Los Angeles Breaking News Footage, 1984–2019
Raw, unedited LA news footage from the streets of Los Angeles, shot overnight by news camera crews and available to license.
FootageWorks is an archive of more than 50,000 Los Angeles news stories, recorded on broadcast news cameras between 1984 and 2019. It began with the library of Citicopters News Service, founded by Jay Mitchell Steinbrecher (known on air as Jay Mitchell), and grew as FootageWorks acquired the archives of other Los Angeles news video services. These crews covered the city overnight and licensed their breaking news footage to local and national television stations, networks and news feeds. Every story began as breaking news, and the footage is raw and unedited: fires, police chases, crashes, rescues and crime scenes exactly as they unfolded, often captured by the first camera on scene, before police or firefighters arrived.
Producers, footage researchers, rights and clearance staff, documentary filmmakers, true-crime series, news programs and editors use FootageWorks to find authentic, caught-on-tape news footage of Los Angeles that cannot be recreated: 1980s and 1990s crime scenes, riots, earthquakes, disasters, fires and rescues, and the real emergency response behind the stories that made the news. Because emergency vehicles change from year to year, the archive is also a period-accurate source for the police cars, fire engines, ladder trucks, rescue ambulances and other apparatus of all 50 law enforcement and fire agencies in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, exactly as they looked in each era.
Stock Video Clips – Coming Soon
Short, 10-25 seconds stand-alone, rights-ready stock video clips cut from our news archive are on the way. Watch our Car & Vehicle Fires clip packs in the video player above.
Featured Raw News Footage Story Videos
INFAMOUS LA MURDER · AUGUST 1989
The Menendez Brothers Murders: Beverly Hills Crime Scene
Raw news video from the Beverly Hills mansion where Lyle and Erik Menendez shot and killed their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. Coroner’s staff roll the covered bodies out of the home and load them into the LA County Coroner’s van as police secure the scene.
INFAMOUS LA MURDER · MARCH 1997 · PART 1 OF 2
The Notorious B.I.G. Murder: Crime Scene, Part 1
Raw news video of the shooting of the Notorious B.I.G., also known as Biggie Smalls (Christopher Wallace), as he left a music industry party at the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.
INFAMOUS LA MURDER · MARCH 1997 · PART 2 OF 2
The Notorious B.I.G. Murder: Crime Scene, Part 2
More raw news video from the scene of the Biggie Smalls (Christopher Wallace) shooting near the Petersen Automotive Museum, as LAPD detectives investigate one of the most famous unsolved cases in music history.
Let our researchers help find the footage for your video production!
Basic research is free. Deep research is a little bit more…
Select Stock Footage
| Clip # | Name | In | Out | Duration | Est. |
|---|
Timecode: 29.97 DF fps. Happy Searching! — final price is set by the server at checkout.
How to select a clip
- Play the video and find where you want your clip to start.
- Click Set In.
- Keep playing to where you want the clip to end.
- Click Set Out. The video pauses there so you can see the last frame.
- Use Jump to In or Jump to Out to go back to either point at any time.
- Use the Trim buttons to fine-tune the In or Out point by one frame (f) or one second (s).
- Click Preview range to watch just your selection.
- Check the clip name, or type your own.
- Click Add to clip list. Repeat to add more clips from the same video.
- When your list is ready, click Add clips to cart (or Send clip request). Copy list copies the names and timecodes.
Keyboard shortcuts (with the mouse over the video or this panel, not while typing a name):
- L play; press again for 2x, then 4x (if the video allows)
- K pause
- J step backwards (about 0.1 s at a time; YouTube cannot play in reverse)
- I Set In O Set Out (pauses on the Out frame)
- Shift+I Jump to In Shift+O Jump to Out
- ← / → one frame back / forward (moves the In or Out point you just set, otherwise the video)
- Ctrl+← / Ctrl+→ one second back / forward
The price shown here is an estimate. The final price is confirmed in the cart.
Times are shown as timecode: hours:minutes:seconds:frames (for example 00:01:15;12 is 1 minute, 15 seconds and 12 frames). A semicolon before the frames means drop-frame timecode, used for 29.97 fps video.