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What is found footage in movies?
Found footage is a cinematic technique presenting a film's shots as recordings of discovered, real events relayed to the audience with minimal mediation. It's considered a form of mockumentary filmmaking.
The Blair Witch Project (1999) popularized the technique, framing the film as the final footage of missing documentarians investigating a haunted woodland. The film's success led to a boom in found footage films, mainly in the horror genre, due to generally low production costs.
Found footage films often use first-person perspectives, mockumentary formats, news coverage conceits, or surveillance footage to present the story.
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How does the found footage film technique make a movie look different from regular films?
The found footage technique distinguishes a movie by presenting it as a recording of actual events, discovered and shown to the audience with minimal editing. This approach often aims for a documentary-like realism, foregoing professional polish for a raw, unfiltered feel.
Key differences include:
* Amateurish aesthetic Shaky camera work and imperfect sound.
* First-person perspective Often filmed from a character's viewpoint, creating a sense of immediacy and tension.
* Limited perspective Restricting the audience's view to heighten suspense.
* Low budget It can excuse the low-budget feel of the movie.The Blair Witch Project (1999) popularized this technique, which is now closely linked to the horror genre.
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Why do filmmakers use found footage as a storytelling technique?
Filmmakers use found footage to present narratives as recordings of actual events, offering a sense of realism. This technique, popularized by The Blair Witch Project, often aligns with the horror genre due to its low budgetary needs and potential for high returns.
The first-person perspective, mockumentary format, news coverage style, and surveillance footage are common approaches in found footage films. These methods enhance tension by limiting the audience's perspective, providing narrative reasons for the story, and offering different viewpoints on events. The shaky cam effect and amateurish framing further contribute to the immersive experience.
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What are some famous movies that use the found footage style?
The found footage technique presents a film's shots as recordings of nonfiction events discovered and relayed to the audience.
Some famous movies that use the found footage style:
* Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is often cited as the first found footage film.
* The Blair Witch Project (1999) popularized the technique.
* Cloverfield (2008) uses shaky cam to disorient the audience.
* [REC] (2007) uses the conceit of a camera operator and a reporter on the site of the events of the film.
* Paranormal Activity (2007) and its sequels use surveillance footage.
* Chronicle (2012) blends footage taken by different characters, news reports, and surveillance cameras.
* Unfriended (2014) is a notable example of screenlife films.1 Britannica SourceCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
How does using found footage affect the way audiences feel when watching a movie?
The found footage technique aims to present a film's shots as recordings of actual events, creating a sense of realism. This approach often enhances the audience's experience by limiting their perspective to that of a single character, intensifying tension.
The use of "shaky cam," where the camera moves erratically, further disorients viewers, adding to the realistic feel. The Blair Witch Project (1999) popularized this technique by marketing the film as a real documentary, which heightened public intrigue and terror. The financial success of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity (2007) demonstrates the effectiveness of found footage in engaging audiences, especially in the horror genre.
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What are some challenges or limitations when making a found footage movie?
Found footage films, popularized by The Blair Witch Project, often face challenges despite their low budget appeal. One major limitation is the need to justify the constant recording and the presence of a camera in every scene. Maintaining a sense of realism can be difficult, especially when unbelievable events occur. Another challenge lies in creating compelling narratives with limited perspectives and potential shaky camera work, which can disorient viewers. Additionally, sound and image quality can be a hurdle, as filmmakers must simulate amateur recordings while ensuring the audio is clear enough for the audience to follow the story.
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found footage, in film, a cinematic technique in which some or all of a narrative film’s shots are presented as if they were recordings of nonfiction events that have been discovered and relayed to the audience with little or no mediation. Found footage can be considered a form of so-called “mockumentary” filmmaking, in which a narrative film is presented as if it were a nonfiction documentary film. The found footage film technique was popularized with the 1999 release of The Blair Witch Project, which purports to be the final footage shot by three missing documentarians who were investigating a supposedly haunted woodland, and has since been closely associated with the horror genre. Because of generally low budgetary requirements, found footage films can be extraordinarily successful investments—both The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity (2007) are among the most profitable films of all time in terms of their revenue compared with their production budgets.
Controversial Italian horror film Cannibal Holocaust (1980)—in which numerous real animals are slaughtered on-screen—is often considered the first found footage film, using the conceit that a professor has stumbled upon a lost film shot by a documentary crew who went missing in the Amazon Rainforest. Interestingly, Orson Welles had incorporated found footage techniques into his film The Other Side of the Wind years before Cannibal Holocaust, but the film was unfinished and unreleased until 2018. Few found footage films were made in the 1980s and ’90s. However, with the massive financial and critical success of The Blair Witch Project, as well as the development of increasingly sophisticated handheld video technology, found footage experienced a popularity boom with more than a thousand found footage films, the great majority of them horror films, being produced in the subsequent decades.
Found footage films typically present themselves in one of four ways, or some combination of the four. First, the film may operate under the conceit that one of the characters in the story is holding a camera, recording what is going on from a first-person perspective. This technique has several advantages, most notably that it is generally cheap, can provide an excuse for amateurish framing and sound recording, and can create tension by limiting the audience’s perspective to that of a single character. As seen in the 2008 blockbuster Cloverfield, it often involves the use of “shaky cam,” in which the camera moves continually and unpredictably to convey realistic movement and disorient the audience.
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A second common approach leans into the mockumentary format, using interview footage and ostensibly more-professional camerawork. Presenting the film as having been recorded as a more formal document of the events ensures a narrative reason for the story to be recorded and provides opportunities for expository dialogue. Though the mockumentary format is very popular, in order to be a true found footage film, the film must be presented as if the footage had been lost and was rediscovered, as in The Last Exorcism (2010), and not presented as intended by the “documentary” filmmakers.
A related method is to present the found footage as news coverage of the events of the story, often using the conceit of a camera operator and a reporter on the site of the events of the film. This can justify the inclusion of features of both the handheld approach and the mockumentary approach and is the primary style used in the influential Spanish horror film [REC] (2007).
Finally, the footage in the film may be presented as if it were surveillance footage or other passive recordings of the events. In this format, the camera is generally static, and the events of the film are depicted as having been automatically recorded, with the footage later recovered. This method allows the filmmakers to free the camera from the perspective of a character in the story, allowing characters to appear together and justifying shots in which there may be no characters present. This approach is rarely the only one used in a feature-length film, but it has been used to great effect in Paranormal Activity and its sequels.
These formats are frequently used in concert. In the found footage superhero thriller Chronicle (2012), for example, much of the early footage is presented as having been shot by the main character, but, as the film progresses, footage taken by other characters, from news reports, and from surveillance cameras is used to provide different perspectives on the film’s events. Found footage can also be blended with more traditional filmmaking techniques to create hybrid films, such as the Japanese horror comedy One Cut of the Dead (2017).
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An offshoot of found footage is the so-called “screenlife” technique, in which a film is presented as taking place on the screen of a single device (or occasionally multiple devices), such as a laptop, tablet, or cell phone. Characters are often shown through video chats and may also communicate with each other via e-mail or text message. Found footage techniques are common in these films, including the use of simulated news footage, handheld streaming video, and footage found online. Notable examples of screenlife films are the horror movie Unfriended (2014) and the mystery Searching (2018).
The term found footage can also refer to film works that genuinely consist of, or otherwise incorporate, old footage found by directors and exhibitors. These materials may be repurposed into new art or exhibited as is at film festivals.