Money b-roll and crypto b-roll: 20 shots matched to what your narrator says

A finance editor's cheat sheet: twenty shots sorted by the sentence they illustrate, how to film or source each one, the legal limits on showing real notes, cards and charts, and a crypto shot that needs neither stock footage nor a real wallet.

Published: 20 October 2026

Why a finance voice-over needs so much footage

Finance is abstract. A narrator talks about interest, a pension, a falling coin, and the viewer has nothing to look at. Cutaway footage fills the gap, and in this genre it supplies most of what you see. The tighter a shot fits the sentence being spoken, the longer people keep watching.

The good news is that a lot of it can be shot in an afternoon at home. What you cannot shoot, you license from a stock library or record from a screen, and each route comes with its own constraints. This guide lists 20 shots by the line they illustrate, then covers shooting technique, the legal limits on money in frame, and the single crypto shot that causes the most trouble.

Twenty shots, filed by what the narrator says

"You earn it..."

• Hands counting bills from above. Payday, side income. Shoot with small notes or prop bills in flat light.
• A counting machine riffling a stack. Business turnover. Prop bills work, and the whirring sound carries half the effect.
• Bundles strapped on a table. A big number, a negotiation. Frame it as a pile, not as one flat note.
• Coins dropping into a glass jar. Slow saving. Macro lens, slow motion, window light.

"...then you spend it"

• A card tapped on a reader. Convenience, small purchases. Use an expired or prop card with the number kept out of frame.
• A phone held against a terminal. Mobile payments. Show only the lock screen, with no card detail visible.
• A long receipt unrolling. Hidden costs. Print one at home or ask a friendly shop.
• A basket filling in an aisle. Prices, groceries. Your own basket, or a store that has agreed.
• A pump total ticking up. Cost of living. Film your own fill-up.
• A checkout page on a laptop. Impulse buying. Build a mock shop page, never a live account.

"...and then it goes wrong"

• A declined payment. Overdraft, shortfall. Fake it on a prop terminal or a designed screen.
• An empty wallet turned out. Being broke. The cheapest shot in the list.
• Envelopes and letters on a kitchen table. Debt, bills. Props with invented names and amounts.
• A "past due" stamp coming down. Late fees. A prop letter and a rubber stamp.
• A person with their head in their hands. Stress, regret. Film a friend, or use stock backed by a model release.

"The market moves..."

• A price chart sliding across a monitor. Volatility. Screen recording, credited as the charting platform requires.
• A late-night desk with several screens. Focus, trading. Your own setup, showing charts and not accounts.
• The business pages of a newspaper in close-up. The economy. Film a paper copy and keep the headlines soft.

"...and crypto does this"

• A phone showing a wallet balance, then the token page with a price moving. Holding crypto, a red or green day. Two shots, one source: a simulated wallet, explained below.
• A novelty bitcoin coin on a desk. The topic itself. A souvenir coin and a macro lens.

Technique that makes home footage look bought

• Anything that falls goes in slow motion. Apple's iPhone guide says the Slo-mo mode records at 1080p and 240 frames per second from the back camera by default, and that is what makes a tossed stack of bills look deliberate.
• Freeze the colour. The same guide lists a setting to lock white balance during video. Turn it on so the green of the notes stays put from take to take.
• Two angles, two distances. Hands and paper work from overhead. Coins, serial numbers and card edges work in macro.
• Three versions of each shot. Wide, tight and moving. The editor then has a clip for every phrase, whatever the narrator ends up saying.

What the law and the platforms say about money in frame

Genuine banknotes. The San Francisco Fed calls the use of US currency on camera perfectly legal and says burning it is not. The law behind that, 18 U.S.C. 504, lets you film currency for screen and television but not make prints from the footage without Treasury approval. The Bank of England classes filming real notes as a digital reproduction in the UK: a note shown with more than half of one side visible has to carry a SPECIMEN overprint, unless it is tilted beyond 20 degrees. Fanned bills and bundles tend to stay on the safe side, while a slow close-up on one flat note does not.

Prop notes. They are lawful only inside the reproduction limits of the currency they imitate, and they must never leave the set as spendable money. Country-by-country details are in prop money for videos.

Cards and bank screens. A legible card number, account number or real banking balance is personal data once the video is public. Stick to prop cards, mock statements and made-up names.

Charts. Each platform sets its own terms. TradingView lets you put its charts in a video broadcast with a credit, and asks for a line such as "Charts by TradingView" when its branding does not show on screen.

Stock footage. Read the license on the provider's own site. Pexels asks for no attribution but bars implying that people or brands in an image endorse your product. Pixabay forbids commercial use of content showing recognizable trademarks, logos or brands connected to goods and services. Vecteezy's free license wants a credit and covers video projects with a budget up to USD 1,000, and its Editorial Use Only clips stay out of commercial or promotional work. If an edit leans mostly on borrowed footage, platform originality rules enter the picture too, as how luxury motivation channels are made explains.

The crypto cutaway that causes trouble

Your first instinct for the wallet shot is to film your own app. Don't. Bitcoin.org's privacy page notes that anyone can see the balance and all transactions of any address. In August 2026 Chainalysis reported a record USD 58 million stolen in violent attacks on crypto holders during 2025, and warned that disclosing holdings publicly can turn people into targets. Stock is no easy way out: branded wallet clips often carry an editorial-only license, which crypto stock footage and its licenses goes through.

A real wallet can never appear on camera without exposing its owner's address and holdings. A larp wallet, or crypto wallet app simulator, produces a believable wallet screen from balances you type, for videos, skits, pitch decks and demos. It stores nothing and reads no blockchain. Filmed with your own phone, the result is footage you made yourself, with no clip license to read and no real balance in the frame. To place a wallet onto a phone held by someone else, read phone screen green screen video. Notifications, status bars and moving prices are covered in recording a wallet screen for video, and the larp wallet guide defines the term.

What the shot may and may not claim

B-roll illustrates a sentence and proves nothing. Prop bills over a saving tip are fine, and so is a simulated wallet in a clip about volatility. Put the words "my portfolio" or "what I earned this month" on the same footage and it becomes a claim. Every figure in a simulated wallet was typed by hand, so it says nothing about anyone's money, and presenting it as real holdings or gains is a deception our terms of use forbid. Leave a Mockup label in frame whenever the wallet is visible. If the balance is the punchline, money skit ideas lists the props for each scene.

Flexdger Wallet is an app of this kind. You set the tokens and amounts, the built-in tokens follow live market prices, and it opens full screen on the phone you film, so the price on the token page moves the way a real one does.

For the luxury end of b-roll, cars, watches and cash cut around a wallet screen, see larp rich clips.

Sources

• Apple Support: change video recording settings on iPhone, read 2026
• Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: US currency's starring role in film, 2019
• Legal Information Institute: 18 U.S. Code 504, printing and filming of US and foreign obligations and securities, read 2026
• Bank of England: using images of banknotes, updated June 2026
• TradingView terms of service and company policy (attribution), read 2026
• Pexels license, read 2026
• Pixabay content license summary, read 2026
• Vecteezy license agreement, updated June 22, 2026
• Bitcoin.org: protect your privacy, read 2026
• Chainalysis: violent wrench attacks targeting crypto holders, 2026