You Are The Camera, You Are The Character: Apparatus Theory and Found Footage

This October, Citizen Jane is premiering a host of new content in a new series, This One's For the Ghouls: Women, the "Other" and Horror. Focusing exclusively on the horror genre, this month will contain spine-tingling essays and reviews discussing our Stephens students' favorite horror films. We'll dig deep (six feet deep, in fact) into the roles and portrayals of women in horror, as well as the abject -- the "other" -- and how those elements interact in some of the most well-known (and/or gruesomest) films in the canon. Check back here soon for more!

Home movies. Security camera footage. A cell phone video. A webcam. These record our daily lives, not voyeuristically, but with the cold, unbiased eye of a lens. The subgenre of horror known as found footage—loosely defined as film seen through recovered or live footage shot in-fiction by a character—uses this familiar and seemingly innocuous format to place the viewer inside the action, rather than as an outside observer. But Apparatus Theory posits that the viewer is already inherently a part of the film, due to the linear nature of filmmaking and editing. So how does found footage, which has an almost paradoxical relationship with its audience, align with Apparatus Theory?

            Found footage as we know it is a relatively new genre in the history of horror. Its inception is typically cited as the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project, and it certainly popularized and delineated the formula, although an earlier example can be found in 1980’s Cannibal Holocaust. Though it’s typically shot with a handheld camera, newer entries have utilized security cameras, cell phones, and even computer screens. It’s a great genre for indie filmmakers—the intentionally “amateur” look of the footage and more natural lighting allow for a significantly lowered budget, and your cast members will often even be shooting and lighting for themselves.

            Apparatus Theory is a field of Marxist film analysis that arose in the 70’s and focuses on the ideological nature of film. The theory states first and foremost that all films are political because they’re made by humans who exist in a political space. This political space is life, and no one is exempt from the reality of surrounding ideologies. And because filmmakers are trying to represent that reality, a film cannot be unbiased. It’s about the relationship between film and the audience, and the audience’s role as an observer.

This is a simplistic summation of the theory, but what matters for the subject of found footage is one aspect of it— the idea that because of how films are shot and edited, the viewer has the point of view of being within the film, and cannot separate themselves from the narrative. Therefore, they are able to be influenced by the ideology of the film. Horror itself is arguably one of the most directly political genres, aside from films that deal with those issues head on. Fear is political, what and who we are afraid of is influenced by our biases, values, and beliefs.

            But a found footage film is not shot nor edited like a traditional movie. It’s a true point of view experience, as most of the time you are directly seeing what the character sees. You move with them. The footage isn’t edited for flow (at least within the fiction of the film), the scenes often end only when the camera is shut off, and a lot of it is made to appear as one long take in post.

In that sense, it demonstrates the tenets of Apparatus Theory in their purest form. You are the camera. You are in the movie. You are not privy to anything the character doesn’t see, or, more accurately, that the camera doesn’t see. It’s the most linear a film can be shot, without changing perspectives or sweeping overhead shots.

But there is something important to consider. The camera doesn’t move on its own. As said, in fiction, a character in the story (or multiple) is carrying it and filming. You may be watching through their eyes/lens, but the point of view is someone, not just a nebulous point in space created by editing. Most of the time, we know who they are. We meet them through the mirror, or through them turning the camera to themselves, or just from the other characters addressing them.

And there is the paradox. You, the audience, are explicitly not in the film. You are not the character holding the camera, the voice behind it is not yours. And yet, the viewer must identify with a perspective.

The audience exists both within and outside the fiction of the film. You are the camera. You are holding the camera. And yet, you are not the one holding the camera. You are the discoverer of the footage. You are the audience, in real life, and within the film.

What does this mean for using Apparatus Theory to discuss found footage? Does that make the experience more or less of a “reality”?

To this, I say: film makes you an observer of a reality. Found footage makes you a participant of that reality, in a more integrated sense, because you become a character, instead of a bystander.

This embodies another idea derived from Apparatus Theory— that being that a character has no agency of their own, all actions being determined by the ideology of not just the filmmakers, but outside society. As a passenger in found footage, you don’t just watch this play out, but imagine yourself as an active participant, despite the fact that the character themselves is not “active” and has no free will.

I hold that, despite its paradoxical relationship with its audience, found footage demonstrates the assertions of Apparatus Theory more readily than traditional film. The audience is put into a more personal position in the film, and are more susceptible to its ideas. Found footage often doesn’t get the critical recognition or analysis it deserves, but it clearly has much to mine.