Re: using commercially produced films in corporate video

You can't do this legally without getting a number of permissions, which will cost you. Particularly for DVD's you plan to sell. The process for getting clearances and rights for clips of this nature can be quite rococo and convoluted, and will take a bunch of time.

You could ignore all this and press on, hoping not to get you and the client sued... but I advise against it.

Check out B-Z rights & permissions to get an idea of the scope of the problem and what it might cost to get done legally.

If this is something they REALLY want, another way to give it to them legally is to buy cleared stock footage with that period look, like from WPA archives and the like. Or you can try to parody the originals using brand-new footage.