film with Ho, but then was quite surprised to find the footage he'd acted in turning up in a dozen other movies. I've heard it suggested that Ho may himself have been the victim of cheapskate distributors, who edited the films without his involvement, so they could bang them out as cheap filler for the western market. Be that as it may, even the films on his CV that don't contain ninjas don't really suggest that he was an undiscovered genius.
Several of them appear to be able to be viewed online here, and a few more here. .

Nik Drou

Citizen Kane has dinosaurs in it.

During the picnic scene near the end of the film, the background is a projection apparently taken from either King Kong or Son of Kong.  If you look carefully, a few pterodactyls do fly by.  It's disconcerting, to say the least.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QyRksgacik

Serge

Well, you know, Charles Foster Kane was a very rich man, and if he wanted pterodactyls at his beach party, who's going to deny it to him?

That is fucking brilliant, thanks for posting that!

Paaaaul

Quote from: Nik Drou on July 08, 2011, 09:40:06 AM
Citizen Kane has dinosaurs in it.

During the picnic scene near the end of the film, the background is a projection apparently taken from either King Kong or Son of Kong.  If you look carefully, a few pterodactyls do fly by.  It's disconcerting, to say the least.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QyRksgacik

Awesome!