Okay "hate" is a strong word, but it makes for a better title than "Why I Find Most "Found Footage" Movies Irritating".
I just finished watching Chronicle (so check out the Five Word Review). It's not that it's a bad movie, but I can't shake the feeling I would have enjoyed it more if it hadn't been forced into the increasingly tiresome "found footage" format.
While there were at least several found footage films prior to 1999, it was really The Blair Witch Project released in that year that made the format (in)famous. The found footage style is really a logical extension of a type of story-telling that is at least 300 years old. The "epistolary work" (from the Greek word for "letter") is a work of prose fiction that is presented as a series of documents - often letters, but also diary extracts and excerpts from other documents. Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula is presented in this way.
It makes sense, then, that the handful of films predating The Blair Witch Project were also horror films to some degree (I have a theory as to why, to which I shall return). As well as Blair Witch, the also-infamous Cannibal Holocaust was also presented as an ostensibly real documentary spliced together from "found" footage. So readily did people buy into this that the director of Cannibal Holocaust allegedly had to produce one of the actresses to prove that they had not murdered her in the production of their film.
Not really a dead lady!
Similar hysteria surrounded the release of Blair Witch, with many people believing it to be a "real" documentary. That the found footage in both these instances essentially formed part of a practical joke (or perhaps more kindly "publicity stunt"), in my opinion, justifies the use of the style.
The fact both Cannibal Holocaust and Blair Witch pretended to use actual documentary filmmakers as their main characters further validates the decision.
My problem is the trend more recently to use the ubiquity of recording devices to justify any poor schlub being the point of view character. And this is where the internal logic of the movie starts to put my suspension of disbelief under strain.
First of all documentary film crews are there to document something. That is fine. Most other people do not record every waking moment of their existence. This has to be justified or "lamp-shaded" within the movie by having other characters say to the PoV character "Dude, why are you recording everything?" of "Hey, man, put that camera away."
Who the hell is supposed to be recording this?!
Secondly, the problem of restricting yourself to one camera angle for 90-120 minutes inevitably results in little teams of camerapeople running around considerately getting cutaways, reaction shots, reverse angles and so forth. The most painful of these is where two would-be documentarians stand opposite each other, alternately glancing at the viewscreen and up at the person they are supposed to be talking to. I've recorded a fair amount of footage, and I have always paused the camera before speaking to someone else.
I don't mind movies having their own logic and conventions. It can be a short-hand, or else just a convention we have come to accept. But it bothers me when the filmmakers are going to such extreme lengths to present the footage as verbatim that they break the conceit of making it realistic, similar to my rant about improvised scenes being justified for creating realism producing overtly unrealistic results.
And it is ultimately the problem of forcing characters to behave in bizarre ways to make the convention work that I find so objectionable. Chronicle climaxes floating around in the air and, although he is injured and flagging, the villain seems to feel the need to pull a hundred camcorders, smartphones and iPads through a glass window several hundred feet in the air and have them float around them so their conversation can be recorded from several camera angles. Amazingly these all line up and never "cross the line". Earlier he also seemed to be recording himself sleeping so he can wake up on camera and, though he bothers to don a disguise, records a crime spree. Moron!
"Sweetheart, will you drive me to a disaster area? Oh, and don't forget your camera in case I'm hit by a flying bus and you need to record it!"
At other instances in the movie, when two camera people are covering each other in shot/reverse shot, the girl's camera is pointing off to somewhere far from where the guy is standing, and with both of them, though they are holding the camera's by their faces, the angles are at an aesthetically pleasing 30° from the "line of action". To get this angle both of them would have to be holding their cameras at arm's length.
I know, it is easy for me to pick holes - that's why I do it - but if you want the single-camera drama look shoot a single camera drama. It ain't rocket science!
So why use "found footage" at all, and why does it seem to be most prevalent in the horror/thriller genres?
I suspect it is to sell us on the idea that something overtly ridiculous actually happened. It is to make us feel as though we were there. There's no point making a "found footage" movie of a kitchen sink drama - we don't have any problem imagining that. The hope is by showing us what seems to be home video footage the "camera never lies" instinct will kick in and we will suspend our disbelief more readily. This may have worked 13 years ago when Blair Witch came out (though there were no special effects in it), but these days, a 12 year old with off-the-shelf software could fake the most amazing things.
When Cloverfield came out, I bashed it for having no plot. A friend said "Well, at least it would be cheap to make - a few actors and some video cameras." I had to gently explain they didn't really release an alien monster on New York, and that these things were composited into the footage at great time and expense later. Ironically the extensive amount of match-moving necessary to get the effects to line up with the footage would mean the process was more time consuming and, ergo, expensive than composting an alien monster into a locked off or motion-controlled plate.
I guess what I'm driving at is it feels like style over substance. Cannibal Holocaust and Blair Witch were being experimental. These days, with movies like Paranormal Activity (and its three sequels!), it just feels like a way to fudge a fairly dull or straightforward plot. Chronicle could have been an interesting character study and subversion of the superhero genre, but it was broken by contorting itself to fit a style that doesn't suit it.
District 9, a perfectly serviceable movie, managed to incorporate faux interviews and mobile phone footage into a conventionally shot drama. I would have been happy with clips of the three kids in Chronicle being dropped in now and then, but the whole movie didn't need to be like this.
Ultimately, being reminded I am watching a movie by the camera going out of focus or shots of people's feet as they are walking takes me out of the moment and so disconnects me from the characters. Rather than being emotionally invested in the conflict between Andrew and Matt at the end, I found myself thinking "So are the police supposed to be recording this? If so are Arri Alexas and prime lenses standard issue in Seattle now?"
I'm not saying it should never be used. Blair Witch and Cannibal Holocaust made it work in the same way This Is Spinal Tap found what worked in the mocumentary movement. But there needs to be an internal logic, and you can't have your cake and eat it. If you're going to make a found footage movie give your cast cameras and accept what you get. Even if it is terrible.
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