While it can be traced back to the 1980's with Cannibal Holocaust, the found footage film has proven itself to be the genre of this generation. Invigorated by the success of The Blair Witch Project and kept afloat by the likes of Cloverfield and the Paranormal Activity series, found footage has become hugely popular in the last few years, largely manifesting in the form of horror films. The low cost of production has drawn young indie filmmakers and studio executives alike, and in a time when most people have easy access to cameras, the appeal has been widespread. However, signs of overexposure are starting to show. We're beginning to be saturated with found footage I think we've all heard the complaints and the calls for a return to traditional horror filmmaking. I know that I'm getting tired of it, so what can be done to inject some new life into the approach?
Let's start by breaking down a classic. I only just watched The Blair Witch Project for the first time a week ago and despite some skepticism going in, I was thoroughly impressed by the film. Without a doubt, it earns its reputation as the king (or is it queen?) of found footage horror and there are many reasons for this. First of all, the realism of the piece is outstanding. Unlike most films of its kind made today, a lot of care was put into making the audience buy the events as true. This is how it was sold and this is also how it functions cinematically. Video quality is grainy and the editing is choppy, stopping and picking up in the way that you would expect actual footage to be arranged. There is no omniscient camera filming the action from alternate angles- everything we see is filmed by the main characters. Nothing of the possibly paranormal forces is ever witnessed. All of the horror originates from the insinuations of creepy faraway audio and the monsters the audience imagines in the darkest corners of the screen. It's also psychological and emotionally charged by the frustrations of the characters. An immersive, strongly unsettling experience is what The Blair Witch Project is and if more contemporary found footage took its lead, the fatigue of the genre might not run so deep.
Taking a complete 180, I'm going to talk about a film I just watched the other day called Snow on tha Bluff. It's found footage, but it is horror of a very different kind. The film follows a man named Curtis Snow in his daily life in "The Bluff", an extremely poor and crime-riddled area in Atlanta. At the beginning of the film, he steals money and a camcorder from a trio of naive college students passing through the Bluff, looking to score some drugs. The stolen camcorder is our means of vision throughout the rest of the film and what it captures is uncompromisingly realistic. Although it stumbles in a few areas, Snow on tha Bluff must be praised for its incredible believability. It swerves into documentary territory on multiple occasions and I'm actually not entirely convinced that everything in the film is fabricated. Ultimately, it serves to highlight something that the vast majority of found footage films never even bother to approach: real world issues. The "stars" of the film are real people living in the Bluff and playing themselves and the film tackles subjects of fruitless crime and cyclical poverty in a very, very raw way. Now why can't more found footage work like this? If found footage in horror allows the audience to empathize with the characters experiencing the scares, then Snow on tha Bluff proves that found footage can also make the audience step into the shoes of a real person and live out their reality.
As evidenced in The Blair Witch Project, found footage horror has the ability to be realistic and frightening in the right hands and the example of Snow on tha Bluff introduces an element of social commentary and real world connections that could take the found footage to new heights. A case can be made for the genre being merely a fad, but I personally think it will be around for awhile, so let's see if we can make it better and stretch the cinematic capabilities to their limits.
The 'found footage' genre, in my opinion, is one of the most compelling ways to shoot horror films. The events on screen are usually seen through a camera of one or more characters involved, who often speak off screen. The filming is done by the actors themselves as they recite their lines off camera. It generally has shaky camera work and naturalistic acting is often used. This genre dates back to at least as far as the 1980s in Cannibals Holocaust, it then became increasingly popular after the release of the Blair Witch Project, 1999, and Paranormal Activity, 2007. The 'footage style' really allows the viewer to believe in what they are seeing; it more relates to the viewer, like it is something that they could have recorded on their video cameras at home.
The Paranormal Activity series has most definitely become one of my favorite movie series because of the way that it is shot. It really makes me believe that all these events are true. Sorry for the spoiler if you actually believed that this series is real. One of my favorite camera shots throughout this series was used in Paranormal Activity 3.
The device that created this amazing shot was the "fan cam." One of the actors in the beginning placed a camera on top of an oscillating fan allowing the camera to record multiple rooms. This creates a lot of tension in many different scenes throughout the movie, not only from the speed that the camera was oscillating but also the placement of the camera. Having the camera set up in the living room which is between the kitchen and the dining room. There were so many scenes that used this camera to scare the hell out of people.
Having the movie being recorded in more of a naturalistic way, but also having unique shots, and having the movie be part of the found footage genre definitely work for these movies. When I watch these movies I have to admit I get a little frightened to sleep alone at night. These are must watch movies in my book!
The other day I decided to make the daring decision to watch Paranormal 4 by myself. I had to watch it during the day though so I didn't scare myself at night to a point where I wouldn't be able to sleep at all for the next week or so. I also watched the other 3 paranormal movies last year during the year because I was bored. All of my friends had seen them so I decided to do it myself just so I can say that I saw the movies. Watching all of these movies I realized how scared I can get at a single movie.
At this fourth one I was legitimately screaming and yelling because I got so scared at certain parts. The pop outs, the effects, I was freaking out at a majority of the movie. Even though I was scared beyond belief, I was still very impressed with how the movie came out and how it was put together. The amount of pop ups and how they brought about the big curve ball about Hunter I thought was incorporated so well. I will admit that I liked how they used people that were not related to the family of Hunter because it showed that they were branching out, however, seeing that Hunter was adopted by this family that shows how the family was related. I wish that they showed us how Hunter ended up becoming a part of this family. I obviously know he was adopted, but when? Why? That's what I want to know.
Overall, this movie was really good, really scary, and very impressive. If you like scary movies, then this is the movie for you, but just be aware, if you watch this at night, good luck sleeping.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Faking Reality
This past weekend I saw the new film Apollo 18. It was a good movie, a great idea, good acting (crapy ending), but the most interesting thing was that throughout the entire movie, both before and after, it pretended that it was an actual collection of leaked footage from the government. This seems to be a phenomena that has taken hold since the Blair Witch Project. Thriller movies pretending to be based on true events.
This is different than a Mocumentary. A mocumentary is a fiction film that presents itself as a documentary, they are usually a satire or a parody, and almost always comedic. The new trend of thriller films that present themselves as fact are serious or scary. Films like Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield are filmed in such a way as to appear to be raw footage. Apollo 18 uses this technique as well,as if the footage we are seeing was originally filmed by those in the movie. Some films take this a little to far. The Fourth Kind is a film about an alien abduction and the film makers made it seem as if it were real. they even went through the trouble of have two lead actresses, one as the "Real" women in "Historical" footage, and another to be the actress playing the "real" woman in the dramatizations. They faked news releases and created a website of facts so that if you looked into the film it would seem true. They even went as far as to not credit the actress who played the "Real" women in the historical footage, to make her seem like a real person.
This new take on thrillers is an interesting trend. I believe that this way of marketing and presenting a story makes more people want to see it. Inside every viewer is a little part of them that wants movies to be true. So if the film presents itself as true, it makes it more interesting and gives it an edge. I feel that in the near future we will see many more films that are completely fictitious but present themselves as factual, simply because it sells.
