Found Footage Films
“Innocence Unprotected” is one of my favorite films.
“Train of Shadows” is a nice pastiche of the found footage concept, since he fakes the film that it centers around. It helps in large part that José Luis Guerín has other films that are in fact documentaries (“In Construction”), and also homages to film (“Innisfree” is about the making of “The Quiet Man” and includes footage of the latter film). I’m not sure if that’s exactly what you’re looking for, but it might at least be an interesting counterpoint.
Also include Craig Baldwin in that list, and Bill Morrison. Two more favorites of mine.
—PolarisDiB
this list has a lot of things worth discussing on it.
& Ken Jacobs, Arthur Lipsett, Anne McGuire, Craig Baldwin, Saul Levine, Abigail Child, Bill Morrison, Matthias Müller, Jürgen Reble, Dietmar Brehm, Phil Solomon, Gustav Deutsch, Norbert Pfaffenbichler, Harun Farocki, Lisl Ponger etc. etc. etc. See my avantgarde list.
Artavazd Peleshian :)
I think the found footage film is a cliche now. It’s the style du jour for experimental films. Too many people are making these films and presenting them as if found footage is de facto mark of quality or interest. I don’t see many people making engaging works out of this footage.
Thanks for all the new figures… Artavazd Pelechian has some gorgeous films… I’m trying to go through quickly all the available films by the above mentioned filmmakers so we can maintain a great discussion.
Bobby….. what films/filmmakers do you see as using the style/technique lazily? I’m not as familiar with the contemporary filmmakers, but I’d like to check out the lower quality work just to see the general state of things. Are you referring to Youtube mashups and things like that or more high-brow attempts? I can’t disprove what you said, but I do want to investigate your claims.
Also, do you think it’s become a cliche now that it’s so much easier (thanks to digital technology) to procure and rework footage?
“The Last Broadcast” is the best found footage film I’ve seen.
Anyone familiar with Los Angeles Plays Itself?
I just saw it for the first time this morning….. absolutely amazing. Not strictly found footage throughout (it contains a few segments of original footage), but a really profound example of using existing material to original ends.
Uh, THE LAST BROADCAST was faked found footage, though, which I don’t think the OP is after. But, yeah, it is pretty creepy though I prefer BLAIR WITCH.
Also in the “exclusively found footage” category is Herzog’s GRIZZLY MAN and WILD BLUE YONDER. The way he forces narrative atop footage already telling/documenting its own alternate story is certainly in line with the majority of found footage films out there. Herzog’s LA SOUFRIERE actually has a lovely little sequence about an eruption earlier in the century that kind of predicts the direction Ken Burn’s style would go, and I have yet to determine if the annecdote is totally made up.
I don’t look at Youtube mashups at all. I’m referring to more “high-brow” attempts, or productions made for the festival circuit. Sorry I can’t offer any names in specific — I’m referring to the mass of largely unknown contemporary experimental filmmakers all over the world.
5 or so years ago I was the selector for an international experimental film/video festival. So for a couple of years in a row I was watching hundreds and hundreds of experimental films every year from all over. If you want to check out examples of the average state of the work, I’d suggest going to your local experimental film showcase/festival.
I don’t think its a cliche because access is easier. I think it’s a cliche because people are following the leaders like Forgacs and others. It’s just a popular style now for experimental films, usually in the form of nondescript home footage. Archival footage of more significance (or specificity) has been used in documentary forever and is nothing novel. I locate the cliched uses of found footage more specifically in experimental film and through the use of home footage/family films, which was a relative novelty ten or so years ago.
Great thread here and thanks twodeadmagpies for providing that list. I see some familiar names but my experience with found footage filmmakers is pretty thin so I’m looking forward to digging in and exploring.
@Ben Simington – Good point about Grizzly Man and Wild Blue Yonder, both oddly engaging films for perhaps different reasons no altogether evident in the story. I think a lot of people were simply fascinated with the ‘idea’ behind the films and were often at odds with Herzog’s style. I haven’t seen La Soufriere so I’ll have to add that to my list.
I wanted to mention (though most probably are already familiar with) www.archive.org which is a great online database of sorts collecting all sorts of bits of audio, video, print, and assemblages from all over the world. If you haven’t made a visit you might consider.
cheers→
Ohhhh yeah, Phil Solomon is awesome! Forgot about him!
Re: Bobby Wise’s complaint:
Whereas we all know Sturgeon’s Law (90% of everything is crap), in some cases that 90% sticks out a little sorer just for the rarity and idiosyncracies of the genre we’re talking about. I have been to many small experimental film festivals and even helped choose selections for one and volunteered for another, and it’s absolutely true, not only on found-footage, but other “experimental” styles. It’s worth noting that Craig Baldwin’s own Other Cinema label has a title called Golden Digest by Animal Charm that purportedly "mashes and mixes up television footage to maybe show what it’s truly saying " that is really just the same footage cut to repeat and “skip” over and over and over again—at least for the first half hour or so before I got impatient and turned it off. This same thing I have seen hundreds of times.
What makes found footage artists stick out, in my opinion, is what compells them specifically about the imagery, and how they go about making something meaningful from it. In this case, Baldwin himself is a master because he not only takes the familiar, the underground, and the downright obscure and mixes it together, but layers in original work and tells engaging (and wacky) stories with them. Bill Morrison’s love of rotting archival footage and turning it into a ghostly pageant for forgotten memories is beautiful and poetic. Tscherkassy’s cutting into frames and layering of them, turning cinema itself into a sort of noize music that attacks itself and the viewers is enticing and provocative. Phil Solomon’s uncanny fantasmagoric quality is unmatched.
But especially these days, it really is easy to take footage from The Shining and make a trailer for it that makes it sound like a romantic comedy. What separates the men from the boys, as in any other case, is focus of vision and a statement to support it. I remember this movie I saw from an experiments in cinema class whose name and director I’ve forgotten, but he took an optical printer and recut scenes from Judy Garland movies that made her singing and dancing look strangled and forced, and those images have never left my mind. Meanwhile, there was this one guy who attended a festival we accepted quite a few of his works who shall remain unnamed, but whom I remember well simply because his movies were total “4:22/7 — Missing Elegy/Written Excess; standardized rote of mesmicism (Ritiogradialyrics)” or some shit (look through the archives to this site and you’ll find many experimental movies that are like notations to some organization that never existed, usually in the form of ##/##:## — Adjective Gerund/Opposing Statement; subtitle with even less grammatical sense (sub-subtitle that is a completely nonsense word outright) and so on…).
The thing about “experimental cinema?” Usually does, in fact, in some way or another, have an “experiment” that the director is trying to pull off (and not all of them work, but sometimes the results are fascinating anyway). Many people, however, want to be “experimental filmmakers”, which makes even less sense than wanting to be a narrative filmmaker for filmmaking’s sake.
—PolarisDiB
Polaris….. very insightful stuff….
The Judy Garland filmmaker’s name is Martin Arnold, an Austrian who is among my favorites. ’Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy" is the title of the film you reference. It left a huge impression on me, too.
I had no idea about Phil Solomon….. just checked out his website and that stuff is pretty amazing as well.
In one of my classes, the professor screened a 16mm print of Ken Jacobs’ The Doctor’s Dream….. which is both structuralist and found footage. It’s amazing and rekindled my interest in the form.
On a basic level, Found Footage seems like the most proper response to our being inundated by media. Repurposing all of that stuff, for me, is a sensible vehicle to make sense of our world of images and spectacle. I won’t say I merely wish there was more of it, but that there were more good examples.
I agree with Polaris that hacks will always put out a bunch of shit, riding a bandwagon and whatnot….. but I think, if anything, that quality found footage work takes more skill and precision than just about any other form.
Glad to see this forum has legs.
I haven’t seen it and I looked for it on Google but couldn’t find it, so I started a thread here about a film that was made for a few hundred dollars and was a big success at Sundance. I found out that that film was called Tarnation and it featured, ( according to the Wikipedia article ), footage from the filmmaker’s family life. Hope that helps.
Rorydean….
thanks for the link. Wild stuff.
That’s it, thank you so much for … well… KNOWING as well as reminding me!
For those who don’t know, Arnold uses the optical printer to repeat frames back and forth one by one, both with the image and sound track, so that the result is something like a pulsing freeze-frame at a particular part of Garland’s singing, which also frozen makes a typically dissonant sustained tone. He usually chooses frames that show her stretching her vocal cords or face in the midst of singing, and intercuts it with shots of that Mickey kid, whatshisface, approaching people (usually female) from behind and cut back-and-forth as if he’s about to attack them sexually. It’s incredibly disturbing.
Arnold, as I understand it, went on to make fun little “the hidden meaning behind the films” montages for none other than the Academy Award ceremonies, but as stated, that practice has largely become YouTube filler as everybody is able to grab a moment in a buddy cop movie and make the lead characters look like they’re totally gay (to speak colloquially). Nevertheless, none of the extended “I AM SPARTAAAAA!!!” re-edits of sustained still frames and sound do even a fraction of a percentage of what Arnold does with his found footage films.
—PolarisDiB
I’ve been working through Hungarian artist, Péter Forgács’ ‘found footage’ films recently which are well worth watching (if you can find them). He runs an archive of home movie and amateur film footage from the mid 20th century and the documentaries he puts together go far beyond the ‘collection of bits of TV as a Youtube film’ which someone may have mentioned earlier.
I just went to see Angelos’ Film yesterday actually and my mind is still blown by footage shot in the middle of a 1943 protest march in occupied Athens against Nazi executions (with predictable consequences).
Just don’t get him mixed up with the other Péter Forgács…
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2334485220070823
I agree that the 90% sticks out sorer in experimental films/video. Cliches just seem so much more egregious, I guess because of the idiosyncracies of the genre, as you mentioned.
Many people, however, want to be “experimental filmmakers”, which makes even less sense than wanting to be a narrative filmmaker for filmmaking’s sake.
…why?
Rhodapenmark: you own that boxset? I suspect it’s great.
“…why?”
Your reason: experimental filmmakers typically and often reject “mass audiences”. There is a de-emphasis of “star-power” in experimental filmmaking that places the romance of being an experimental filmmaker more on the filmic expressions achieved than the kudos gleaned.
It totally makes sense to want to make experimental films (and thus be an experimental filmmaker) as an appreciation of the art and fascination with the medium, but I am referring to people I’ve met at experimental film festivals who want to be an experimental filmmaker for the exoticism of being “an artist.” This makes even less sense, in my mind, than wanting to be a narrative filmmaker for the exoticism of fame without having an actual interest in the art and medium, because at least there’s a (stupid) infrastructure to support it. In other words, I understand people wanting to be Michael Bay because they’re stupid. I don’t understand people wanting to be Jonas Mekas so that people will think they’re smart.
I do realize I misstated myself. “for filmmaking’s sake” is actually a good reason to be a filmmaker experimental or otherwise. Sorry! I meant for “their own sake”.
Santropez: I own that box set.
It is, indeed, great.
I actually like the music added to the films better than what Kino did with their Avant Garde sets. Unseen Cinema they at least tried to replicate lost scores, restore broken ones; Kino is compositions sometimes right out of Music Theory class.
—PolarisDiB
I understand people wanting to be……because they’re stupid.
I don’t understand people wanting to be….. so that people will think they’re smart.
I believe on the rest of the Internet, the best way to express my reaction to that is,
“lol”
—PolarisDiB
Exit Through the Gift Shop by Banksy qualifies as well with the film itself being the subject. One of my favorite films released in the US this year.
“Los Angeles Plays Itself” is not “found footage.” The filmmaker sought out and rented dozens of films shot in L.A. and chose clips from them. It’s a film ABOUT L.A., so he appropriated footage of L.A. landmarks (e.g. the Bradbury Building) in famous films and made a film out of that footage. It’s never been properly distributed because the filmmaker never got the rights to use any of the footage.
I could look into my archive of films shot in New York that I’ve taped off TV over the decades (PORTRAIT OF JENNIE, THE NAKED CITY, SERPICO, TAXI DRIVER, ONE FINE DAY, etc.) and make a film using shots excerpted from those films. It wouldn’t be “found footage.” But of course I wouldn’t be able to distribute the film because of the rights issue. Who knows how many thousands of dollars it would cost to get the rights to all that footage from studios/distributors/producers, etc.
I agree that found footage has some sort of element of surprise in its discovery. It’s not simple archive footage.
Patrick
I’d like to start a discussion about Found Footage Films and Filmmakers working in the medium.
I’m excited by the work of Bruce Conner, Peter Tscherkassky and Martin Arnold….. and I’m hoping to expand my knowledge via this forum.
Seeing cinema contorted like this is perversely enjoyable….. who are the artists in this tradition that you follow?
How has digital technology changed how found footage filmmaking is created and understood?