Over the Found-Footage Fad?

The hand-held camera genre is upon us again with yet another instalment of Paranormal Activity. That’s right folks, we’re up to chapter four in the supernatural saga. With horror being the prototype of found footage filmmaking, are we getting sick of the faked home video cliché or are we more scared than ever?

The discovered video frenzy has circulated our screens since the early eighties, but it wasn’t until The Blair Witch Project, a nineties cult classic and an amateur footage first, that the genre manifested into a psychological mind-fuck.

Supernatural scares in Paranormal Activity.
Source kurt-less via Flickr

A requirement of the genre is the apparent need for all characters to end up missing or dead, yet thankfully camera equipment is always in pristine condition no matter the multitude of variables that could affect image or sound quality.

Regardless of this major implication, when films get it right, the found footage technique is sure to be a screamer.

While supernatural themes are ancient concepts in cinema, what the genre typically achieves is an unattainable level of scare using the force of suspense. With most films in this category, what makes it so freakin’ scary is the element of the unknown. Rarely do we ever see what is causing the characters to flip out and/or become mentally unsound, rather we are witnesses to shaky camera work and blood-curdling screams.

Entertainment editor of The Week, Scott Meslow claims, “The Blair Witch Project was believable without being grisly, frightening without being repulsive, intriguing without providing all the answers. It was a snuff film with a safety net”.

Don't watch alone. Source HBOIndia via Flickr

This ‘based-on-a-true-story’ concept seems to be Hollywood’s new love affair, with Paranormal Activity succeeding in paying homage to the Blair Witch’s landmark cinema triumph.

But the problem with this fad overkill is that while these horror films have in my book succeeded in causing many sleepless nights and the investment of night-lights, some films (let’s say The Devil Inside) don’t hack it.

What can sometimes be a victory in contemporary cinema can unfortunately also be an utter disappointment.

Horror film phenomena’s work when footage is both possible and powerful. They work when the audience cannot determine true from false and go home Google-ing it, sleeping with one eye open.

I’m still shaken by the ol’ first hand footage but if it can’t be mastered, please Hollywood, leave it alone. 

The Fall of 35mm

With the advent of spring 2012 (or fall for our northern hemisphere counterparts), a deadline looms for film exhibitors around the world. This is the deadline to cash in on the offer propounded by various major film studios that if exhibitors make the conversion from film projection to digital projection, then the studios will pay them a “virtual-print fee” for the next ten years for every new release shown digitally. However, with a price tag of $70,000 to $150,000 per screen, this conversion can be quite costly and near impossible for many specialty art house theatres, which are running on a budget of $500,000 a year.

More than being expensive, the conversion from film projection to digital projection is not necessarily a shift into new technology that is such a desirable one for purist film exhibitors who want to continue to show classic and obscure films in their original format of 35mm.  Quentin Tarantino owns the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles, California and has vowed that the day this cinema completely stops showing films in a 35mm format is the day he burns it to the ground.

Christopher Nolan is another Hollywood director who is a big advocator of continuing to shoot films using 35mm. Before the completion of The Dark Knight Rises, which Nolan shot entirely in 35mm, he held a private screening of the first ten minutes of the film to many members of the Director’s Guild of America urging these men and women to continue to fight for the right of the artist to have the choice between shooting films in whichever format they may choose.

How do you make a bad film worse? Make it 3D!

Barging its manic and monotonous head onto a screen near you, the third dimension of film is costing you more (and making you a likely candidate for Blade’s doppelgänger). But with the promiscuity of the over-used and over-it 3D in question, every Tom, Dick and Harry of the film biz is taking it around the block.
3D used to be a niche novelty. And I blame Avatar completely for tarnishing what used to be visually orgasmic experience.

James Cameron's Avatar, the reason we are suffering
today. Photo courtesy of xyeshu via Flickr

Sure the equation adds up. A wide, whirling world of colour plus an epic display of special effects must equal 3D. But the problem seems that while Avatar, (which was primarily designed to be a 3D experience mind you), was an excellent contender to adopt the 3D tagline, I physically pull my hair out when films possessing the slightest shred of any special effects feel they are worthy of 3D status.

When films such as Step Up 4: Miami Heat and Disney’s mega-flop Mars Needs Moms start to mess around with the once sacred 3D, the profit hungry cinema distributors are merely rehashing shitty 2D films (Burton’s Alice in Wonderland anyone?) to cash in on the gimmick.

While The Guardian journalist, Mark Kermode jests that “(3D cinema) is the 21^st century equivalent of the snood”, he also joins the club of film-fans-against-film-trash.

Don't they look stupid? Photo courtesy of NASA Goddard
Space Flight Centre via Flickr

“The thing these movies have in common is that they are essentially trash – they are perfectly suited to the phoney-baloney gimmickry of 3D,” he writes.

“It is a con designed entirely to protect the bloated bank balances of buck-hungry Hollywood producers.” Amen Kermode.

Yet by and by, while Hollywood money hunger will forever be the demise of quality cinema, I beg filmmakers to consider the craft of 3D over the gimmickry of it and at least stamp the dreaded 3D on something with substance.

How do you feel about 3D films? Tedious or tremendous?