Origins of Found Footage: Timeline

In the late-00s, a variety of successful found footage films began receiving mainstream visibility. Paranormal Activity, REC, Cloverfield, and George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead all made waves, and inspired an influx of like-minded films. Until recently, most people probably didn't realize that found footage was actually a genre, they thought it was just... The Blair Witch Project. So it's understandable that devotees of earlier found footage films are eager to argue against the idea that Blair Witch invented the format. But you see such a humorous hodgepodge of which disparate films are supposed to represent the "one true original idea," it's clear that the origins of found footage can be rather murky.

I've written a couple of vast, expansive entries attempting to outline the sordid origins of found footage -- only to discover another bit of information that rips asunder much of what I had written! So I've settled on compiling a timeline that outlines what I've been able to learn thus far, for anyone who's interested. The information represents what knowledge I have access to and could be subject to revision where suppositions prove false. I cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information, but cursory sleuthing will show that at least the majority of it is easily verifiable.

THE ORIGINS OF FOUND FOOTAGE 

1980 -- February 7th, Cannibal Holocaust is released in Italy. Conventional wisdom holds that this is the first scripted movie to incorporate found footage as a significant plot point. It includes the influential premise of recovering footage left behind by a lost documentary crew. It further incorporates "shaky cam" filming to simulate realism and a "viral" campaign in which the movie was promoted as genuine footage, which later got the filmmakers in hot water when they were tried for murder! Cannibal Holocaust is believed to have been inspired by the "mondo" films of the 1970s that depicted ostensibly real footage of gore and extraordinary events.


Circa 1988 -- Director Dean Alioto releases a low budget movie titled Alien Abduction (later known as "The McPherson Tape"). The film depicts a family being taken by aliens and it is likely the first paranormal-themed found footage film. Unlike Cannibal Holocaust, this film is believed to have been presented entirely in found footage style, which would become a standard among future found footage films. Although the film was later destroyed in a warehouse fire, clips purported to be from the film are featured on a Japanese TV show widely available for viewing on the internet. 


Late 80s, Early 90s -- Various low budget films including Manguden (1988), 84C MoPic (1988) and Man Bites Dog (1992) uniquely utilize the found footage format pioneered by Cannibal Holocaust. These cover such varied topics as serial killing and the Vietnam War.


1992 -- October 31st, on Halloween, BBC1 airs a film titled Ghostwatch. Featuring actual BBC personalities, the premise was a live BBC program broadcast from a haunted house, where they quickly encountered a malevolent spirit. Considered exceedingly frightful, the film was then banned from ever showing again on British TV and it was credited with inspiring a man to commit suicide (that isn't movie content, that really happened). A similar TV-special premise would later be revisited in movies such as The Last Broadcast (1998), The Feed (2010), Grave Encounters (2011) and, to an extent, Atrocious (2010).


1994 -- Work on The Blair Witch Project is purportedly begun.


1997/1998 -- Paranormal-themed found footage films begin appearing, including a purported early version of Strawberry Estates and a remake of Alien Abduction titled Alien Abduction: Incident In Lake County (first broadcast on the TV station UPN on January 20th, 1998). As The Blair Witch Project is believed to have been in the works for years at this point, it is unknown whether these films had "scooped" Blair Witch or genuinely preceded it. Incident In Lake County represents the earliest proven use I can find of the "death bed confession" penultimate scene where the cameraman turns the camera onto themselves and gives their last thoughts. Inclusion of this scene would become very common in found footage films, including The Blair Witch Project.


1999 -- July 30th, The Blair Witch Project is released, becoming a massive commercial success and popularizing the found footage genre. Many films followed in its wake although it would be ten years before new found footage films began finding success comparable to Blair Witch.

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My Perspective: As far as "who copied who," it's an inconsequential question. I think that in the late 90s, after a variety of notable but mostly small-scale successes for the genre, many different people were vying to hit gold with the format. Similarly to how in 2007 & 2008 a new rash of found footage films suddenly began emerging, the time was right for a great work to appear and as usual there wasn't just one person looking to succeed. 

The Wicksboro Incident (2003)

The Wicksboro Incident

Spoiler Warning: This entry contains spoilers about the conclusion and other important plot points of The Wicksboro Incident.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5. 

The Wicksboro Incident is a very bold film in a cornucopia of ways. First, it is quite uncommon to see a found footage film with such a stark and obvious musical score. It's an exceedingly peculiar decision for a film which otherwise would rank among the most realistic found footage movies of all-time -- there is nothing overtly paranormal ever featured in it, what-so-ever. Rather, the film's initial premise of an unseen alien takeover is subtly corroborated when the group becomes ceaselessly pursued by the law. What Wicksboro Incident is, more than anything, is a chase movie. But the paranormal shades make for some interesting nuances.

The film begins with a documentary segment, featuring the typical UFO-believer ideology about unexplained sightings and government conspiracy. Heavily featured is an inventor named Lloyd explaining how in the 1950s he collaborated with the government on a device that detects auras. After working late into the early morning in the fallout shelter that was his workspace, Loyd emerged to find that the entire population of Wicksboro where he worked, had been vaporized into thin air. After 50 years in hiding, he has decided to come out with his story and film a documentary.

Some people comment on believing that it is a genuine documentary for the first 20 or so minutes. Indeed, realism is one category where this movie definitely deserves praise. The audience is led to believe that they are following an eccentric, crazy old man's goose chase until they find his bunker-laboratory in the desert of Texas, and the group of three becomes hunted by the police, the government, and perhaps forces unknown.

The ensuing chase, which makes up the meat of the film, could pass for an action plot. That is, if not for the shaky-cam, shoestring dynamics. This is where the film makes its other great departure from tradition. Many found footage films make use of dark shots and random angles, but none to this extent. Much of the film focuses on random car lights, the flicker of a lighter, and complete, total darkness. This isn't Hollywood-style darkness where there's not supposed to be light but you can see perfectly. This is you staring at a completely blank screen. It's a bold, bold move. But it works ingeniously to tingle the mind's eye, and inspire homegrown fears of mostly your own devise. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't sometimes clutching my arm in fear of what might happen next, even though very little ever did.

With so little on screen, the inclusion of an unabashed soundtrack may be a benefit rather than a detractor, despite harming the realism. We as film fans are trained to fear impending doom based on certain nuances of the accompanying music, and so when we here these sounds and yet see little more than pitch black on the screen, it's left up to our psyche what kind of horrors must be lingering off-screen. While cynics might call this bad filmmaking, it was an intentional tactic from the filmmakers (as explained in the audio commentary), and for fans of found footage, it should work wonders (as it did on me).

As the film draws to a close, it includes the genre's near-requisite "deathbed confession" (which is what I call a penultimate scene in a found footage movie where the camera-holder turns the camera on themselves and gives their last words, typically summing up the situation), but in this case it doesn't include a goodbye, as the cameraman appears confident he will be saved. Evidently he is not, though, as the final bit of movie shows newspaper clippings detailing the obituaries of our three freelance filmmakers. Clearly they have been killed to hide the conspiracy, an alien takeover that is both real and too frightening to think about, according to the now deceased camera-man.

I give it a flawless 5 out of 5 in subtlety, the quintessential fear-inducer of any decent found footage film. It also deserves at least a 4 out of 5 in originality, for its bold choices and uncommon story. It has to lose points, though, for lacking an on-camera paranormal element. Near the end I kept waiting for that moment of true fear to leap out of the frequent pitch blackness; a craft in the sky, a grey arm reaching out to silence the cameraman's life... It's not that I want aliens to prance into bright daylight and do a jig, but I look to The Blair Witch Project for the standard on how to avoid anything specifically impossible, while still providing scary events of questionable origin. Wicksboro has none of that per se', but plenty to play on your imagination until you think you may have seen something.

Skeptically, you might wonder why an alien race has taken over 50 years to overtake the mankind, when evidently they had the technology to vaporize an entire town's population without so much as disturbing the half eaten breakfasts left behind. But the main purpose is that the preposterous premise is both creepy, and wild enough to seem like bullhockey until we find the bunker in the desert; and that's exactly how it's supposed to pan out. Besides, for all we know the vaporization weapon is extremely expensive and can't be used on such a large scale. To nitpick the paranormal is foolhardy when potential limitations are endless for non-existent technology.

Overall Wicksboro Incident is fantastically creepy, and a great work. It's simple, it's pure. It doesn't rank on par with Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity, but it ranks above many of its contemporaries in the found footage genre. I wouldn't recommend watching it with the lights on, though, I imagine it'd greatly diminish the effect of the minimalistic dark-screen camera action.

Fourth Kind (2009)

The Fourth Kind 

Rating: 2 & 1/2 Stars Out of 5

Note: this does NOT contain any spoilers beyond general expository information (like that which you might read on the back of the box, or see in a trailer).

Overview: Effectively creepy at times, but by and large a glitzy Hollywood take on the found footage genre that forgoes much of what makes the style so chilling. It tries a little too hard, and in doing so falls short.

Other than perhaps Jurassic Park when I was five years old, it's hard to imagine a movie I was more anxious for than 2009's Fourth Kind. Aliens have always scared me more than anything, particularly abduction scenarios and the stoic, bone-chilling "greys." Every year has its share of psycho slashers and ghostial hauntings, but I'm always on the lookout for horror movies featuring aliens. Imagine my supreme joy to find that not only was a grey-themed abduction film coming out, it's found footage!

While ghosts tend to dominate, alien abduction has its own tradition within the found footage genre, including its original paranormal incarnation Alien Abduction (The McPherson Tape) and its remake Incident In Lake County, as well as 2003's The Wicksboro Incident.

Fourth Kind is a slick, spooky film about a small town in Alaska where an unprecedentedly large section of the tiny community is being plagued by sleeplessness, incited by the feeling of being watched over by a mysterious owl, which under hypnosis reveals to be something much more sinister. It's a psychological ride. At its best it provides creeping chills and even presents a compelling narrative about the line between self-delusion and how to interpret extraordinary real life events, depending on how you choose to interpret it.

Unfortunately for Fourth Kind, it came out a month after the wide release of Paranormal Activity. That's the found footage equivalent of The Beatles opening for The Turtles. Without Paranormal Activity, it's possible Fourth Kind would have scared the everloving shit out of me. But following such a masterpiece, a severely less well-done film was hard to swallow.

While most good found footage films play up the "this really happened" angle, Fourth Kind takes a rather ham-fisted approach, positing an untimid opening monologue declaring the events to be real, and perplexingly interjecting supposed "real footage" of the events alongside hollwyood recreations (I suppose they wanted to pay twice the number of actors they conceivably needed). Everything about this film is, of course, wholly fictional, in case you were wondering.

Some films convince you they could be real through a strict attention to realism and plausibility.... and then there's Fourth Kind, which shows you preposterous events but has the gall to look you straight in the eye and tell you it's fact. Not the most nuanced approach, to be sure. But it can be scary, in the sense that it's so bold as to almost elicit a "they're hamming it up so much, it has to be real or they'd need to be idiots" reaction. It's an admirable tactic, and I don't blame them for trying.

Occasionally the "real footage" moments are creepy. Yet it would have been more compelling had the whole film been done this way. As is, the scenes of "real" footage tend to be used sparingly and often to little effect. Moments where it's used to decent effect are juxtaposed against moments where it seems to be nothing better than a gimmick. Although a unique touch, the film would have been better without it.

Overall, Fourth Kind provides some serious skin-crawling moments, and excellent thrills. But I'm not a thriller guy. It's splendid as a thriller, but as a descendant of The Blair Witch -- which it is, in the way that it openly purports to contain genuine footage of a real paranormal event -- it falls very thin. And hey, if you don't expect me to lavish praise on shoestring budgets and speak cautiously of big productions, you're reading the wrong blog. I'd recommend this movie to fans of Fire In the Sky, but not Incident In Lake County.