Do you like "found footage" films?

[Jacco]

I have come to the decision recently that they are my least favorite kind of movie. I was pretty meh to them at first, with ones like Blair Witch but then Cloverfield, Apollo 18, Paranormal Activity, etc started coming out. I'm not sure what it is about them that I dislike, maybe the fact that they never actually "end".

Do you like them?

Capcha: Ticked Off

Yes, I am capcha. After the way I saw Apollo 18 end 5 minutes ago I am.

 

[Marter]

Like any other genre, it depends on the quality of the film. I'm not going to broadly say I like or dislike something based on its style.

 

[FalloutJack]

Cloverfield was fine. Blair Witch can go die in a fire.

 

[DugMachine]

I enjoyed Cloverfield. I liked the gritty 'real' feel to it. Stuff like Paranormal Activity though just doesn't do it for me.

 

[cojo965]

The way I see it, "found footage" movies started as a way to hide how low budget they were. To give an example, watch this episode of Everymanhybrid: Now you may have noticed Slenderman in that video, he is a popular subject for this format because he is cheap to make. The spesial effects used are also on a budget yet are effective. This format is what sells videos like this so well. The point I'm trying to make is that once you try too much with the format like Cloverfield it flaws come up that a different fomat wouldn't show. Also recent examples of the format have the problem of "shaky cam." In the video you see that though the camera does shake quite a bit, it is relatively still. Coverfield suffered from its setting resulting in a camera that could not sit still causing motion sickness that led to a friend walking out of the theater partway through the movie. This all leads me to think "found footage" movies don't work well as theater material, but unfortunately it is wildly popular now, so all we can do is wait for this fad to blow over so that this format can return to where it works best.

 

[manic_depressive13]

I thought Chronicle was pretty decent. Like every other technique the found footage thing can be done well or it can be done badly.

 

[Dangit2019]

Blair Witch? Haven't seen it.

Cloverfield? I still like it. Especially the scene where Lizzy Caplan

Spoiler

blows up

Apollo 18? I saw the ending. I'm so glad I didn't waste a hour and a half of my life on that feces pile.

Paranormal Activity? I liked the first one, the rest can die in a fire.

Also, Chronicle pulled it off by inventing a way to have the camera smooth (even though it didn't need the format in the first place). It did work to its thematic advantage at times, though, and it was a great film.

A good movie can be made out of anything. Found footage can be a good format for lower budget movies, or movies that can benefit from the style. However, when people use it to cheat out of making good special effects simply because they're lazy and wouldn't be bothered to invest in a tripod, than the movie can be relied on to suck.

 

[Wayneguard]

The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre did it the best. It had the documentary "feel" but it wasn't in the explicit documentary style. Damn that's a good movie...

 

[aba1]

I feel that found footage style only works in a very few specific instances. Paranormal Activity and Blair which project are good examples of using them for horror since the style hides so much from the viewers sight. I think the best example of it being used well is Chronicle, if you watch the way they use the technique in the movie they are so spot on I just loved that they made the camera get steadier the more the main character learned to control his power thought that was a really nice touch.

 

[DugMachine]

I thought Chronicle was pretty decent. Like every other technique the found footage thing can be done well or it can be done badly.

I thought it was awesome when he would levitate the camera and it would go third person for a bit.

 

[BathorysGraveland]

Not really. The only "found footage" film I can say I like is Cannibal Holocaust. That is a damn good film, really good. But pretty much all the others I've seen have been horrible shaky-camera stuff where it can be hard to figure out what's going on. Is that realistic and atmospheric? Perhaps, but it isn't very fun to watch.

 

[Paflick]

Not especially. There are a few that were okay. I hated Blair Witch, but Paranormal Activity was... Alright.

Does Marble Hornets count? Because that one's fucking amazing.

 

[Gennadios]

Depends on how they're done, but I think it's harder to do them "well" for my tastes.

End of Watch was great, although there were times when the movie just threw the whole found footage thing out the window and did shots that just couldn't really work in handheld footage.

Nothing else was impressive, I liked the first and third Paranormal Activity, don't remember the second, and just got back from seeing the latest one, which was a waste of my time. If I'd been there alone I would have just gotten my refund halfway through and left.

Main problem with PE4 was that it had the least actual paranormal activity and they tried to throw in some character development or family dynamic stuff, worked nowhere near as well as End of Watch.

 

[Vausch]

Chronicle, Visitor Q, and End of Watch. Those were the only ones I liked, and they kinda break the rules.

Chronicle uses the powers to float it so it can be third person, Visitor Q isn't like anything I've seen before, and End of Watch... well it cheats. Several instances simply don't use a hand-held camera of any kind, especially around the end. Though I did like the overall story.

 

[Therumancer]

I have no real problem with the style, and think it has a lot of potential. The problem is that few people really use it to it's potential, and rather use the "found footage" as an excuse to skimp on FX or actually showing anything going on. Inevitably "found footage" relies on more shaky cam and intentionally blocking out anything decent.

There have been a few exceptions like one movie called "Grave Encounters" (I think) which did it well, actually showing plenty of awesome FX bits during the climactic moments. There have been a couple of others that used the gimmick well, but they generally aren't well known.

I'll also be honest in saying that I find the growing conspiricy movement about such movies to be quite interesting. The idea being that in a world where virtually everyone has a camera, and viral internet, and you see tons of amateur "found footage" movies and clips being produced, how many people would recognize a REAL video of something freaky for what it was. The genere might suck overall, but encourages a large degree of skepticism. As an idea it's relatively plausible in of itself having read what goverment organizations did for disinformation during war time (including The Cold War) and occasionally still gets outed today.... without tying it to any conspiricy or motive in paticular, as that isn't part of what I find intrigueing about the mental exercise. I find it kind of amusing that today if you were to hypothetically rely on having pictures of a hidden goverment base and threatened that "if anything happens to me, the pictures I have will go up onto Youtube and every other web site on the globe" it would be meaningless because nobody, especially the newspapers/tv channels/etc... would believe it as genuine.

In a more fantastic case, if there WAS actually a Slenderman, a haunted "Candle Cove" broadcast, or anything of the sort, simply by being mentioned on Something Awful or other sidtes, and going viral with all the amateur creations nobody would take it seriously. I mean Slendy could be behind you right now, take you out on your webcam, and if the video was uploaded everyone would just assume it's one of a million similar videos people made for lulz (queue X-files music).

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

Like any other genre, it depends on the quality of the film. I'm not going to broadly say I like or dislike something based on its style.

Pretty much sums up my view of it all.

It doesn't depend on how the film is being presented but more of the quality of the film itself. That being said, I like it when the films are used the show some kind of personal perspective (like Cloverfield) or if it's being used to show footage from a security camera
(like Paranormal Activity and some parts of Chronicle) but when I'm staring at someones snotty mug throughout the film (like Blair Witch) then that really narks me off.

 

[Therumancer]

Not especially. There are a few that were okay. I hated Blair Witch, but Paranormal Activity was... Alright.

Does Marble Hornets count? Because that one's fucking amazing.

Marble Hornets is a good amateur effort, though I find it a bit boring at times (haven't checked back for a while) and to be honest their audio distortion effect is absolutly jarring to the point where I find some of these videos painful to watch. In one case it felt like my spine was quivering for like an hour afterwards. I'm probably unusually sensitive, but it's not an encouraging thing to watch.

It's definatly part of the "found footage" genere, at least to begin with. I think it's turned a bit more into a drama due to it increasingly being recordings of an active investigation.

With the way things were progressing when I left off, I'm kind of surprised the Marble Hornets team didn't set up a live stream at some point, and went to some creepy location and had a skit acted out right then and there. That actually struck me as a logical progression of their format. They might not have the resources to do something like that though.

 

[Therumancer]

Like any other genre, it depends on the quality of the film. I'm not going to broadly say I like or dislike something based on its style.

Pretty much sums up my view of it all.

It doesn't depend on how the film is being presented but more of the quality of the film itself. That being said, I like it when the films are used the show some kind of personal perspective (like Cloverfield) or if it's being used to show footage from a security camera
(like Paranormal Activity and some parts of Chronicle) but when I'm staring at someones snotty mug throughout the film (like Blair Witch) then that really narks me off.

I actually thought Cloverfield was one of the worst examples of the genere. Like "Blair Witch" it pretty much relied on the idea of an incompetant/stressed cameraperson who manages to amazingly miss everything of note going on. You don't even clearly get to see the monster until pretty much the end, and all of the "good stuff" (well for a horror fan) is set up so it's implied, etc...

"Blair Witch" kind of gets points for originality, the problem with that movie was the complete lack of a pay off. It's the horror movie equivilent of blue balls, which I guess was sort of the point, but still not very entertaining to me.

I'll also say in closing (these posts are pretty long for the subject) that very, very few found footage movies ever manage to establish any kind of mythology. Most of them rely on throwing out wierdness for the sake of wierdness. Some people will insist that the unexplained is the most scary, but really to a horror veteran it's obvious anyone can spew out the trappings, it's all about how well a creator is able to tie everything together. A good "wierd" horror movie is when you think there is no way everything could be fit together to make sense, and the writer/director manages to tie it up all in a neat package at the end and makes you go "wow, that was really F@cked up" once you understand. With something like "Blair Witch" we don't even know if there was a monster, if it was psycho towns people, a witch, a dead child molester, or a bunch of kids who all dropped their camera after playing "creepy ghost time" in the woods and decided to all skip out to live on a hippie commune where they will be discovered 20 years later and only thought to have been disappeared... "whoa man, those woods were like trippy, so we decided to dedicate ourselves to the wonders of pot and LSD as Guru Bongmeister instructs... we kind of lost track of the time, it's been 20 years and you thought we got murdered in those woods... wow man.. far out". Of course after what they did with Blair Witch 2, that could be the eventual third part of the trilogy, I'm sure Cheech Marin will appreciate the work.