Found Footage Quotes

'Paranormal Activity' was the first of our independently made/studio-released films. It was also the ultimate low-budget high-concept movie, which is what we are always looking for. 'Paranormal Activity' was the genesis of our model, of which I am so proud.

Where 'Paranormal Activity' really comes into its own is its rhetoric of legitimacy - how it uses itself to authenticate itself, and thus furthers the pretence of being real.

When people come to me with an idea and they say, 'We can do it found footage or traditional,' I always say to do it traditionally.

A perfect example is 'Zero Dark Thirty.' That's the closest thing to reportage that I've done because a lot of that was shooting from the hip and found images and giving the actors a lot of freedom to explore the space and not have to repeat their actions twice and basically workshop on-camera.

What bother me, not "bother me," exactly; that's not the right way to put it. But especially in the horror genre, once a movie like Paranormal Activity comes out and becomes popular - and that's a totally fine and valid movie - everyone starts copying it. Everything becomes a found-footage movie that looks like somebody shot it with their phone.

If you look to the few films that have been really successful, 'Insidious,' 'Paranormal Activity,' it's all basically the old monsters.

I'm a big horror fan. I'm a genre fan. I like to make these movies. They're my favorite kinds of movies to make.

An effective found footage movie is much harder to make than an effective traditionally shot movie. A crappy one is much easier to make because you take your camera, and you shoot the scene, and you're done. But to make it effective, they're actually much trickier.

Movies, to a large extent, stand or fall on the strength of their scripts. But a documentary is a collection of found objects: fragments you've collected, accidents of interview and happenstance, pieces of stock footage that surface in the course of six to nine months of research and production.

YouTube is found footage. It's here to stay, and people will always come up with new concepts that will make sense for found footage.

'Clown' started as a fake trailer for a nonexistent movie.

I'm really proud of Blair Witch Project as a film, but as far as the cultural phenomenon of it - that was just weird luck.

'The Blair Witch Project' is great for motion sickness. The first time you see it, it is extremely creepy. The first time I saw it, I saw it on a bootleg tape on a tour bus before it had even come out. It was one of the first movies I'd seen like that. I didn't even realize it was a damn movie!

My father always said I have a face for radio, and 'Cloverfield' was one of my finest pieces of work.

'The Blair Witch Project' is a great movie.

I love 'Paranormal Activity' because it scares you more with little effort. I like 'The Blair Witch Project' and the 'Omen' series and 'The Exorcist.' I love 'Exorcism of Emily Rose.'

'Ouija' has a steady directorial hand, some attractive young actors who taking the silliness seriously, and few admirable genre elements. It renounces the faux-found-footage ShakyCam style, instead employing a traditionally smooth visual style.

I would highly, highly recommend seeing 'Paranormal Activity' with a friend or, better yet, a group.

For a found-footage-style movie, there's a definite advantage in using unknowns, because it helps sell the illusion that it's real. A known actor would get in the way of the suspension of disbelief.

The movie that scared the hell out of me was 'The Blair Witch Project.' I can't remember another movie that scared me the way that one did.

'Cloverfield' and 'REC' are great examples of movies that took kind of tired genres, the monster movie and the zombie film, and by filming them in found footage, it was a new perspective. It gives you a whole new take and helps you re-experience that all over again.

It's funny, people don't think of 'Cloverfield' as being restrained because it's a handycam movie, but the only reason it's a handycam movie is because that was supposed to be the reality of the situation.

There have been movies like 'Paranormal Activity' or 'Blair Witch Project' in Hollywood that showed you could do movies with little or no money. It doesn't prevent them from creating larger than life spectacles as well.

One of the advantages of this found footage format is that you can have deliberately badly composed frames. Here we can put a camera in the weirdest angle and it kind of throws you off. You never know what you are supposed to be paying attention to. It's deliberate chaos.

Like anything, I think there are some wonderful found footage movies, and there are some less good. Certainly when it's done well, I really love it. I really love it as a genre.