More About Found Footage

            More on Found Footage

    I have just spend a week trying to analyze what is right and what is wrong with the found footage craze.
    I believe that the craze began with Paranormal Activity. After the Blair Witch there were a few attempts at making found footage films, but that movie was basically a one and done. Even the sequel is not found footage (that was a major mistake on the producers part).

   We could go back further to the first great found footage movie. All the way back to the 70's there was a notorious movie titled Cannibal holocaust. It is so dark and bloody that most fans over look this minor master piece. It is about a band of so called journalist who travel to the Amazon to document a lost tribe only to first create the story they are there for and then later become victims of their own curiosity.

    I believe that curiosity is the key to the quality found footage films. In Cannibal Holocaust these jerks ( I am being kind) keep filming from a safe distance while someone is raped, later while the same thing is happening to one of them and then they keep film while one of their own is being killed. It is a film that shows that the person or persons with the camera does not have to be a hero or likable. You can give that camera to a murderer or a thief or a total coward.

    I say that you can do this because you are doing this. You are picking who holds the camera and reveals the action. We are trying to follow rules here and there are no rules. Anything goes in this new genre.

    I would argue that the biggest problem with this genre is the sticking to the rules of normal films. Look at most of them, they are still stuck in a 180 degree world. They are shot as if there is still a crew of fifty people behind the camera.

    To prepare for this post I looked at a few movies that I had not seen yet. The first one was Paranormal Activity, Tokyo Nights. A sort of remake of the American version. You can see the whole thing on youtube if you wish. I like the pacing of this version. There is a rule about Japanese horror film making. It is said that American’s try to startle their viewers while the Japanese try to disturb them. Their style of filmmaking is to get under your skin and scratch away.



    The other film was one that I had high hopes for, Area 407. This could have been a great film instead of just an okay film. The people who boarded the plane that crashes in this film are much smarter than the ones who crawled out of the wreckage. I would have rather watched a movie about the flight and the crash without the monster portion. All the stuff that happens on the ground reminded me of the playstation 2 games I did not like enough to finish.

    Challenge yourself and your characters to be smarter than the audience. Characters who go out of their way to get killed are characters that no one will remember.

    Okay that is it for now. If you have any suggestions leave them as a comment. If someone disagrees with me so much that they wish to respond in post form I would be happy to post it here if it is well written.
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