Found footage (film technique)

Found footage is a cinematic technique and film genre in which all or a substantial part of the work is presented as if it were film or video recordings recorded by characters in the story, and later "found" and presented to the audience. The events on screen are typically seen through the camera of one or more of the characters involved, often accompanied by their real-time off-camera commentary. For added realism, the cinematography may be done by the actors themselves as they perform, and shaky camera work, improvisation and naturalistic acting are routinely employed. The footage may be presented as if it were "raw" and complete or as if it had been edited into a narrative by those who "found" it.
The most common use of the technique is in horror films such as The Blair Witch Project, Cannibal Holocaust, Paranormal Activity, Diary of the Dead, Rec, Cloverfield, Trollhunter, V/H/S, Incantation or Be My Cat: A Film for Anne, in which the footage is purported to be the only surviving record of the events, with the participants now missing or dead. It has also been used in science fiction such as Chronicle, Project Almanac or Europa Report, drama such as Zero Day and Exhibit A, non-horror type such as Project X, family such as Earth to Echo, experimental arthouse such as The Connection, The Outwaters or Masking Threshold and war films such as 84C MoPic.
Some pseudo-documentary films such as Lake Mungo or Noroi: The Curse, most screenlife films such as Searching or Profile, a few POV films such as Hardcore Henry or Presence, most livestream and "live TV" films such as Ghostwatch, as well as films where the footage is presented as originating from surveillance or dashboard cameras such as Taxi, are also often considered to fall under the found footage umbrella, despite the fact that technically the footage is not presented as "lost and found", but only as long as the camera is implied to be a part of the film and not a fourth wall the way it is in traditional films.
As a storytelling technique, found footage has precedents in literature, particularly in the trope of found manuscript, as well as epistolary novel, which typically consists of either correspondence or diary entries, purportedly written by a character central to the events. Like found footage, the epistolary technique has often been employed in horror fiction: both Dracula and Frankenstein are epistolary novels, as is The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft.
In filmmaking, the 1980 cult horror feature Cannibal Holocaust is often claimed to be the first example of found footage. However, Shirley Clarke's arthouse film The Connection (1961) and the Orson Welles directed The Other Side of the Wind, a found footage movie shot in the early 1970s but released in 2018, predate Cannibal Holocaust. America's Deadliest Home Video (1991), remains a potent use of the format as well as an unsung groundbreaker in the found-footage field - an ahead-of-its-time application of the vérité-video form to the horror/crime genre. The device was popularised by The Blair Witch Project (1999). Found footage has since been used in other commercially successful films, including Paranormal Activity (2007), REC (2007), Cloverfield (2008), Chronicle (2012), Creep (2014) and Late Night with the Devil (2024). Reviewing V/H/S for The A.V. Club, Scott Tobias notes that the genre "has since become to the '00s and '10s what slasher movies were to the '80s."
The genre appeals to some film producers because of its lower cost, as it is believed the illusion of amateur documentary style allows lower production values than would be accepted on a conventional film. Other filmmakers choose it for creative reasons.
Writer-director Christopher B. Landon, who has made several found footage horror films, as well as filmmaker Adrian Țofei in his found footage manifesto, posit that the genre is likely to successfully extend outside horror in the future.
Found-footage films typically employ one or more of six cinematic techniques—first-person perspective, pseudo-documentary, mockumentary, news footage, surveillance footage, or screenlife—according to an analysis of 500 found-footage films conducted by Found Footage Critic.
The film magazine Variety has used the term "faux found-footage" to describe the technique. Film scholar David Bordwell criticizes the usage, arguing that it sows confusion, and instead prefers the term "discovered footage" for the narrative gimmick.
According to filmmaker Adrian Țofei in his found footage manifesto, a found footage film is technically a pseudo-documentary or fake documentary film, in which all or a substantial part of the picture is presented as being composed of recordings of real life events, seen through cameras that are part of the events. He defines found footage as a "filmmaking concept" with the goal of giving audiences the illusion that they're not watching a movie made by filmmakers and actors, but genuine life events recorded by people like them who were part of the events, which would allow audiences to be fully immersed in the movie experience.
In a 2016 article for Cinema Journal, Cecilia Sayad explores the relationship between the found footage genre and reality. She asserts that the genre’s metaphorical framing, convincing audiences that films contain true unscripted footage, and its technical framing, mimicking amateur home videos and security footage, are key to what creates fear in the audience, dissolving the traditional boundaries between what is part of the film and real life.
Sayad highlights how the found footage genre invites the audience to “to anxiously scan the image for threatening presences”, blurring the boundary between what is on screen and what is real. For example, The Paranormal Activity series’ inclusion of the timestamps on each clip of footage “empowers the audience”, encouraging watchers to analyze evidence in real time. Typical found footage techniques, like shaky handheld sequences and sudden zooms, create the illusion that the camera frame is unable to contain the evil of any film’s antagonist to the screen. The selective choice to not center major action sequences on camera, like during the climax of the Paranormal Activity (2007), also contributes to this effect. Sayad notes that “the sense of lurking danger is enhanced as much by our fear about seeing things as by our anxiety about what we do not see”.
Importantly, Sayad notes that there is an important distinction between found footage horror films and other “self-aware” horror films, like 1996’s Scream. She writes,
The following entries are notable films in the found footage genre, though some were only partially made in that style.