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THIS IS A TRUE STORY. I love that tag at the beginning of movies. Back in the days of VHS, actual movies themselves could be considered "found footage" in that they were thought to be "lost" films that the majority of people haven't been able to see because of it's rare nature. Growing up, I remember watching a movie called Black Devil Doll From Hell. The VHS box was very non-descript. A semi-competetent painting of a black marionette doll with cornrows, silhouetted by a large fire in the background. The back of the box even more vague (what studio made this movie?), and the stickers on the tape itself looked like they came off an old dot matrix printer. I remember renting it and being shocked at how crude and low budget it was. Shot on video, like, the old rear end VHS camera recorder video, with in-camera cuts and in-camera audio. And it was graphic as well. There's not much violence, but the story revolves around the devil doll raping a conservative black woman, and it does not leave much to the imagination (the doll has a human tongue). I saw this movie when I was maybe 12 or 13 and fell in love with it. Showed all my friends and cousins. A lot of them didn't trust me already because I'd show them other movies I "discovered" at an early age like Sleepaway Camp and I Spit On Your Grave. It wasn't until I was in college that I found out the actual creator of the movie was born and raised in Chicago (where I grew up) and shot the movie completely (COMPLETELY) independently, to the point that he personally drove to each and every mom & pop video store in the Illinois area to sell them his movie directly.   Someone mentioned that when found footage movies "breaks the rules" it takes them out of the movie. I think half the reason why I love this genre is that there really are no rules. This is a genre that came about because of the adventure of discovering new movies. I'd say if anything, the things that would break the movies are things you wouldn't really think about at first. The company card at the beginning (although a lot of found footage movies try to mask this by altering the studio card to something more plain text), known actors in parts (Mark Duplass as the Creep), but even then, it doesn't ruin it, or "take me out of the movie". Impossible shots from cameras that no longer have operators is great to me. One of my favorite moments is when they completely break the narrative at the end of The Last Broadcast. A lot of people say something like that would take them out of the narrative, but the way I see it, it's using the break in narrative the same way a movie like Funny Games breaks the narrative. It's a purposeful tool to shock the audience into re-examining what they just watched. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wrnoGO2oKs Which brings me back to the original point I was going to make. THIS IS A TRUE STORY. What does that evoke when you see that before a movie you watched? That you're about to see something that maybe actually happened. A recreation of events as they actually went down in the real world. To that end, would you consider movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, or even a movie like Fargo a part of the found footage genre, or at least a close parallel cousin? Hell, Return of the Living Dead even works that "THIS IS BASED ON A TRUE STORY" right into the story itself, with Frank retelling the "true story" behind Night of the Living Dead. Fargo doesn't try to hide that it's a movie at all, but there's still that disclaimer in the beginning. And the whole feel of what an actual small town in Minnesota would actually be like (or at least what our expectations would have us believe it to be). TCM looks gritty and real. It looks hot as hell. I start unconsciously sweating during scenes in that movie that look uncomfortably hot. It beats you over the head at the beginning with it's ties to the real world. Just read/listen to the opening text crawl. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGj1ZbM_4eQ It forces you to identify both Sally and Franklin, immediately binding you to their story, and makes you believe that everything you are about to witness actually happened to these two real-life people. Imagine seeing and hearing that, then watching TCM for the first time. The 70s broke all kinds of narrative conventions. The Manson Family documenary shatters any kind of boundaries and had cameras rolling before, during, and after the publicly known Family Murders. Censorship kept the movie out of the public eye for a long time, but it's sporadic resurgence through the years could classify it as a "found footage" movie in the same way that foreign docs were once considered "found footage" like Mondo Cane, The Guinea Pig Series, and coming back stateside, you have movies like Faces of Death and Traces of Death, that blur the line of what's real and what's not by combining real world footage of people getting maimed/killed with obvious re-enactments meant to titillate and excite the audience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFJ_9pAAvHM With the death of the mom & pop VHS store, where do you go to discover lost movies? You can't anymore. Studios recognize that and don't even try anymore. Directors do, but they must find ways to trick the audience within the confines of the movie itself (or through goofy ARG poo poo and viral videos). They know their movie's not going to be passed around on an unmarked VHS tape with the words "promise me, you're going to love this." (this was how I saw Blair Witch, before it hit the theaters). Everything's marketed to hell and overly researched on the internet before it even reaches your hands. You could make the argument that youtube's the next frontier for found footage, but again, EVERYONE knows about it. It's like saying you're looking for a good found footage movie at Blockbuster instead of Uncle Terry's Old Timey Video Shack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dav3S82oeto And that's not to say youtube (or it's influence at least) isn't crushing boundaries when it comes to this genre either, mainly because the nature of youtube itself (content provided by everyone, both corporate and independent). Unfriended becomes a crazy meta-representational piece when watching it through a web browser. While not specifically horror, the rise of rap youtube stars have given way to a flood gritty "real life" music videos. Bobby Shmurda was in everyone's ear because of a youtube video. The Feds also took him down because of his youtube prominence (and his real life track record of trafficking narcotics). King Yella in Chicago was shot in a drive-by while shooting a music video called Black Lives Matter. The line between reality and fiction is all but wiped away on the internet, and while it's fun to speculate on where we're heading with this melding of genres and even what constitutes as reality vs. fiction, it's also just as fun to look back on where all this originated from. On the flipside, at the end of the day, perceived as real or fake, you always have to remind yourself, it's only a movie.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7TaOaLPLxU OR IS IT?! ruddiger fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Oct 1, 2016 |
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Sep 30, 2016 19:04
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Trash Humpers is amazing, I love Harmony's use of the dogme95 style to blur the lines of what's real and fake. Gummo and Julian Donkeyboy are other noteworthy examples. And speaking of the WNUF Halloween Special, they're doing a screening of it at the Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles as a part of Beyond Fest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5iCF2Ltjlk ruddiger fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Sep 30, 2016 |
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Sep 30, 2016 19:26
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precision posted:Speaking of which, I can't believe nobody has mentioned Man Bites Dog yet. I was going to mention it in my post but wanted to see if this thread had the cred on its own. It's a shame the op started the whole thing off with "I like found footage movies, but.." And then goes on to list what sins they make to make them faulty in their eyes (and then only mentions movies only made in the past few years). Todd Browning's Freaks. First ancestor of the found footage? While not shot in a documentary style, it is shot as a behind the scenes look into the backstage going-ons of carny life while focusing on the real life deformities of the sideshow freaks, and gives a candid view of traits that were taboo at the time (infidelity, trans lifestyle, etc) and presents them only because they're attributed to members of the freakshow. It sucks that Browning's original 4 hour cut is lost to time. Art lost to time is a tragedy, but art lost to censorship should be a crime and the people who perpetrated it should be condemned in the annals of history.
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Oct 4, 2016 03:02
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Popelmon posted:That movie really surprised me. I didn't want to watch it because it heard about all the animal cruelty but I'm really glad I tracked down a copy now. Very unpleasant to watch but the narrative structure was really interesting and I definitely didn't expect it to turn into FF after half the movies was over. Also: That soundtrack is loving amazing. Agreed, I love the music from that movie. They also use it in the opening title sequence for Treevenge. One of the very first movies I worked on out of college was this little indie feature out of Chicago called Street Thief. It's completely scripted, and was shot fake-documentary style. It was on Netflix and Amazon for a while I believe, if you get the chance, check it out.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEC0NmiTuSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nw1tJn2r94
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Oct 4, 2016 16:20
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This season of American Horror Story is found footage as gently caress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KUjpSNDlY4 The first half of the season is done in a reality documentary format, with talking head interviews and re-enactments, and the second half is the cast of the show, both the actors and the people they were based off of, return to the house along with a production crew to document them going back. ruddiger fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Oct 22, 2016 |
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Oct 22, 2016 16:51
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Jumping on the shark craze a little late here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KVkpQMSjHY Plus, Open Water did this premise (minus the rogue wave) a little over a decade ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWBRpZhk_vA
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Oct 28, 2016 18:44
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I was looking for the home invasion scene from Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer on youtube but couldn't find it. Watching that movie again (there's a 4K restoration that's been screening in select cities), I forgot how little violence you actually see. Most is either after the fact, off-camera, or it goes down so fast, you barely have a chance to register it as it happens. The two goriest shots in the movie are a slow pan across a mutilated prostitute in a bathroom and Otis' decapitation, but even then, you only see the head, and you can only hear Henry cutting the head off in the tub, you never see him sawing into the body. I'm not sure what this poster is from (it's dated 2012), but it captures the aesthetic and feel of Henry the way very few other images do. 
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Nov 1, 2016 18:12
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BENGHAZI 2 posted:the visit is trash with a barely believable handwave for why this found footage movie shot by a child is framed so perfectly I guess one could say it's a commentary on the self-absorption of the younger generation, that the two leads can go three days without looking for pictures of their grandparents, or pictures of their mom with their grandparents (that's kinda why they went?), or even trying to get help when it was clear that these people were not able to take care of themselves. There were a lot of logic hurdles you had to turn a blind eye towards, and the ending betrays the body of the movie as the dementia and senility of the old couple turns into malicious antagonism and the children are ultimately rewarded for their inattentiveness, and have no lament for the loss of their grandparents, or of their own innocence. At the end, I thought it was a pretty gross exploitation of the fragility of old people and the utter disregard by those closest to them backed up by the brother still being self-absorbed while rapping over the end credits.
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Dec 6, 2016 02:46
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:How dare you. That's funny because after that movie was over I was thinking there was only one memorable shot in the movie, the shot of the train leaving the terminal and the mom trying to keep pace with the window.
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Dec 6, 2016 17:56
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The sister in The Visit stated at the beginning that she basically wanted to make an emotionally exploitative doc, and she ultimately succeeds, just not in the way she thought, and the sacrifice of those she was already willing to exploit carries no emotional weight for her other than the threat to her immediate quality of life, so there really is no arc for her either, as she succeeds in what she wanted to from the start. It kinda carries the same exploitative themes as Don't Breathe, where the female protagonist willingly sacrifices her followers for monetary gain. I personally didn't like either movie, I'd put them up there with other opposite end culturally exploitative films like Captain Phillips and American Sniper. ruddiger fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Dec 19, 2016 |
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Dec 19, 2016 19:50
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