At Not Quite Reality, I've decided to focus exclusively on independent found footage. Why? I wish I had a fun story about seeing The Blair Witch Project in theaters and thinking it was real (sorry, I was only three). I wish I could recount a vivid memory of my first ever found footage experience. But the truth is, I just gradually stumbled upon more and more of them, until I realized how much I loved the format.
What IS Found Footage?
A simple question with many possible answers, depending on how "pure" you think that found footage needs to be to qualify. It's largely considered a genre, but that feels technically inaccurate - found footage can be ANY genre from horror to comedy, from drama to sci-fi. Found footage is more of a medium, a method of storytelling, in the same way that a "podcast" or a "news article" is merely a format over which content is conveyed. A postcard can tell a knock-knock joke or deliver a ransom note, so it's less a genre and more a format through which a genre is conveyed.
Semantics aside, many people still struggle to agree on what counts as found footage. The most pure, most classic definition requires a literal interpretation - fictional footage must present itself as something that was lost, later found, and released in an unedited version. Movies like Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project fit this bill.
Over time the genre grew and expanded. For example, Project X uses the same method of delivery (in-world cameras), but the film itself was intentionally shot as a record of a friend's birthday and just released, skipping the lost and found stage. What happens when new segments and interviews are added in to the lost footage? A movie like The Ring uses "found footage" as a plot device - does it fall on the spectrum?
I think the key word in the conversation is "spectrum" - there are a LOT of found footage and found footage-adjacent movies out there, and your definition on what counts or doesn't count is unique to you. So for the rest of the article, I'll go over all the possible variations of found footage.
Traditional Found Footage: The simplest and most universally agreed-upon type of found footage. Real-world cameras are the storytelling device. The movie that comes out as a result wasn't typically the intended use of those cameras. Some tragic event causes the footage to be lost and later recovered.
Other Found Footage (that technically isn't "found"): Taking the concept one step farther, this sub-format still uses in-world cameras. However it can be about ANY type of story and skips the "lost and found" lore typically associated with the genre.
Mockumentary: The first real deviation from the traditional format, the "mock documentary" keeps the premise of a fake movie pretending to be something real. However it can include all kinds of extra shots and aspect that pure found footage can't - legacy interviews, music scores, cinematic shots of b-roll footage.
Screenlife: This is a newer addition that became popular as social media and personal devices did. It essentially explores "what if an entire story was told over a computer screen?" These movies can also get away with a lot of stuff that traditional found footage can't - music apps, splashy vlog edits with graphics, text-based apps to show things like inner dialogue.
Analog Horror: This niche category is a small, fringe type of found footage that answers "what if that pile of VHS instructional tapes in the back room of your school library actually came from Hell?" Analog horror typically relies on a VHS-tape aesthetic (complete with distortions, static, pops, and audio anomalies) that is applied to an instructional video or documentary, that quickly distorts into a cursed horror concept.
Point of View (POV): These stories are told from the first person - i.e. every shot you see is the direct eyeline of a character. Sometimes it is explained that the character has some type of camera implant, but other times you just simply accept that you're seeing what the character is seeing.
Epistolary Novels: Essentially "found footage books". This format predates any other format, and was essentially the birthplace of found footage. These novels operate under the same principle - a piece of fiction that pretends it's real - except they use exclusively print-based sources (letters, documents, written interviews, transcripts, news articles, text messages, etc.).
For the purposes of my website, I consider all of those to be under the umbrella of "found footage". If you are a purist, you may exclude a lot of things like mockumentary and POV, and consider them something totally separate.
There are some other found-footage adjacent styles that are worth pointing out, but for the purposes of my website, these don't fall under the umbrella of found footage:
Movies with footage as a plot device: Movies like The Ring and The Empty Man are traditionally, cinematically shot, BUT they have scenes or entire plots driven by a character finding footage. They are interesting to talk about in the context of found footage itself, but for the most part they are traditional movies. This also includes Hybrid Found Footage Movies - movies that alternate back-and-forth between a cinematic movie and in-world camera shots. Parts of the movie ARE found footage, but the movie itself is using it as a plot device.
Shot On Video (SOV) Movies: When camcorders became widely accessible, there was a boom as anybody could make their movie ideas come to life without a big studio budget. These all FEEL like found footage movies - because the genre is full of amateurs running around with handheld cameras - but it's not because the camera is supposed to be a part of the story.
Fiction Within Fiction: Some movies or shows are ABOUT a fake piece of content within that movie's universe - for example, the black-and-white film watched in Home Alone, which was completely fabricated for the movie. This is more of a meta type of fiction than it is any kind of found footage.
I hope this guide was helpful if you're new to the found footage format! For the record, I'm a lover of ALL movies and styles, and they all deserve their recognition and space to be discussed. But I still wanted to include this breakdown so visitors know what to expect from my site. Enjoy your stay at Not Quite Reality - and remember, don't stop filming!