Checking in With Found Footage

At the beginning of the year, I noted that found footage films were getting more complex and starting to make their way into other genres besides horror. “Chronicle,” for example, was a refreshing take on the superhero film, and “Project X” was a raunchy teen comedy. Both did well in theaters and are expected to spawn sequels in the near future. Since then, there have been a couple of other interesting additions to the genre I thought deserved some discussion.

First, we have the critically acclaimed police drama “End of Watch,” which is partially found footage, comprised of material shot by the characters themselves supplemented by regular photography. Director David Ayer, best known for “Training Day,” uses the found footage to create a greater sense of verisimilitude as we follow the day-to-day lives of a pair of Los Angeles policemen. The film was originally conceived to be entirely found footage, and easily could have been done that way. The conceit made sense for the story, as the actions of the police are frequently recorded, and the technology has progressed to the point where it would be plausible for criminals and other participants to be taping themselves during the events we see depicted.

Another major director took the plunge with found footage in the eco-horror film, “The Bay.” Barry Levinson, veteran writer and director, frames the story as a Skype interview being conducted with the protagonist, one of the survivors of a recent disaster that decimated a small East Coast town. Footage of the Skype call is interspersed with video evidence from various sources that she has collected, which she often narrates for the audience. I thought “The Bay” had a lot of very strong ideas, but the actors were pretty poor and there was too much reliance on traditional horror movie gimmicks and scares. Apparently its distributor thought so too, and “The Bay” was stuck with a limited platform release and was mostly viewed through VOD services.

Found footage continues to flourish in this year’s horror films. “Paranormal Activity 4” and “REC 3” were the latest films in their respective series, both showing some signs of fatigue. “Chernobyl Diaries” scared up a decent profit during a crowded summer season. In the fall we had “V/H/S,” an anthology horror film where the various segments are presented as the contents of a stash of video tapes discovered in the film’s framing sequence. Then there was “Sinister,” which is similar to ‘The Ring” in that the main character literally finds the footage – a series of gruesome Super 8 home movies that show the POV of a disturbed serial killer.

What I like about this latest batch of found footage movies is that they have grown beyond the original concept of recovered footage from a single film camera, like we saw in “The Blair Witch Project.” Instead, the recovered footage often comes from a variety of sources, providing the opportunity for a larger scope and more complex storytelling. As the subject matter of these films has become more diverse, it also reflects the growing reality of a modern world where the cameras are everywhere, and all you need is a kid with a smartphone in the right place as the right time to place a camera on any scene.

What we haven’t seen much of yet is the exploration of how easy it is to edit and manipulate this kind of footage to create serious distortions of the truth. Thinking on the antics of James O’Keefe, I wonder if we might see a more critical crime or political thriller in the near future, contemplating the ability of film to mislead us. One of the reasons I think that found footage is so compelling is that we unconsciously react to the footage as being more real and believable than regular film productions, to the point where we ignore shoddy production values and bad acting. However, it also means we can be more easily fooled.

There’s been vocal consternation that the studios are stuck in a rut and only seem to want to finance either outrageously expensive CGI spectaculars or the microbudgeted found footage films. However, I think found footage does have a lot of potential as a genre that is being overlooked. Some of the most creative and interesting films in recent years have been very low-budget features, and the aesthetic of found footage and commercial video recording is becoming one of the defining ones of this era. Along with the mumblecore films, this is filmmaking getting back to basics, and that’s not a bad thing.

I hope we see more major directors trying out this genre, and finding more novel things to do with it. Found footage has proven itself surprisingly versatile, and this year has seen two major films, “Chronicle” and “End of Watch,” that have elevated it to new heights.
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