The Public Domain Project Makes 10,000 Film Clips, 64,000 Images & 100s of Audio Files Free to Use

Sure, we love the inter­net for how it makes freely avail­able so many cul­tur­al arti­facts. And sure, we also love the inter­net for how it allows us to dis­sem­i­nate our own work. But the inter­net gets the most inter­est­ing, I would sub­mit, when it makes freely avail­able cul­tur­al arti­facts with the express pur­pose of let­ting cre­ators use them in their own work — which we then all get to expe­ri­ence through the inter­net. The new Pub­lic Domain Project will soon become an impor­tant resource for many such cre­ators, offer­ing as it does “thou­sands of his­toric media files for your cre­ative projects, com­plete­ly free and made avail­able by Pond5,” an enti­ty that brands itself as “the world’s most vibrant mar­ket­place for cre­ativ­i­ty.”

So what can you find to use in the Pub­lic Domain Project? As of this writ­ing, it offers 9715 pieces of footage, 473 audio files, 64,535 images, and 121 3D mod­els. “The project includes dig­i­tal mod­els of NASA tools and satel­lites, Georges Méliès’ 1902 film, A Trip To The Moon, speech­es by polit­i­cal fig­ures like Win­ston Churchill and Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., record­ings of per­for­mances from com­posers like Beethoven, and a laid-back pic­ture of Pres­i­dent Oba­ma play­ing pool,” says a post at The Cre­ators Project explain­ing the site’s back­ground.

In the Pub­lic Domain Pro­jec­t’s expand­ing archives you will also find clips of every­thing, from rock­et launch­es to film of old New York to very, very ear­ly cat videos, to, of course, mush­room clouds. I imag­ine that some future Chris Mark­er could make cre­ative use of this stuff indeed, and if they need a score, they could use a con­cer­to for pizzi­ca­to and ten instru­ments, Chopin’s “Noc­turne in E Flat Major,” or maybe “John­ny Get Your Gun.” Alter­na­tive­ly, they could part out the very first doc­u­men­tary and use the Pub­lic Domain Pro­jec­t’s bits and pieces of Dzi­ga Ver­tov’s Man With a Movie Cam­era. What­ev­er you want to cre­ate, the usable pub­lic domain can only grow more fruit­ful, so you might as well get mix­ing, remix­ing, and shar­ing, as Pond5 puts it, right away. Vis­it The Pub­lic Domain Project here.

via The Cre­ators Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kandin­sky, Mon­dri­an, Munch & Flem­ing Entered Pub­lic Domain in 2015 — But Welles, Achebe, and “Pur­ple Peo­ple Eater” Didn’t

Sher­lock Holmes Is Now in the Pub­lic Domain, Declares US Judge

The British Library Puts 1,000,000 Images into the Pub­lic Domain, Mak­ing Them Free to Reuse & Remix

A Cab­i­net of Curiosi­ties: Dis­cov­er The Pub­lic Domain Review’s New Book of Essays

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.