The Best Action Stock Footage For Film Makers – Part 2

July 7, 2017
, Updates

“What is the best action stock footage for effects such as explosions, fire, smoke, etc?”
Since the term best is so subjective, this is really asking 2 distinct questions:

What is the best quality action stock footage?
What is the best free action stock footage?

In this video I will answer both of those questions!

The Best Quality Action Stock Footage

ActionVFX

In my humble opinion, the best quality action stock footage I have ever seen being distributed online is ActionVFX. ActionVFX offers a very large range of extremely high quality stock footage elements for anything from explosions and muzzle flashes to ground cracks, dust, smoke and debris. Their products have been used in many popular TV shows such as Fear of the Walking Dead and Narcos.

All of the elements are perfectly exposed, come in resolutions up to 4K and are often shot in slow motion. For rendered elements such as the ground cracks and ground burst effects, you also get separated render passes for shadow and Z depth. Their products are not cheap, but you can decide to purchase entire collections or individual elements depending on your budget and your requirements. Single elements range from $15 to $30 and full collections from $199 to $499.

If you run a movie studio and have access to a larger budget, you may want to consider purchasing the ActionVFX drive. The drive includes all of the ActionVFX collections, 1316 individual elements in full 4K and they will ship it to you on a physical drive to save you hours or days of downloading their media online.

Video Copilot Action Essentials 2

One of the staples in the industry for high quality action stock footage is Action Essentials 2 from Video Copilot. This collection has been around for quite a while and only comes in a maximum resolution of 2K, but I have seen it used in endless TV shows from The Walking Dead to Black Sails.

The pack is pretty reasonably priced at $99.95 for the 720p version and $249.95 for the 2K edition. The reason this pack is so popular and I would recommend it if you are just getting into film making and visual effects is that it includes over 500 stock footage elements across 20 different categories so you get a very large variety of effects to work with. It includes fire, smoke, explosions, dust, debris, impacts, dirt hits, bullet shells and much much more. It even includes some bonus content such as grunge textures and a handful of sound effects.

If you are looking for something affordable to get you started, this is the pack I’d recommend.

Triune Explosion & Fire Assets

If you are simply after a set of cool looking action stock footage for explosions and fire, make sure to check out the Explosion Assets & Fire Assets on the Triune store.

The Explosion Assets pack contains 12 unique explosions, rendered from 4 angles each so you end up with 48 individual assets. There are a few debris assets included as well and the pack will set you back $99.99.

The Fire Assets come with 30 unique fires, plus additional versions for ignition and looping, giving you a total of 45 fire stock footage elements. This pack is a fair bit cheaper than the Explosion Assets at only $29.99

All of the elements from these packs look like they have been generated and rendered out in SideFX Houdini and they look nice and detailed. I especially like that the explosion assets look nice and dirty and with some colour correction and colour grading you can easily blend them into your own footage.

If you intend to get both the Explosion and the Fire Assets pack, you may consider just snatching the Pyro Bundle at a slight discount, costing $119.

So now that we talked about the best quality action stock footage, let’s check out what the best free options are!

The Best Free Action Stock Footage

ActionVFX

Huh, haven’t we already talked about ActionVFX? We sure did! ActionVFX not only offers great high quality action stock footage, they also offer a pretty large set of great free elements that you can download from their website. Simply head over to their free vfx page, create yourself a free account and start downloading.

Blinkfarm

One of the best free resources for cool action stock footage for muzzle flashes, explosions, fire as well as sound effects for guns and more, make sure to check out Blinkfarm on YouTube.

All of their stock footage elements are free to use, just make sure you include a link back to their channel and give them the appropriate credit!

Detonation Films

Detonation Films has been around for a very long time and their website does show the age. While they have now set up a new DetFilms4K website, the free action stock footage elements can all be found on the original Detonation Films website.

The Detonation Films website isn’t that great to navigate but they contain some great free action stock footage if you know where to look. Here are the links to their free elements:

In order to download the free elements, scroll down to the bottom of each page and click on the big Detonation Films logo.

A form will pop up asking for payment. If you like what they do, please consider giving them a little bit for their effort, but you can just as easily specify the price as $0 and proceed through the checkout process. You will have to provide your email address and you will be emailed a link to the free stock footage download.

Footage Create

Finally, if you are looking for great free action stock footage, make sure to visit Footage Crate.

Footage Crate’s website has seen a fairly recent face lift and now offers a pretty big range of both free and paid stock footage elements across a very large number of categories.

You can find plenty of free elements elements that you can download and use for free in your own film projects.

Final Thoughts

There are so many great resources out there whether you are looking for the best quality or the best free action stock footage online. Please let me know if I missed anything and I will update this page.