Found footage

For the horror genre, see Found footage (genre).

Found footage is a filmmaking term which describes a method of compiling films partly or entirely of footage which has not been created by the filmmaker, and changing its meaning by placing it in a new context. It should not be mistaken for documentary or compilation films. It is also not to be mistaken with stock footage. The term refers to the "found object" (objet trouvé) of art history.

Experimental and avant-garde film

The American collage artist Joseph Cornell produced one of the earliest found films with his reassembly of East of Borneo, combined with pieces of other films, into a new work he titled Rose Hobart after the leading actress. His film is notable for its Surrealist form and influence on later filmmakers. When Salvador Dalí saw the film, he was famously enraged, believing Cornell had stolen the idea from his thoughts. But Adrian Brunel made, twelve years before, Crossing the Great Sagrada (1924) and Henri Storck conceived, for years earlier, Story of the Unknown soldier (Histoire du soldat inconnu) (1932.

In contrast to Cornell's use, structural film or "Materialfilm" (German) often demands that the artist only use material of preferably unknown origin, not very defined content, and poor physical condition. This material might be treated in any way the artist chooses, even completely untreated, as long as he ignores any meaning or content of the source material.

The second major renaissance of found footage films emerged after Bruce Conner's A Movie (1958). The film mixes ephemeral film clips in a dialectical montage. A famous sequence made up of disparate clips shows "a submarine captain [who] seems to see a scantily dressed woman through his periscope and responds by firing a torpedo which produces a nuclear explosion followed by huge waves ridden by surfboard riders." Conner continued to produce several other found footage films including Report and Take the 5:10 to Dreamland among others.

Subsequently, films by Ernie Gehr, Ken Jacobs, and Bill Morrison have focused on minor manipulations like image enhancement or reductions in speed (or famously no manipulations) in film footage. In Douglas Gordon's 24 Hour Psycho which slows Alfred Hitchcock's film down until it is 24 hours long.

Another example is Stuart Cooper's Overlord, which uses stock footage of the landing on Normandy during World War II to increase realism. The footage was obtained from the Imperial War Museum in the UK. Other parts of the film were shot by Cooper, but using old WWII-era film stock with WWII-era lenses.

Stan Brakhage used found imagery for his film Murder Psalm (1981) while numerous other avant-garde filmmakers have incorporated pieces of found footage into their work.

Other notable users of this technique are Craig Baldwin in his films Spectors of the Spectrum, Tribulation 99 and O No Coronado. Bill Morrisson uses found footage lost and neglected in film archives in his 2002 work Decasia. A similar entry in the found footage canon is Peter Delpeut's Lyrical Nitrate (1991).

Commercial cinema

Another common use of found footage searches for material with recognisable content, which is edited into more or less narrative structures. Through means of editing, sound, voice-over, subtitles and/or inserts, the filmmaker tweaks the interpretation of the audience in a way that it accepts the new truth of the footage. Normally the source footage is of unknown origin, however, if footage with recognisable content (like historical or well-known commercial footage) is used the result can be made a parody or a political statement. A term which describes this genre is mockumentary.

One of the first examples in mainstream cinema is Orson Welles' F for Fake (1974), which masterfully plays with truth and fiction and seems to be able to prove each of its statements. Another example of the use of found footage is in Woody Allen's first film, What's Up, Tiger Lily? in which Allen took a Japanese spy film by Senkichi Taniguchi, completely re-edited it and wrote a new soundtrack made up of his own dialogue for comic effect.

A third meaning of found footage arose with the invention of TV formats which featured odd films and videos, mostly done by amateurs, combined with outtakes of film and video professionals, as well as stunts and accidents from sports shows.

Music video and VJing

A certain style of music video makes extensive use of found footage, mostly found on TV, like news, documentaries, old (and odd) films etc. Prominent examples are videos of bands such as Public Enemy and Coldcut. The latter also project video material during their stage show, which includes live mixing of video footage. Artists such as Vicki Bennett, also known as People Like Us, use Creative Commons archives such as the Prelinger Archive.

Practitioners

• Martin Arnold
• Craig Baldwin
• Dara Birnbaum
• Abigail Child
• Bruce Conner
• Joseph Cornell
• Guy Debord
• William Farley
• Péter Forgács
• Ruggero Deodato
• Barbara Hammer
• Ken Jacobs
• Matthias Müller
• Vivian Ostrovsky
• Paul Pfeiffer
• Luther Price
• Philip Solomon
• Chick Strand
• System D-128
• Peter Tscherkassky
• René Viénet

See also

• Experimental film
• Found Footage Festival
• Mashup (video)
• Montage (filmmaking)
• Music video
• Vietnam in HD, in which thirteen Americans retell their stories in Vietnam paired with found footage from the battlefield
• VJing
• WWII in HD, in which twelve American service members retell their stories in WWII paired with found footage from the battlefield

Further reading

• Cut: Film as Found Object in Contemporary Video, Stefano Basilico, Milwaukee Art Museum 2004.
• Found Footage Film, Cecilia Hausheer, Christoph Settele, Luzern 1992, ISBN 3-909310-08-7
• Films Beget Films, Jay Leyda, London, George Allen & Unwin 1964.
• Recycled Images: The Art and Politics of Found Footage Films, William C. Wees, Anthology Film Archives, New York: 1993. ISBN 0-911689-19-2

External links

• Found Footage Films and videos Video Channel
• The Recycled Cinema
• Cartographie du Found Footage by Nicole Brenez
• Remontando el siglo XX by Enrique Piñuel Spanish Found Footage Filmmakers (Spanish)