The “found footage” technique has become one of the most popular styles in film, especially in the horror genre, and while The Blair Witch Project played a key role in popularizing it, the first found-footage movie came out almost four decades earlier. The popularity and success of the found-footage style in film mostly rely on how it's often marketed as telling a real-life story, which was the key to The Blair Witch Project’s viral success, and it gives writers and filmmakers a lot of creative freedom. Found footage has been used in a variety of genres, but it’s commonly used in the horror genre.
The world of horror is home to the most popular found-footage movies in film history, such as Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield, and REC, with their success credited to The Blair Witch Project. While The Blair Witch Project is key in the history of found footage in film, the origins of this technique go all the way back to the 1960s, with its history in horror beginning in the 1980s with one of the most controversial movies ever made.
1961's The Connection Was The First Found Footage Movie
The first known movie shot in a found-footage style is The Connection, directed by Shirley Clarke and based on the 1959 play of the same name by Jack Gelber. Released in 1961, The Connection opens with a title card that explains the movie is the result of found footage put together by cameraman J.J. Burden while working for Jim Dunn, an acclaimed documentary filmmaker who disappeared. The movie follows Dunn as he films a group of heroin addicts and former jazz musicians while they wait for their drug connection to arrive. Dunn ends up taking heroin with the rest, and The Connection ends with Dunn telling J.J. that the film belongs to him, with Dunn leaving to the rest of the addicts as they wait for their next connection.
The Connection was involved in censorship issues due to one word used repeatedly to refer to drugs, and though it was ultimately labeled as “vulgar”, the usage of the word wasn’t considered obscene. Still, The Connection performed poorly in of box office, but it was restored and released in 2012, giving it a new chance.
The First Found Footage Horror Movie Was 1980's Cannibal Holocaust
The Connection opened the found-footage door for many filmmakers, but it wasn’t until 1980 that it made its way to the horror genre with Cannibal Holocaust. Directed by Ruggero Deodato, Cannibal Holocaust is an Italian horror movie about an American film crew – director Alan Yates, scriptwriter Faye Daniels, and cameramen Jack Anders and Mark Tomaso – who disappear in the Amazon rainforest while filming a documentary about indigenous cannibal tribes. Anthropologist Harold Monroe agrees to lead a rescue mission to find them but can only recover the crew’s lost cans of film, which an American TV station wishes to broadcast despite their graphic and gruesome content.
Cannibal Holocaust stood out for its visual realism, which ended up getting the crew in big trouble. Cannibal Holocaust was controversial due to its graphic violence, which led to rumors about the murders and more shown in the movie being real, for which Deodato was arrested and charged with multiple counts of murder. Deodato was cleared of all charges after presenting evidence of how they achieved the movie’s most graphic and horrifying scenes, but Cannibal Holocaust was still banned in several countries.
Blair Witch Project Defined The Modern Found Footage Movie
Cannibal Holocaust prepared the ground for horror filmmakers using the found-footage technique, and it’s thanks to it that many found-footage horror movies have had the success they had, most notably The Blair Witch Project. Directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, The Blair Witch Project was released in 1999 and presented the found footage of three filmmaking students – Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard – who went into the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland, in order to film a documentary about the local legend of the Blair Witch.
The Blair Witch Project was a viral sensation thanks to its genius marketing, as the fictional legend of the Blair Witch was marketed as real, with a timeline of events and more shared on the movie’s official website, and the actors were listed as either “missing” or “deceased”, inviting the audience to come forward with any information about them. The team behind The Blair Witch Project went as far as to make fake newspaper articles, newsreels, TV news reports, and staged interviews with actors posing as police officers, investigators, and townspeople. This and more raised questions about whether the events of the movie were real or fiction, and the confusion continued after the movie was released thanks to its realism.
The Blair Witch Project was a huge box-office success, thanks to both its marketing campaign and the movie’s visual and narrative quality, and it successfully revived the found-footage technique while also defining it for the modern audience. The Blair Witch Project influenced found-footage movies like REC, Trollhunter, V/H/S, Cloverfield, and more, but all of them also have a lot to thank Cannibal Holocaust and The Connection for.
