I am making a music video and was wondering if anyone knew if i would have to contact the creators of faces of death to use under 30 seconds of riot footage. my one concern is that this video was comprised of public footage and is also a very old video. any info on this subject would be very very helpful. or if anyone knows how i could contact the creators that would also be helpful.

http://www.facesofdeath.com/

http://www.urbanlegends.com/movies/faces_of_death_review.html

It's highly doubtful they'll be able to help. Most likely they licensed the footage you're looking for from somebody else, and the best thing that can happen is that they'll point you to the copyright holder of the original source material (if they get back in touch with you, that is). You might want to look into some readily available stock video instead.

where would i be able to find stock video of riots and such. where would i even start to look?

News bureaus will sell footage. Use Google and look for "buy news footage".

For example:
http://www.bbcfootage.com/

Keyword: "unrest" (not riot)

Result: 398 sheets were found matching the term(s) UNREST.

thank you so much for all of your help. this is imoprtant thing to me because this music video may just appear on MTV2 if we can prove to the record company it is worth it to play in on there.

Try these on for size:

http://www.archive.org/
http://www.open-video.org/

Free!