Can we still use that old footage?

Maybe, but you probably can't prove it, and that's the real problem. Whether you're allowed to reuse footage depends on what the people in it agreed to at the time, and in most organisations that agreement is a signature on a form nobody can find, covering uses nobody wrote down.

Here's how it usually surfaces. The funding submission's due Friday. Someone remembers the film from the day program a few years back, the one where a participant talks about catching the bus on his own for the first time. It's still the most persuasive thing you've ever made. So can you put thirty seconds of it in the submission?

Then the questions start. Did he sign, or did his guardian? Did the form say website, or "promotional purposes", or nothing at all? Is he still with the service? Is he still alive? The coordinator who ran the shoot left two years ago, and the release forms, if they exist, are in her old inbox. Nobody knows. So the clip stays where it is, and the submission goes in with a stock photo and a paragraph.

Why the answer's usually "we don't know"

Because consent gets treated as production paperwork. It's collected on the day by whoever's holding the clipboard, written for the project in front of them, and filed with that project. When the project ends, the record and the footage go their separate ways. Five years on, you've got one without the other.

Even when you can find the form, it rarely answers the question you're actually asking. Most releases record that someone signed. They don't record what that person was told, what they thought they were agreeing to, or for how long. "May be used for promotional purposes" feels broad. In practice it settles nothing, because it doesn't tell you whether a man who talked about his own disability on camera expected to turn up in a funding pitch five years later.

Time makes it worse. Staff move on, sometimes on bad terms. Clients change services, or change their minds, or die, and their families have views. A hospital clinician who explained a new model of care on camera has since left, and the model's been quietly dropped. A government officer explained a program that's since been scrapped, and the clip's still on the department's channel, saying the opposite of current policy. Some of your footage you're not allowed to use. Some of it you're allowed to use and shouldn't, because it's no longer true.

What you're about to try

You'll do one of three things, and none of them work.

You'll reuse it and hope. It's already on the website, so it must be fine. That's the one that ends with a phone call from a daughter who's just seen her late mother in a social ad.

You'll bin it out of caution. Legal says if you can't prove consent, don't use it, and someone decides the cleanest answer is to delete the lot. The footage you lose is the footage you can never film again.

Or you'll ask legal, clip by clip, every time. That's slow, and it doesn't work anyway, because legal can only answer from the paperwork, and the paperwork's the bit that's missing.

All three treat this as a one-off question. It isn't. It's a standing one, and it'll come up every time anyone wants to show what your work actually looks like.

Keep the footage and the permission together

What fixes it is footage stewardship. Footage stewardship is keeping footage, the consent behind it and the context it was captured in together, so you can always answer three questions: what's in it, who agreed to what, and is it still true.

In practice that means a few unglamorous things.

Write consent for the life of the footage, not the length of the project. Tell people in plain language how it's likely to be used, for how long, and how they can pull out. Record what they were told, not just that they signed. Where someone consents on another person's behalf, record who, and when that should be checked again.

Keep the consent record attached to the footage itself. When you look up a clip, the person, their consent and its limits should come up with it. If those live in different systems owned by different teams, they'll drift apart. They always do.

Give it a review date, the way you would any other record. Every couple of years, someone checks whether the people in it are still comfortable, whether what they're saying is still accurate, and whether it's time to retire it.

And make withdrawal work. If someone asks to be removed, you should be able to find every place they appear in a day, not a quarter.

None of this is technical, and none of it replaces advice from your own legal or privacy team. It gives them something to work with. It's mostly a decision about who owns the question, and that owner usually sits closer to risk and records than to comms.

Why this matters more than it looks

Here's the part that's easy to miss. The footage that's hardest to reuse is the footage that's worth the most.

A scripted piece with your chief executive is easy to clear. Everyone on camera is staff, the release is standard, and nobody's going to change their mind. It's also the thing your audience believes least. What people believe is someone with a real stake speaking in their own words: a participant, a carer, a nurse at the end of a night shift, a resident who was sceptical and said so. That's evidence. It holds up because nobody could have scripted it. And it's exactly the material that gets stuck when the consent trail goes cold, because it involves real people, often in vulnerable moments.

So without stewardship, you drift towards polish by default. Not because anyone decided it works better, but because it's the only footage legal will sign off. You end up making your case with your least credible material, while your most credible sits in a folder nobody's allowed to open.

We've made that trade knowingly. When we advised Freedom Home Care to film their clients unscripted rather than to a script, it was because unscripted is what people believe. The same choice means that footage needs more care over time, not less. Real evidence comes with real obligations, and stewardship is what keeps it usable.

Where to start

Pick the five clips you'd most want to use in the next twelve months. For each one, try to answer the three questions. What's in it? Who agreed to what? Is it still true? Give yourself an afternoon.

If you can't answer them, you've found the gap, and it's far cheaper to close now than in the week a submission's due. If you're about to film something new, settle consent before the camera arrives. That's part of what we work through in a Narrative Brief, alongside who should be on camera in the first place. And if the problem's bigger than five clips, start with The Footage Problem Nobody's Talking About.

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Questions people ask next

Does a signed release mean we can use the footage forever?

Not necessarily. A release records that someone agreed to something at a point in time. Whether it covers a new use depends on what they were told, what the form actually says, and whether anything's changed since, including whether they've asked to withdraw. Broad wording like "promotional purposes" rarely settles it. Treat old consent as something to check, not a permanent licence.

What should consent cover if we want to reuse footage later?

It should tell people, in plain language, how the footage is likely to be used, for how long, and how they can pull out. Record what they were told, not just their signature. If someone consents on another person's behalf, record who, and when to check again. Then keep that record attached to the footage, not filed away with the project.

What do we do with old footage when we can't find the consent?

Don't delete it and don't quietly reuse it. Set it aside, work out who's in it and whether you can still reach them, and ask again where it matters. Plenty of people will be glad to say yes. Where you can't reach someone, keep the footage as a record but leave it out of anything public.

Who should own footage once the project's finished?

One named role, not a team, and usually closer to risk or records management than to communications. Comms commissioned it, but comms moves on to the next project. Whoever owns it needs to be able to say what exists, what consent sits behind it, and when it's next due for review. Without a named owner, nobody can answer those questions.