Our product is the influential result of the combination of ‘found footage' horror sub-genre, such as The Blair Witch Project (1999); V/H/S (2012); Paranormal Activity (2007)... Although our initial inspiration of choice is Host (2020), we started to see the inconvenience of using online calls to somehow develop a story out of it. In the end, our main influences are the movies as mentioned above. They all had presented their story as if it was captured by characters within the narrative using handheld cameras, surveillance footage… Instead of showing what the audience wants to see, these found footage movies focus on portraying what the characters actually see. This means that the audience wouldn’t be able to predict what will happen next. As the mysteries in the movie start to unfold, the status of characters will get worse. Through our product, we attempted to show how unpredictable and realistic the event can be, that none of the characters know what is behind the gate.
What makes our product different from those that are as mentioned, is that we develop the story from a newspaper that I found online. It was interesting, considering that we intended to develop the story from scratch, just like any other found footage movies. We figured out that the possibility to twist the information is endless, therefore we use the newspaper as the foundation to develop everything else.
Although there are four characters in our product, we try to display the sequence through one character’s perspective, and that is Louis. It can be quite clear that this character is the most neutral in the group of characters. However, due to him being in the group, he still has to follow his friends and break in. But this doesn’t mean that he is all in to discover the abandoned garden, due to the fact that he was nervous and unconvinced to break in, unlike the other characters.
Horror genre has a different way to evoke fear in the audience, by revealing the supernatural, the killer…, before the characters’ awareness about its presence. Meanwhile, because everything is through the characters’ perspective, found footage synchronizes the fear of the audience with the characters themselves. This not only results in the experience being more realistic, but it also makes the audience feel like all the events actually happened, and that they are really watching a movie.
I don’t think it is mandatory to adapt to new changes on how found footage movies should be filmed. Taking into consideration, Host (2020) adapts and uses online call platforms to make a movie. Instead, I think it’s optional on the recording equipment to use, as long as it doesn’t stamp into one frame. It is all about diversity.