Visibox Pit Of Despair Pack is a collection of high-definition video clips designed to enhance visual experiences in audiovisual projects, live performances, and art projects. This collection contains 25 clips cut from two American anti-drug films of the late 1960s: Drugs in Our Culture, a half-hour educational film made by KQED in San Francisco in about 1968, and Narcotics: Pit of Despair, a 1967 cautionary drama from Film Distributors International in Los Angeles.
Most of both films is people talking. In between, they cut away to the world they are worried about: a crowded city sidewalk, a psychedelic light show with a band playing under liquid projections, a house party with a record player and a room full of dancers, a college campus, a run of flat, hand-drawn animation about marijuana, and a cobra rearing in dry grass. Those cutaways are what is in this pack.
Use these clips as visual accompaniment to music, as VJ material, or as background visuals in a variety of settings. They’re built to set a mood and take a backseat to the main event while still giving people something to look at.
Technical Details
The clips are 1080P h.264-encoded MP4 files without audio, at 24 frames per second, in the films’ original 4:3 aspect ratio (1440x1080). Both films survive as standard-definition archival transfers, and these clips are scaled up from them. Expect film grain, a soft picture, and the odd scratch. Credits are below.
These are scene cuts, not seamless loops. Each clip is one shot or one continuous sequence from its film, so it holds up on repeat, but you will see it wrap. The exception is Shell-Curtain-1, which plays forward and then backward so that it wraps without a jump.
Word-Strobe-1 flashes rapidly. Think about your audience before you put it on a big screen.
Both films are distributed by the Prelinger Archives through the Internet Archive, and both are widely treated as being in the public domain. We’re passing them along on that basis, so this pack does not carry our standard video pack license. As far as we’re aware, you can use, modify, and distribute this material for any purpose, commercial or otherwise, without permission or attribution. The scene selection and editing are ours, and a credit for that work is appreciated but not required.
One caveat, in the interest of being straight with you. Neither film was made by the federal government, so their public domain status rests on how they were published, not on who made them. The copies we worked from carry no copyright notice on their titles or credits, and we have found no evidence of a surviving copyright claim on either film. Some of the clips also show people on a public street, performers on a stage, and actors, and copyright status says nothing about a person’s rights in their own likeness. If your use is a high-stakes one, do your own clearance. The full notice is in the LICENSE.pdf included in the download.
How To Use
If you’re using Visibox, just drag ’em in! If you’re using VLC, select “Repeat One” from the Play menu. In Quicktime Player, select “Loop” from the View menu. These clips will also work in most VJ environments.
Pro tip: on a 16:9 output, Visibox crops the 4:3 frame edge to edge by default. If you’d rather see the whole frame, set Fit Mode to “Fit (Letterbox)” on the clip, or set it for the whole project under Project > Fit Mode.
About The Films
Drugs in Our Culture (about 1968). Part one of the series Drugs: The Children Are Choosing, with Dr. James Fadiman. A production of KQED Educational Services, San Francisco. Producer-director: Joanne M. Mock. Distributed by the University of California Extension Media Center.
Narcotics: Pit of Despair (1967). A Film Distributors International presentation, Los Angeles. Produced and directed by Mel Marshall. Featuring Kevin Tighe, Gerald LeRoy and Julie Connors.
Archival transfers by the Prelinger Archives, hosted by the Internet Archive (Drugs in Our Culture, Narcotics: Pit of Despair). Scene selection, editing and encoding by Spaceage, LLC.