How can I make archive footage look good?

My project is a courtroom thriller, and there are suppose to be protesters outside of the courthouse, since it's a big dramatic case.

However, I do not want to have to block off roads and hire actors to play the protesters, so I am wondering, if it would be legal to use real footage of real protesters, taken from people's home cameras and phones? Is their a place to get archive footage, or is this usually not a good idea, since people may be able to be seen on there without giving their consent to be in the movie?

If I can go this route though, how can I make the archive footage look good? I checked out some footage of protests, and the footage might not gel well, with the movie. If you watch a movie like JFK (1991), for example, they took 8mm films of the assassination and blended that with the movie, and they made it look like art, and the audience of course new that it was intended to be seen through the point of view of the public's cameras. Where as one could easily screw that up, and you have a more intended, cinematic looking movie on one hand, then it cuts to amateur taken videos by everyday people. So the question is, how do you make lower quality archive footage, look artistic when blended with the movie in general?

Thanks.

It's called stock footage.

To the looking good, it depends on the quality of the footage in question. Garbage in = garbage out.

how do you make lower quality archive footage, look artistic when blended with the movie in general?

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So you want to know how to make garbage footage look great? You already know the answer. You don't. You don't buy low quality footage to start with.

On second thought the garbage stock footage it'll probably match your media

You should really be looking to write within your price range/abilities.

You could "creatively" get away with it - e.g. have the fact it's cell phone footage be part of the script. So you could have a scene with a news presentor talking about the protest, then have s/he say something like "a few of our viewers sent in their own footage of the scenes on 43rd" [que cell phone footage]. But that still wouldn't be ideal - generally it's better to take full quality footage and degrade it, so you can control just how cell-phone-y it is.

Better yet, don't write a protesting scene. Have it implied. A few interior shots of people talking about the protest + sound of protesters + a few signs being waved out the window in the b/g.

Even better again:

Sweetie said:

You should really be looking to write within your price range/abilities.

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