ALT Podcast cover art on a navy background. Text reads: Deep Dive. What Is Real? Documentary First. At lower left, the Velveteen Rabbit as drawn in Margery Williams' 1922 book. At lower right, a 1989 vacation photo of Christian Taylor and her little sister Annie giving each other bunny ears.

ALT Episode 287, with Phil Maher of Stockfilm. Archival Footage: Why Use Home Movies? Five reasons from a man who has spent more than a decade rescuing family reels. Documentary First. Swipe. Pictured: a yellow Kodachrome movie box with Circus 6/9/66 handwritten on it.

ALT Reason one. They feel true. Scratches and dust are how it actually looked. Stockfilm leaves them in, because the flaws make an audience feel like they were there. Pictured: a faded home movie frame of an old trolley car under a steel framework.

ALT Reason three. They catch people being themselves. Men smoking over babies. Families dancing in the basement. People staring at the camera because they didn't yet know how to smile for it. Pictured: a woman in a dark dress and a man in jeans dancing hand in hand on a lawn.

ALT Reason five. Every frame can be proven. Stockfilm holds the original reel behind every clip it licenses. As AI recreations of history become common, that proof lets a filmmaker show the footage is real. Pictured: two metal film cans, one labeled 1881.