Found footage is a cinematic technique in which all or a substantial part of the work is presented as if it were film or video recordings recorded by characters in the story, and later "found" and presented to the audience. The events on screen are typically seen through the camera of one or more of the characters involved, often accompanied by their real-time, off-camera commentary. For added realism, the cinematography may be done by the actors themselves as they perform, and shaky camera work and naturalistic acting are routinely employed. The footage may be presented as if it were "raw" and complete or as if it had been edited into a narrative by those who "found" it.

The most common use of the technique is in horror films, such as The Blair Witch Project, Cannibal Holocaust, Paranormal Activity, Diary of the Dead, REC, Cloverfield, Trollhunter, V/H/S, and Incantation, where the footage is purported to be the only surviving record of the events, with the participants now missing or dead. It has also been used in science fiction (e.g., Chronicle, District 9, Project Almanac, Europa Report), drama (e.g., Zero Day, Exhibit A), comedy (e.g., Project X), mystery (e.g., Searching), family (e.g., Earth to Echo), experimental arthouse (e.g., The Connection, The Outwaters) and war (e.g. 84C MoPic) films.

Although found footage was originally the name of an entirely different genre, it is now frequently used to describe pseudo-documentaries crafted with this narrative technique (e.g. Lake Mungo, Noroi: The Curse) and screenlife films (e.g. Unfriended, Searching). The film magazine Variety has, for example, used the term "faux found-footage film" to describe some titles. Film scholar David Bordwell criticizes this recent usage, arguing that it sows confusion, and instead prefers the term "discovered footage" for the narrative gimmick.^[1]

Found-footage films typically employ one or more of six cinematic techniques—first-person perspective, pseudo-documentary, mockumentary, news footage, surveillance footage, or screenlife —according to an analysis of 500 found-footage films conducted by Found Footage Critic.^[2]

As a storytelling technique, found footage has precedents in literature, particularly in the epistolary novel, which typically consists of either correspondence or diary entries, purportedly written by a character central to the events. Like found footage, the epistolary technique has often been employed in horror fiction: both Dracula and Frankenstein are epistolary novels, as is The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft.

In filmmaking, the 1980 cult horror feature Cannibal Holocaust is often claimed to be the first example of found footage.^[3] However, Shirley Clarke's arthouse film The Connection (1961) and the Orson Welles directed The Other Side of the Wind, a found footage movie shot in the early 1970s but released in 2018, predate Cannibal Holocaust.^[4] America's Deadliest Home Video (1991), remains a potent use of the format as well as an unsung groundbreaker in the found-footage field - an ahead-of-its-time application of the vérité-video form to the horror/crime genre.^[5] The device was popularised by The Blair Witch Project (1999).^[6] Found footage has since been used in other commercially successful films, including Paranormal Activity (2007), REC (2007), Cloverfield (2008) and Chronicle (2012).^[7] Reviewing V/H/S for The A.V. Club, Scott Tobia notes that the genre "has since become to the '00s and '10s what slasher movies were to the '80s."^[8]

The genre appeals to film producers because of its lower cost, as it is believed the illusion of amateur documentary style allows lower production values than would be accepted on a conventional film.

Writer-director Christopher B. Landon, who has made several found footage horror films, posits that the genre is likely to extend in the future outside horror.^[9]

• Analog horror
• Cinéma vérité
• Epistolary novel
• Fictional book
• Hoax
• Mockumentary
• Pseudo-documentary
• Screenlife