What Is B-Roll? Definition, Examples, and How to Use It

B-roll is the supplementary footage cut alongside the main footage in a video. If the main shot is an interview, a presenter, or the central action, that is your a-roll. B-roll is the rest: hands working, a wide of the building, the machine running, the street outside.

That is the b-roll definition in one line. The b roll meaning is the same however you see it written, and you will see all three: b-roll, b roll, and broll. The hyphen is a house style choice, not a distinction.

It comes from three places: shot on location alongside the main footage, pulled from an existing archive, or licensed. The name is a leftover from film, when the primary footage lived on one reel and the supplementary footage on a second.

There is a fifth job that most b-roll guides leave out, and it is the one that changes what you shoot: in animated and mixed-media work, b-roll is the plate that graphics and animation get built on top of. That is the rest of this page.

B-roll is everything cut alongside it. Without b-roll you still have a video, but it is a hard one to watch, because the viewer stares at one framing for the whole runtime and the editor has nowhere to hide a cut.

The distinction matters most in the edit. An editor with plenty of b-roll can tighten a rambling interview into something sharp. An editor without it is stuck with every pause and every stumble, because there is nothing to cut away to.

• Illustrating narration. A line about a process lands harder over the process happening than over a face.

• Covering edits. Cut away, remove the sentence, cut back. The jump disappears.

• Establishing setting. A wide of the site tells the viewer where they are in two seconds.

• Controlling pace. Visual variety is what keeps someone watching past the first thirty seconds.

• Giving animation somewhere to live. In mixed-media work the footage is not filler between talking heads. It is the plate that callouts, data and character animation get composited onto.

Mixed media means live-action footage with motion graphics, data visualization, character animation or 2D elements composited on top. It works because the two halves do different jobs. Footage carries authenticity and place. Animation carries information and abstraction. Neither does both well on its own.

In practice that means annotating a real machine with callouts, showing an invisible process over a real environment, turning a filmed interview into an explainer with graphics, or laying interface and data over product footage.

This kind of work sits close to corporate animated video and commercial video production in how it is produced.

If animation is going on top, the shoot has to be planned for it. This is the part conventional b-roll advice never covers.

• Leave negative space in frame. A graphic needs somewhere to sit. Frame the subject off-center and keep one side clear.

• Lock the camera off, or use controlled moves. Handheld footage means the animation has to be motion-tracked to match, which costs far more than a tripod.

• Shoot longer holds than the edit needs. A graphic needs time to animate on, hold, and animate off. A two-second shot cannot carry a four-second callout.

• Get clean plates. A few seconds of the empty frame, no subject, gives the animator something to work against.

• Decide where the graphic sits before you frame the shot, not after. Reframing in post means cropping, and cropping costs resolution.

• Light and grade so graphics stay legible. White text on a bright window does not read.

Every example on this page comes from a finished client production. What each one demonstrates:

• Lehigh University, what is a scutoid. Presenter on a locked-off camera, 3D geometry animated into his hands. The b-roll is a single controlled shot whose only job is to host the animation.

• Lehigh University, COVID-19 protocols. Interviews framed off-center so animated callouts and campus building illustrations could be placed in the clear side.

• Alta Vista Strategic Partners. Aerial and office footage with typography and annotation markers composited over it. The aerial of the facility is real; the markers identifying each area are not.

• Wiley. Documentary footage used as fill inside animated brand shapes, so the footage is not sitting behind the graphic, it is inside it.

• HealthFirst. Lifestyle and clinical footage carrying brand typography and a logo mark, where the footage supplies warmth and the graphics supply the message.

• Snell & Wilmer. Screen recording and live-action combined with kinetic typography for an internal walkthrough.

More finished work is in our animation portfolio and case studies.

1. Script first. You cannot know what footage you need until you know what is being said over it. Our guide to writing a video script covers getting there.

2. Storyboard the composite, not just the footage. Board what the finished frame looks like with the graphic in it, so the framing you shoot is the framing the graphic needs. See what a storyboard is, or start from a blank storyboard template.

3. Build a shot list that marks which shots carry animation. Those shots need longer holds, cleaner backgrounds and a locked camera. The rest do not.

4. Shoot with the graphic in mind, and grab a clean plate of every shot that will carry one.

5. Build an animatic if the timing is complex, so you know a callout fits before you are paying an animator to build it. See what an animatic is.

• Shooting with no idea what will be said over it. You end up with hours of footage and nothing that matches the narration.

• Handheld everything. Then discovering that motion-tracking the graphics costs more than a reshoot would have.

• No clean plates. Cheap on the day, expensive in post.

• Framing tight. A beautiful close-up with no room for a callout is useless to an animator.

• Treating b-roll as something to gather afterwards. In mixed-media work it is the foundation, not the filler, and it needs planning like anything else.

For a straight interview piece, b-roll is what makes the edit watchable. For a mixed-media piece, it is the foundation the whole thing is built on, and that changes the job from gathering footage afterwards to planning it before anyone rolls.

The practical difference is small: know what will be said over each shot, leave room in frame for whatever is going on top, lock the camera where a graphic has to stick, and grab clean plates. None of it costs anything on the day. All of it is expensive to fix later.