Why do you call footage footage?

Answer 1

Personally, I refer to 'footage' as "length" or "distance", and 'square footage' as "area".
People who use 'footage' are, frankly, somewhat mathematically challenged; in addition
to the problem they have remembering big words like 'length' and 'area', they're also not
quite sure what the difference is. If they ever had to deal with volume, they'd most likely
refer to that as 'cubic footage', but I haven't heard that one yet. What I have heard though ...
and it still gives me the shivers when I talk about it ... is "metric footage".


You may be referring to the "video footage" that reporters carry, or transmit, back
to the studio. That's a holdover from the days when everything in the field was
shot on film, which was rushed to the studio and processed in time for the late News.

Whence ... "Here's the story of what happened out there this afternoon. Film at 11:00."

Anyway, film was bought, shot, timed, and processed by the foot. When you shot a
story in the field, the product you brought back was literally "footage". Video ...
either on tape or solid-state storage ... hasn't been around very long, and so far,
the term has stuck.