Selling Vintage Home Movies 1950's 1960's 1970's

I'm treading in an area I don't know much about here. I purchased some really nice old home videos from the 50's, 60's and 70's. and had them telecined onto my hard drive. I'm a little uncertain as to what kind of releases are needed on these to break them up into smaller clip segments and sell them. If anyone has some input I'd love some advice. Thanks!

I don't know for sure since I don't sell them but I would imagine you would need the releases from the people in the film.
Or they would be editorial.

Just a guess of course.
Jake

yeah - I just finished doing the same thing with some old footage and basically you can only sell it as editorial unless you have a model release for the people.

That's great guys, thanks for the info. Yeah, some of these old videos are fascinating once you get over the fact that it is definitely not HD. They are like little time capsules. Pretty cool stuff.

MichaelWard, what will you do if one of the heirs of the photographer asked you for a proof of ownership?

I did the same thing too a couple of years ago with some of my family's 8mm footage. SS asked me for a property release, even for those where you couldn't see anybody (just showing a church, for example...). I've been lucky, because I just asked my mother (the owner of the footage) and she signed the property release... :-)
No special request from P5...

And what about a dead person? Is it still editorial or could I sign, for example, a model release for someone who is not alive anymore like my grandfather??? I'm his heir, right?

Wideweb, I do have the physical film reels of the material which I purchased here and there. At some point I would think that these people got rid of this stuff because it meant nothing to them. They'd have to sue for damages caused by the use of the material and I don't think using it for editorial use could cause damage, especially if most of the individuals in the films are deceased. I could be wrong, but just my take on it.

Gigidread, I was wondering about that too....for example one clip is a square in Italy with pedestrians, all of whom are in their 40s or 50s and this is the early 1970's. I'm sure most if not all of the individuals are deceased. The person that filmed it was probably in his 50's at the time as well.

There are two distinct issues:

Ownership of the material and ownership of the copyright. Usually these go hand in hand as the creator is the owner of both -unless the work was commissioned; then depends on the agreement.

I have been asked to provide proof of ownership of my vintage footage that my dad took on Super 8mm back in the 70's. My dad can sign something. Just wondering if other people did this. Waiting for an answer from Curators as to how I can prove that the footage is ours and the copyright also.

I have a slightly different question: many years ago, my mother (still living as are most in the videos so signatures are not an issue) had our old family 8 mm home movies (1960s vintage) transferred to VHS tapes. Recently I digitized the VHS tapes to SD files. Presumably, the market for SD clips is small, so I would like to now "up-convert" them to HD. Of course since the aspect ratio is wrong, I'd either need to have black edge pillars, or zoom in. I'd vote for the zoom in. Any recommended software or experience with this? Is the resolution just going to be unacceptable? Are they commercially viable as just keeping them SD? Thanks.