Trickery! Tomfoolery! Part II
Sgt. Angle Reporting for Duty!
Two weeks ago, I dove deep into a discussion of the mockumentary genre in film, and how filmmakers will test the intelligence and loyalty of the audience by providing a false sense of reality as if it were truly real. To further the discussion of how film can toy with an audience’s attention span, let us this week explore a sub-genre of the mockumentary: the Found Footage Film.
(There is a movie that is considered the start of this genre, Cannibal Holocaust. I have not seen it, but from all descriptions it is disgusting and involved actual killing of animals. I choose not to discuss it here.)
Unlike Forgotten Silver — the great Peter Jackson movie we discussed last time — which is ABOUT the found footage, an actual discovered footage movie serves the purpose of embedding the viewer “in the moment” that the footage takes place. Perhaps one of the most famous movies that kicked off this phenomenon was the unexpected (and sometimes inexplicable) successful Blair Witch Project, about a few kids who set off to explore the legend of a terror in the woods, and find themselves the victims (or something like that. My memory of this film is that it was an unsuccessful, disturbing, incomplete mission of storytelling, so I’m not going to bother reading the synopsis again).
Blair Witch was misunderstood by some as to be “real” footage, because the actors mostly improvised, and their reactions were often real because the directors took it upon themselves to withhold information from time to time about when the “terror” would strike next, and how. Because the reactions and the screaming are real, perhaps that is why audiences were disturbed as much as they were — or maybe it was the unsteady handywork of the handheld cameras, the dizziness that ensued, and the snot dripping from the girl’s nose.
Drip. Drip.
Whatever the case, Blair Witch raked in over $140 million domestically, on a budget of $60,000, so began the long and tested relationship moviegoers still have with “being duped.” Below is a short list of other “found footage” movies, some better than others, and one that pushes the genre even further by showing us “documentary” footage of aliens.
That movie is, of course, probably the best of the bunch: District 9.
Taking the world by storm in 2009, District 9 follows an alternate version of South Africa where aliens have been stranded and placed into a restricted zone for the last twenty years. As authorities try to herd the aliens to a new location, one human becomes entangled in their culture in an interesting way. The documentary style is chopped up halfway through with “normal” movie storytelling, mixing fiction with “reality”, nevertheless being entirely fictional. Talking heads, typical of many documentaries, offer the film a true sense of realism that drives home the story’s character and emotional arcs poignantly.
Another found footage alien movie that is perhaps more mainstream is Cloverfield, which covers a monster/alien attack seen through the eyes of three desperate New Yorkers trying to save a young lady friend while being sure to stop and take a picture of the angry alien every chance they get. The problems with the conceit of the film — besides silly and unlikeable characters who make awful decisions — are two fold: 1) No camera’s battery would last that long. 2) Drop the damn camera and worry about surviving. Enough said, soldier.
Former CHUD columnist Devin Faraci pointed out that horror is the owner of the found-footage genre, what with recent flicks Paranormal Activity, Rec 2, and The Fourth Kind messing with audiences’ acceptance of what is real and what is fake. Faraci also makes an interesting point, that the very concept of “found footage” is not unique to film alone. Books and stories, dating back to the 19th Century (Dracula, anyone?) would be presented as discovered letters and diary entries of actual people, such that we must be reading something true, if it’s all in a letter written between two people. Perhaps Akatzen can contribute in an upcoming “Book Report” on the “discovered letters” concept in books, how it came to be, and thus adds to the shaping of the conceit in the film world?
The director of Paranormal Activity is continuing his foray into the “discovered footage” world with the film Area 51, which is about three teenagers’ horrifying adventure into the top-secret facility.
The alien world will also be explored with the Timur Bekmambetov / Weinstein’s collaboration Apollo 18. The concept of the movie is based on a conspiracy theory revolving around the “cancelled” Apollo 19 and 20 space missions. “Legend” has it that these missions actual DID happen, that they were joint US/Soviet missions, and they were executed to explore wreckage of a space craft photographed by Apollo 18. The exploration allegedly led to the discovery of a female alien. See the odd video below.
The Found Footage genre isn’t going anywhere any time soon, and will most likely get bigger in the next year or two — found footage of a superhero or villain, perhaps, or of vampires and werewolves lurking behind coffee shop counters. Wherever the concept takes us will only more sharply define the role that films — fact or fiction — have in the overall “duped” culture of Americans.
In the next installment of Trickery! Tomfoolery! we’ll look at docu-dramas and biopics — how a fictionalized version of the truth is more often than not mistaken for the truth. Thanks to Oliver Stone and the like.
Until next time: You are DISMISSED!
Sgt. Angle
