The Cut That Changed Everything: Backup, But Not Background: How B-Roll Took Center Stage
And when filmmakers f-up, B-roll was the safety net.
Hey friends,
Thanks for all your emails on the big story we did last week on the origins of Avid and its founder, Bill Warner. I am glad it conjured memories and I appreciate the gems you shared with me.
Lots happening with Eddie AI. Here’s the TL;DR, Eddie now supports:
French, German, Spanish, and English interviews.
Multicam interview logging (identify and rank soundbites, grouping them by topics)
Identifying the bad parts (out of focus, shake, etc) of a b-roll clip and creates a stringout of the best sub-clips, making it swifter to find what you need.
It is totally a coincidence that this week’s article relates to the feature we just updated. Completely. ;)
Also: our 1,000 docs programs, where we’re supporting 1k doc filmmakers with free access to Eddie, is doing well. If you’re working on a doc film you’re passionate about, learn more and apply here.
This week’s feature is all about the unsung hero of your timeline: B-roll. Once the sidekick, now the scene-stealer. From patching over rough edits to becoming the edit itself, B-roll has evolved from spliced shadows to visual power moves. Whether you’re working on a doc, a vlog, or just trying to make your sizzle pop, this piece is for you.
More soon,
Shamir
The term “B-roll” dates back to early film editing, where it referred to a secondary reel used to hide splices in the main footage: A-roll. Traditionally, it’s what sets the scene, adds context, or dresses up dry moments.
And when filmmakers f-up, B-roll was the safety net. There to patch over rough cuts or missing shots.
But somewhere along the way, B-roll stopped playing backup and started carrying the melody.
Splicing in the Shadows
The term B-roll originates from the mid-20th century as a clever workaround for a very analog problem: visible splices in 16 mm film. Unlike 35 mm film, which was wide enough to hide editing splices within the frame, 16 mm stock revealed those cuts as visual artifacts.
To solve this, editors used black opaque leader to mask splices and split footage across two reels: A-roll and B-roll.
This method called checkerboard printing allowed unexposed print stock to be run through the lab twice: first exposed to the A-roll, then again to the B-roll, alternating between footage and black.
It was standard in doc and TV production throughout the 50s and 60s.. Editors used A-roll for interviews or primary scenes with synced audio. B-roll for silent cutaways.
B‑roll, or the “cutaway” was considered the bandaid solution. Picture an interview where someone says something controversial: the shot would cut to a nod, hand gesture, or wide of the room to mask the edit.
By the 90s, with the advent of NLE like Avid and Final Cut Pro, the necessity of two decks disappeared but the concept of A-roll and B-roll still remained.
Today, B-roll has transcended its original purpose. No longer just backup to mask a cut. It’s a storytelling tool in its own right:expanding what visual storytelling could be.
Mood, Memory & Manipulation
If you've ever sat through Film Theory 101, there’s one name you probably couldn’t escape: Lev Kuleshov.
The Russian filmmaker in the 1910s who, without the luxury of sound or dialogue, discovered one of the most foundational tricks in cinema.
Here’s the classic exercise. Kuleshov took the exact same neutral expression of an actor. No smile. No frown. just a blank slate and spliced it with three different cutaway shots:
Man’s face + Dead woman in a coffin = sadness
Man’s face + Bowl of soup = hunger
Man’s face + A reclining woman = lust
The actor’s expression never changes but the audience interprets completely different emotions based on the image it's paired with. The context created by B‑roll (the cutaway images) reframes understanding of what the neutral face is supposedly feeling.
This effect laid the groundwork for modern editing theory in that it shows how B-roll is as much active storytelling as it is filler.
Stock to Stock: Film Strips to Footage Libraries
If B-roll started as literal film stock then the 2000s marked its spiritual sequel.
With the rise of DSLRs and digital video workflows, a new creative class emerged. One-person crews, indie documentarians, and YouTube pioneers who didn’t always have time to shoot that perfect sunset, skyline, or bustling city street. But they had options.
Enter: the stock footage boom.
Getty Images, Pond5, VideoBlocks (now Storyblocks), Artgrid, Filmsupply, Shutterstock, and Motion Array.
The list is nearly endless.
Need a slow-motion shot of a woman twirling in a wheat field? Aerial pass of downtown Tokyo at night? Man tying shoelaces in golden-hour light? Done, done, done.
No permits, no weather delays, no lighting setups. Just click, license, drop it into your edit.
Suddenly, even modest productions could feel global. Cinematic. Without ever leaving the edit bay.
And as search tools improved, enter metadata tagging, AI-assisted curation, and license-by-use filters stock B-roll became both an insurance policy and a creative palette.
From splicing silent film to dragging high-res clips onto a Premiere timeline, B-roll’s journey from stock to stock shows just how much storytelling has changed and how much of it can now happen far from the camera.
B‑Roll & the Rise of Creator Economy
Flash forward to 2025:
We’re in the golden age of the solo studio. Mic, key light, compact camera rig. But here's the catch: talking head alone just doesn’t cut it anymore.
To stand out, creators need more than clean audio and crisp 4K. B‑roll has become the new shorthand for storytelling, scale, and effort. It signals polish. It buys attention.
No one internalized this better than Casey Neistat.
A decade ago, he helped redefine the vlog format with daily vlogs that looked like mini documentaries. Drone shots, time-lapses, kinetic montages, fusing street-level grit with cinematic rhythm.
He’s still doing it now.
“New York City Lunch Crisis.” Uploaded to his channel May 6th 2025.
One moment you’re watching his friend Jordan bite into a slice of pizza. Next: a sweeping drone shot of Manhattan slices across the screen. Slice to slice.
That cut does more than look cool. It adds scope. It tells you: this isn’t just a lunch break, this is a story set in a city with stakes.
With over 12 million subscribers and billions of views, Neistat’s influence helped normalize b‑roll as editorial language for creators. Now, cutaways of coffee steam, traffic lights, train doors, shoes on pavement: it’s all part of the grammar.
When B‑Roll is the film
Some films don’t just rely on b-roll. They are b-roll.
Take Planet Earth. The narration may come from David Attenborough, but the real story is told in long silences: a snow leopard brushing against stone, a lizard sprinting for its life, clouds folding over mountaintops.
What you’re seeing isn’t filler, it’s the film.
And behind those few pristine seconds.. dozens, sometimes hundreds, of hours of raw footage. Crews would wait weeks for polar bears to appear, using motion-triggered cameras to capture elusive wildlife. Relying on drones, helicopters, or deep-sea rigs for sweeping shots.
Planet Earth III filmed for 1,904 days, requiring 134 individual shoots across 43 countries and six continents. We’re talking over 2,000 hours worth of footage, easy.
Or Koyaanisqatsi, legendary experimental doc. No narration, no interviews, no dialogue. Just hypnotic sequences of city grids, burning oil fields, time-lapsed crowds, all cut to Philip Glass.
Even modern YouTube explainer channels like Vox are structured more like visual essays.
Rhythm built through: subway maps animating in sync with voiceover, looping gifs, hands slicing bread and color-coded charts pulsing to synth.
“Attention spans are shrinking.” Yeah, yeah.
We’ve been hearing that since the pre-Vine era. But here’s the part worth repeating: editing is still your most powerful tool to fight that drift.
Well-placed cutaways, visual metaphors, rhythmic inserts help reset the viewer’s attention.
In a scroll-heavy world, it’s one of the few forces left that can hold someone still, without asking them to.
The Final Cut
B-roll was never the headline act. It wasn’t the dialogue, the plot, or the big emotional moment.
In interviews, it softened edges. In docs, it filled the silence. In explainer videos, it became the bridge between ideas.
When creators didn’t have a crew, it became their co-director. When editors ran out of time, it saved the scene.
Adapting faster than any format. From celluloid to stock libraries, DSLRs to AI, it never stopped evolving.
And now after years spent in the wings, frame by frame, it’s starting to steal the scene.
Getting more and more interesting folks. Can we please please have Italian?
Yes! Sorry wasn't very clear...