# What to post when you have no footage > Seven things to cut a reel from when the camera roll is empty: screen recordings, photos, text frames, and the archive you forgot you had. Canonical: https://easyreels.io/blog/reels-with-no-footage [Blog](https://easyreels.io/blog) ยท Workflow 16 September 20264 min read You almost certainly have material: old photos, screen recordings, screenshots, product shots and the clips from the last shoot you only used once. Cut a reel from stills on the beat, record your screen, or re-cut footage you already published against a different track. A shoot is the slowest way to solve an empty schedule. "I have nothing to post" is almost never true. It usually means "I have no new footage", which is a different and much smaller problem, and solving it with a shoot is the slowest option available. ## Seven sources you already have | Source | Where it is | Cuts well? | |---|---|---| | Old photos | Your camera roll | Yes, one per beat | | Screen recordings | Thirty seconds away | Yes | | Screenshots | Messages, dashboards, reviews | Yes, held longer | | Footage you used once | The last shoot's folder | Yes, against a new track | | Product or work photos | Whatever you already shoot for | Very well | | Text on a plain ground | Nowhere, you make it | Yes, sparingly | | Ten minutes of hands | Your kitchen table, today | Best of the lot | The last row is the escape hatch. Ten minutes filming your own hands doing something (writing, packing, making, typing) produces eight to twelve usable clips and needs no planning, no location and no one else. ## Photos are footage The fastest fix, and the one people overlook because a photo does not feel like video. Treat each image as a clip, change it on the beat, and give it a slow push in so the frame is never completely still. Stills need longer on screen than moving footage (about a second each rather than half), so cut on every second or fourth beat rather than every beat. Thirty photos and a track is a thirty-second reel: [photo slideshow reels](https://easyreels.io/blog/photo-slideshow-reels) has the full method, including the crop discipline that stops the sequence flickering. ## Record your screen Under-used by everyone who is not selling software, and it works for far more than software. Anything you do on a screen is footage: a spreadsheet, a booking system, a design file, a document, a browser. - **Record vertical** by resizing the window, or record full screen and punch in when you cut. - **Move deliberately and slowly.** Cursor movement at normal speed is illegible when cut to one-second shots. - **Zoom in past 100%.** Interface text is unreadable at phone size otherwise, and compression finishes off what the size started. - **Record three minutes**, cut it into fifteen shots. One session is a week of posts. - **Clean the screen first**: close the tabs, hide the notifications, use a neutral wallpaper. ## Re-cut what you already posted The clips from your last shoot were used once, in one order, against one track. The same folder against a different song at a different cut density is a genuinely different video, not a repost: the pacing changes what the footage reads as. This is the single highest-return habit for an account that posts often, and the reason a deep folder pays for itself several times. [Turning old footage into new reels](https://easyreels.io/blog/repurpose-footage-you-already-have) covers what makes a re-cut read as new rather than recycled. ## Text frames, used carefully A reel of pure text cards is the last resort and it does work, particularly for advice and commentary, but it has a low ceiling, because there is nothing to look at and the whole thing rests on the writing. - **One idea per card**, four to eight words. - **Put something behind them.** A single moving clip or a subtle texture under the text does more than a flat colour. - **Mix them in** rather than making the whole video from them: three text frames among ten shots reads as structure; ten reads as a slideshow of opinions. - **Keep the type system fixed** so they still look like your account: [reusable text overlays](https://easyreels.io/blog/reusable-text-overlays). ## The ten-minute shoot that fixes it permanently If the archive really is empty, the fastest way out is not a planned shoot. It is ten minutes, one surface, one pair of hands. 1. **Clear a table near a window.** Side light, no overhead bulbs. 2. **Film your hands doing six things.** Writing, opening, pouring, sorting, holding, setting down. Four to six seconds each, three takes of each. 3. **Film four cutaways.** A hand entering frame, something closing, a light switching on, an object landing on the surface. 4. **Punch in for six close details.** Texture, an edge, a label, a screen. 5. **Stop.** That is around forty clips in ten minutes, which is a month of posts. [Filming b-roll on a phone](https://easyreels.io/blog/filming-b-roll-on-a-phone) has the settings: vertical, locked exposure, four to six seconds, and the reason forty is the number to aim for rather than nine. ## Why this keeps happening Running out of footage is a symptom of shooting per post. An account that films for the video it is making today is always one bad week away from an empty schedule; one that films for the folder is not. The fix is structural rather than creative: shoot in bulk, sort into folders by subject rather than by date, and let a template pull from the right folder. In [Easy Reels](https://easyreels.io/) that is what the media library and templates are for: a folder of forty clips and a track is a generation, not an afternoon. [Batch-creating reels](https://easyreels.io/blog/batch-create-reels) is the habit that makes "I have nothing to post" stop occurring. **About this article.** Written by the team that builds Easy Reels, which cuts your clips to the beat of a song and renders a finished vertical reel. Spotted something wrong or out of date? Write to [support@easyreels.io](mailto:support@easyreels.io). ## Stop editing. Start posting. Easy Reels turns the footage you already have into beat-synced vertical video, automatically, in minutes. [Start your 7-day free trial](https://app.easyreels.io/signup) ## Read next - [Photo slideshow reels: stills cut to a beat](https://easyreels.io/blog/photo-slideshow-reels)You do not need video to make a video. How many photos a slideshow needs, and the movement that stops it looking like a gallery. - [Turn old footage into new reels, not reposts](https://easyreels.io/blog/repurpose-footage-you-already-have)Most accounts are sitting on months of unused clips. How to audit what you have, and what makes a re-cut read as new rather than as a repost. - [Filming b-roll on a phone that cuts well](https://easyreels.io/blog/filming-b-roll-on-a-phone)A beat-matched edit eats clips faster than anyone expects. The settings, the six shots worth getting every time, and why four seconds is the right length.