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Tuesday 9 October 2012, 17:02
On the Five Live show last Friday I referred to the new horror movie Sinister as a 'found footage film'. This seem to have annoyed some people - was I right or wrong to call it that?
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Comment number 1.
flaherty469th October 2012 - 18:05
Great article Dr K,surprised there was no mention of 1998's the Last Broadcast,which never really got the attention of other 'found footage' films...
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Comment number 2.
Jonah9th October 2012 - 18:09
Dr. K, Found footage is both a technique AND a genre. I would say Sinister is a partially found footage film. However, not all found footage films have to be scary. Think back to 1993 with Michael Keaton in "My Life", in which he is diagnosed with cancer and leaves tapes to his unborn son, who watches them at the end. It is quite literally a found footage story, but rather than having the audience discover the footage, we watch it being created.
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Comment number 3.
gordyduffni9th October 2012 - 18:14
While watching It I never felt I was watching a found footage film, its a much more traditional horror film which has a character finding footage relevant to the plot, but don't films in every genre use this plot device.......
The Chernobyl Diaries isn't a found footage film either, it's just shot in a documentary style, unless I missed a title card or character talking to the camera operator...
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Comment number 4.
ThriceAccursedBiscuit9th October 2012 - 18:16
The defining conceit of the "Found Footage" genre is surely the idea that we (the audience) could have stumbled across this recording ourselves, and that, from start to finish, it is a self contained snapshot of an event. In Sinister, the found footage that is shown is embedded within a traditional narrative structure that exists around it and is ultimately a diagetic plot device. Otherwise, any film in which we watch a character watching footage can be called a found footage film.
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Comment number 5.
MarkoosMuse9th October 2012 - 18:19
Sorry Mark, you're wrong on this one. Sinister is not a found footage film. But that is certainly a genre.
Just because a character literally finds some footage in the plot of the story does not mean it is a found-footage-film which plays on the conceit that the FILMMAKER has found this footage (and in some cases put it together for you). In the case of Cloverfield, they make it clear at the start that we are meant to be watching a tape that has been acquired by the US military.
Anyway, I personally am looking more forward to the latest instalment of the growing found-ring-film genre on December 14th!
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Comments 5 of 91