Found footage is a cinematic technique and film genre in which all or a substantial part of the work is presented as if it were film or video recordings recorded by characters in the story, and later "found" and presented to the audience. The events on screen are typically seen through the camera of one or more of the characters involved, often accompanied by their real-time off-camera commentary. For added realism, the cinematography may be done by the actors themselves as they perform, and shaky camera work, improvisation and naturalistic acting are routinely employed. The footage may be presented as if it were "raw" and complete or as if it had been edited into a narrative by those who "found" it.
The technique is most commonly associated with horror films, particularly Cannibal Holocaust, The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and Rec. It has also been used in science fiction, drama, comedy, crime, experimental film, and other genres.
Found-footage films generally make the recording device part of the story world rather than using the invisible camera of conventional narrative cinema; the images may come from handheld cameras, fixed surveillance cameras, or other recording devices.
History As a storytelling technique, found footage has precedents in literature, particularly in the trope of found manuscript, as well as epistolary novel, which typically consists of either correspondence or diary entries, purportedly written by a character central to the events. Like found footage, the epistolary technique has often been employed in horror fiction: both Dracula and Frankenstein are epistolary novels, as is The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft.
Earlier films used versions of the device. Shirley Clarke's The Connection (1961) presents itself as footage shot by a documentary crew, while the birthday-party sequences in Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind, which began filming in 1970 but was not released until 2018, are assembled from footage recorded by people attending the party. In horror, Cannibal Holocaust (1980) is widely regarded as a foundational work of the found-footage form. After Cannibal Holocaust, there were a few found footage films, but they were mostly obscure. Early examples include the films Manson Family Movies (1984) and The Last Broadcast (1998).
(1989–1991) used many of the techniques later associated with found footage. Michael Gingold of Fangoria has described the 1993 film America's Deadliest Home Video as an early example of the format in horror and crime cinema. The Blair Witch Project (1999) brought found-footage horror into the mainstream. Reviewing V/H/S in 2012, Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club compared the genre's growth in the 2000s and 2010s to the popularity of slasher films in the 1980s.
Found footage is also well suited to low-budget filmmaking, as its rough, amateur-video aesthetic can help give the images a sense of authenticity.
Analysis Film scholar David Bordwell has criticized the term "found footage" for fictional films, noting that it had already been used for films assembled from pre-existing material. He uses "discovered footage" for films such as The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, comparing the device to the literary tradition of the found manuscript.
The Unnamed Footage Festival in San Francisco uses the broader term "in-world camera" for films in which the recording device exists within the fictional world, encompassing found footage as well as related forms such as screenlife and faux documentary.
In a 2016 Cinema Journal article, film scholar Cecilia Sayad argues that found-footage horror plays with the boundary between fiction and reality through framing, both by presenting the film as documentary material and through the use of handheld cameras and static shots. Discussing the Paranormal Activity films, Sayad notes that timestamps and cameras placed throughout the characters' homes give viewers access to time and space beyond that of a conventional narrative film. At the same time, the limits of the frame leave viewers watching for threats that may remain unseen.
Sayad contrasts found-footage horror with self-conscious horror films such as Scream. While Scream openly presents itself as fiction, she argues, found footage presents its images as real even as unstable framing draws attention to what the camera can and cannot show.
List
Films
The following entries are notable films in the found footage genre, though some were only partially made in that style.