My recent essay here raised one of the difficulties of working in the “found footage” genre: how much of the artistic impact in the finished film is due to the artistic skills of the filmmakers who created the source footage, and how much of it is due to the found footage artist who made the film? Filmmaker Masha Godovannaya wrote a guest post in response to my essay here.
Does this matter to you as a viewer? Do you have examples of specific films you’ve seen, where this issue came up in your mind? If you are a filmmaker who works with found footage, is this issue a concern for you, and, if so, how have you dealt with it?
Let me hear from you! As with any online discussion, please listen carefully and reply thoughtfully. Thanks.
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For me, these films feature the skills and talent of the film editor, collage artist, constructivist, which are ideally foregrounded. There are so many interesting examples. from Arthur Lipsett's Very Nice, Very Nice [https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/experimental-film] to Abigail Child's Mirror World. An interesting spectrum exists between films created from documentary footage and those from fiction, with different constaints and effects. Making a found footage film from such unfinished, unreleased footage as Eisenstein's Mexican Project seems at least a public service. Can anyone provide links to the films of Masha G?
Hi Robert, since I have plenty of films, it will be hard to select without know your interests))) All films are listed on my above-mentioned website (or Light Cone), and you can let me know which one you could be potentially interested in. you can drop me a line at seligerus@yahoo.com with your choice))) warmly, m
On the subject of found footage I’ve no theoretical axe to grind, but last year an idea (which I won’t pretend was a clever idea) formed in my mind to make a short film using footage from some of the movie serials common in the pre-TV era. Not the kind of thing I’ve done before, but I thought it was worth a shot. A second idea seemed to follow naturally: I’d make it not as a single film, but as a serial. The result was The NEXT THRILLING CHAPTER, a suite of seventeen short films plus one trailer, only recently finished. If my observations aren’t startling, at least they’re fresh.
My relation to the footage I used began more than half a century ago. I never forgot the eerie and shocking first chapter of The FIGHTING DEVIL DOGS. I’d endured the small trauma of being forced to leave the hero of MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR SATAN to face a clanking robot when my parents took me on vacation. And occasionally, through the years, I was haunted by dim recollection of two images (accompanied by a feeling of drab hopelessness and alienation) that belonged to a serial about which I otherwise remembered nothing, not even the title. In the course of research last year I recognized these images in The LOST PLANET.
I suppose one might choose to work with pre-existing footage for a variety of reasons, but for me it was personal. In my childish way, I’d once taken these adventures very seriously, and wondered now whether I might take them seriously again. I wanted their simple-minded heroes to stand up and fight against some of my current political anxieties.
The project was predicated on availability of the serials as inexpensive dvds. In all, I watched thirty-four, most of which I hadn’t seen before. The number wasn’t predetermined; there’s nothing significant about it. It was as many as I could stand. There were compensatory delights, but much of this preliminary research—the search for images—might be characterized as drudgery.
To paraphrase a question you raise, David, might I have better realized my idea by shooting new images? For better or worse, the answer in this case is definitively no. Use of old serial footage wasn’t a choice that came afterward. It was the foundational premise. It wasn’t an idea complete in itself, but the start of a process in which even script and soundtrack were excavated, in part, from pre-existing material.
The exercise was a success. The serial’s complete. Yet I find now that the nature of the footage presents a problem. I wasn’t relying on viewers to share my relation to the footage I used, yet I’m a little surprised to find some indifferent to what I’ve done because they have no interest in movie serials. Is it too soon to be concerned that a more sophisticated audience might discover I’ve failed to maintain an adequate ironic or formal distance from this relentlessly lowbrow material?
If I can wriggle out of that one, I may have one or two further observations to offer...
Bosco, thanks so much for sharing your experiences, your insights, and your ideas. This is obviously one example of a passionate and personal reason to use found footage rather than shooting new footage. In my opinion, it is absolutely too soon to be concerned about any particular responses from anyone. Personally, I am quite tired of the need to appear "sophisticated" by being ironic towards popular forms, and I love it when someone embraces their genuine love of any kind of lowbrow film.
Whether the box is marked highbrow or lowbrow, I usually get directed to the other box by whoever’s inside. My aesthetics are evidently idiosyncratic rather than koinosyncratic. Experiences during and after acts of attentive engagement alter my apprehension of the world, sometimes permanently. Works that provoke such responses serve as route markers along the way to becoming who I am.
In this respect, my experience of movie serials never bore much weight, though several left an indelible trace. Returning to them in preparation for what became The NEXT THRILLING CHAPTER, I didn’t expect to be enchanted or excited. I just wanted shots and sequences that would form a visual narrative. But before I’d even gone in search of my images—yes, MY images: images that, whatever they were, would be subject to MY intention—I made a decision that impacted on how they’d be used.
Intertitles. I find them refreshing. I’ve been listening to dialogue and voiceovers my whole life, but intertitles invite (or demand) a different kind of attention. Texts were accordingly broken into short sections.
But it was soon clear that a sustained narrative couldn’t be constructed using my provisional stock of images, at least not one that was visually self-consistent. I think I’d always known it, but plunged ahead hopefully, as if confident of ultimate success. Instead, here I was making something that might masquerade as a movie, but was actually more like a comic strip. Captions would tell the story, while panels—selected footage—provided a commentary. I feared the one-two of narration followed up by illustration might be wearisome, but put together the opening chapter as a test, and it wasn’t dreadful.
The film material began to assert itself when I came to the second chapter. At the outset I’d kept an eye open for shots and sequences with something of poetry or magic—or even just plain oddity—that might be deployed athwart the text, either independently or as a kind of counterpoint. I found some, and used some, but I had no embarrassment of riches. Some things that were admirable in their original context—framing, camera movement, locations—had no obvious merit once prised loose from it. Degradation of image also rendered much of the material unprepossessing. (I’m not Bill Morrison.) So, to the question of how much the serial depends on the pre-existing and visible qualities of the original footage, the answer is not so much.
On the other hand, that the footage originates in the past is immediately perceptible. Does a viewer perceive it reflexively as a vehicle for satire? I’m certain I used it as freely as I did because I was conscious of its origin as cheap adventure fiction. Yet I also seized gratefully on shots of war and disaster appropriated by the serials. The Hindenburg burned in 1937; two years later, Bela Lugosi knocked it out of the sky in The PHANTOM CREEPS.
And that reminds me: I watched Bruce Conner’s A MOVIE last week, for the first time in thirty years, and spotted about half a dozen details echoed by The NEXT THRILLING CHAPTER. None were deliberate, though I was certainly conscious of working in Conner’s wake. I’m pleased to acknowledge this furrow’s been ploughed before.
Thank you so much. This continues to be detailed and clear description of how one found footage artist thinks about the material while working, especially your great description of the constant re-evaluation that goes on while making something.
Thanks for the kind words, David. I’ve welcomed the opportunity to try to articulate what I was doing. A few more details range from the obvious to not so obvious:
At a basic level, footage was used to illustrate the text. “Behind the facade of a supply warehouse in the business district” reads the intertitle, and the shot that follows is, as far as the viewer is concerned, precisely that.
Narrative develops in a more complex way. Intertitles then tell about a “vast criminal network” and a sequence of shots show a truck entering a garage, and a man going into an office. This individual hands a picture to a man behind a desk and, after we see the picture, the man behind the desk gives the first man some money. The viewer is invited to read these shots, in relation to the intertitles, as if they belong together. This is the everyday alchemy of film-editing in a narrative context, but the illusion of continuity must be accepted in defiance of the fact that the shots originate in different serials. In this case it’s easy enough; other instances demand the viewer’s willing collaboration. Yet even where the film material wanders off at a tangent, the text beats narrative time.
Sometimes images take the lead and, as a result, the intertitles appear to lag in providing context or commentary. Selection of shots was done very freely. Where the reins are not drawn too tightly, footage liberated from old serials basks at least in the half-life of a new-found independence.
The intertitles, however, are relentless. Despite some obvious gags, viewers are unlikely to find the serial funny. Laughter is a balm, but there’s just no time. And the soundtrack, lugubrious in places, sometimes abrasive, occasionally distracting or intrusive, doesn’t offer much encouragement.
Now and again, old movie serials are discussed by the intertitles—but what is the text really saying? I trust it’s apparent movie serials are not the subject. If this is so, then the appropriated footage is both accurately placed and at the same time imaginatively displaced by the text. It’s not something I’d count on a viewer being aware of, but I think it’s perceptible...
I'm in the middle of watching your serial, and I find it fascinating and original. If you like, please share a link, and let others know where they can watch it.
Thanks for taking an interest, David. If anyone else is interested, the trailer and all seventeen parts of THE NEXT THRILLING CHAPTER are available on YouTube
For me, these films feature the skills and talent of the film editor, collage artist, constructivist, which are ideally foregrounded. There are so many interesting examples. from Arthur Lipsett's Very Nice, Very Nice [https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/experimental-film] to Abigail Child's Mirror World. An interesting spectrum exists between films created from documentary footage and those from fiction, with different constaints and effects. Making a found footage film from such unfinished, unreleased footage as Eisenstein's Mexican Project seems at least a public service. Can anyone provide links to the films of Masha G?
Dear Robert, thank you very much for your comment!
i have some of my films available at my website - https://mashagodovannaya.wordpress.com/ and some could be found at Light Cone -- https://lightcone.org/en/filmmaker-1111-masha-godovannaya
or you can drop me a line at https://mashagodovannaya.wordpress.com/contact-2/ and i will be happy to send you links to the films that may interest you
Thanks, Masha. I'm reading your note for the first time a year later. Appreciate your offer. I would be happy to look at any film of your selection.
Hi Robert, since I have plenty of films, it will be hard to select without know your interests))) All films are listed on my above-mentioned website (or Light Cone), and you can let me know which one you could be potentially interested in. you can drop me a line at seligerus@yahoo.com with your choice))) warmly, m
On the subject of found footage I’ve no theoretical axe to grind, but last year an idea (which I won’t pretend was a clever idea) formed in my mind to make a short film using footage from some of the movie serials common in the pre-TV era. Not the kind of thing I’ve done before, but I thought it was worth a shot. A second idea seemed to follow naturally: I’d make it not as a single film, but as a serial. The result was The NEXT THRILLING CHAPTER, a suite of seventeen short films plus one trailer, only recently finished. If my observations aren’t startling, at least they’re fresh.
My relation to the footage I used began more than half a century ago. I never forgot the eerie and shocking first chapter of The FIGHTING DEVIL DOGS. I’d endured the small trauma of being forced to leave the hero of MYSTERIOUS DOCTOR SATAN to face a clanking robot when my parents took me on vacation. And occasionally, through the years, I was haunted by dim recollection of two images (accompanied by a feeling of drab hopelessness and alienation) that belonged to a serial about which I otherwise remembered nothing, not even the title. In the course of research last year I recognized these images in The LOST PLANET.
I suppose one might choose to work with pre-existing footage for a variety of reasons, but for me it was personal. In my childish way, I’d once taken these adventures very seriously, and wondered now whether I might take them seriously again. I wanted their simple-minded heroes to stand up and fight against some of my current political anxieties.
The project was predicated on availability of the serials as inexpensive dvds. In all, I watched thirty-four, most of which I hadn’t seen before. The number wasn’t predetermined; there’s nothing significant about it. It was as many as I could stand. There were compensatory delights, but much of this preliminary research—the search for images—might be characterized as drudgery.
To paraphrase a question you raise, David, might I have better realized my idea by shooting new images? For better or worse, the answer in this case is definitively no. Use of old serial footage wasn’t a choice that came afterward. It was the foundational premise. It wasn’t an idea complete in itself, but the start of a process in which even script and soundtrack were excavated, in part, from pre-existing material.
The exercise was a success. The serial’s complete. Yet I find now that the nature of the footage presents a problem. I wasn’t relying on viewers to share my relation to the footage I used, yet I’m a little surprised to find some indifferent to what I’ve done because they have no interest in movie serials. Is it too soon to be concerned that a more sophisticated audience might discover I’ve failed to maintain an adequate ironic or formal distance from this relentlessly lowbrow material?
If I can wriggle out of that one, I may have one or two further observations to offer...
Bosco, thanks so much for sharing your experiences, your insights, and your ideas. This is obviously one example of a passionate and personal reason to use found footage rather than shooting new footage. In my opinion, it is absolutely too soon to be concerned about any particular responses from anyone. Personally, I am quite tired of the need to appear "sophisticated" by being ironic towards popular forms, and I love it when someone embraces their genuine love of any kind of lowbrow film.
Whether the box is marked highbrow or lowbrow, I usually get directed to the other box by whoever’s inside. My aesthetics are evidently idiosyncratic rather than koinosyncratic. Experiences during and after acts of attentive engagement alter my apprehension of the world, sometimes permanently. Works that provoke such responses serve as route markers along the way to becoming who I am.
In this respect, my experience of movie serials never bore much weight, though several left an indelible trace. Returning to them in preparation for what became The NEXT THRILLING CHAPTER, I didn’t expect to be enchanted or excited. I just wanted shots and sequences that would form a visual narrative. But before I’d even gone in search of my images—yes, MY images: images that, whatever they were, would be subject to MY intention—I made a decision that impacted on how they’d be used.
Intertitles. I find them refreshing. I’ve been listening to dialogue and voiceovers my whole life, but intertitles invite (or demand) a different kind of attention. Texts were accordingly broken into short sections.
But it was soon clear that a sustained narrative couldn’t be constructed using my provisional stock of images, at least not one that was visually self-consistent. I think I’d always known it, but plunged ahead hopefully, as if confident of ultimate success. Instead, here I was making something that might masquerade as a movie, but was actually more like a comic strip. Captions would tell the story, while panels—selected footage—provided a commentary. I feared the one-two of narration followed up by illustration might be wearisome, but put together the opening chapter as a test, and it wasn’t dreadful.
The film material began to assert itself when I came to the second chapter. At the outset I’d kept an eye open for shots and sequences with something of poetry or magic—or even just plain oddity—that might be deployed athwart the text, either independently or as a kind of counterpoint. I found some, and used some, but I had no embarrassment of riches. Some things that were admirable in their original context—framing, camera movement, locations—had no obvious merit once prised loose from it. Degradation of image also rendered much of the material unprepossessing. (I’m not Bill Morrison.) So, to the question of how much the serial depends on the pre-existing and visible qualities of the original footage, the answer is not so much.
On the other hand, that the footage originates in the past is immediately perceptible. Does a viewer perceive it reflexively as a vehicle for satire? I’m certain I used it as freely as I did because I was conscious of its origin as cheap adventure fiction. Yet I also seized gratefully on shots of war and disaster appropriated by the serials. The Hindenburg burned in 1937; two years later, Bela Lugosi knocked it out of the sky in The PHANTOM CREEPS.
And that reminds me: I watched Bruce Conner’s A MOVIE last week, for the first time in thirty years, and spotted about half a dozen details echoed by The NEXT THRILLING CHAPTER. None were deliberate, though I was certainly conscious of working in Conner’s wake. I’m pleased to acknowledge this furrow’s been ploughed before.
Thank you so much. This continues to be detailed and clear description of how one found footage artist thinks about the material while working, especially your great description of the constant re-evaluation that goes on while making something.
Thanks for the kind words, David. I’ve welcomed the opportunity to try to articulate what I was doing. A few more details range from the obvious to not so obvious:
At a basic level, footage was used to illustrate the text. “Behind the facade of a supply warehouse in the business district” reads the intertitle, and the shot that follows is, as far as the viewer is concerned, precisely that.
Narrative develops in a more complex way. Intertitles then tell about a “vast criminal network” and a sequence of shots show a truck entering a garage, and a man going into an office. This individual hands a picture to a man behind a desk and, after we see the picture, the man behind the desk gives the first man some money. The viewer is invited to read these shots, in relation to the intertitles, as if they belong together. This is the everyday alchemy of film-editing in a narrative context, but the illusion of continuity must be accepted in defiance of the fact that the shots originate in different serials. In this case it’s easy enough; other instances demand the viewer’s willing collaboration. Yet even where the film material wanders off at a tangent, the text beats narrative time.
Sometimes images take the lead and, as a result, the intertitles appear to lag in providing context or commentary. Selection of shots was done very freely. Where the reins are not drawn too tightly, footage liberated from old serials basks at least in the half-life of a new-found independence.
The intertitles, however, are relentless. Despite some obvious gags, viewers are unlikely to find the serial funny. Laughter is a balm, but there’s just no time. And the soundtrack, lugubrious in places, sometimes abrasive, occasionally distracting or intrusive, doesn’t offer much encouragement.
Now and again, old movie serials are discussed by the intertitles—but what is the text really saying? I trust it’s apparent movie serials are not the subject. If this is so, then the appropriated footage is both accurately placed and at the same time imaginatively displaced by the text. It’s not something I’d count on a viewer being aware of, but I think it’s perceptible...
I'm in the middle of watching your serial, and I find it fascinating and original. If you like, please share a link, and let others know where they can watch it.
Thanks for taking an interest, David. If anyone else is interested, the trailer and all seventeen parts of THE NEXT THRILLING CHAPTER are available on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@thenextthrillingchapter7464/videos
and on Vimeo
https://vimeo.com/search?q=next%20thrilling%20chapter