The camera as character: theorising the camera’s agency in found-footage horror film

Nisa, Ami (2024) The camera as character: theorising the camera’s agency in found-footage horror film. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

Text (Doctoral thesis) nisa.amina_phd (10026537).pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only until 25 July 2024. Download (36MB) | Request a copy

Abstract

The popularity of the found-footage sub-genre of horror films soared between 2007 and 2017, especially in the USA. The films in this subgenre are typically described as narrative films made of assembled footage that the filmmakers claim to have "discovered." Found-footage is frequently thought to produce horror through constrained first-person perspectives and an appearance of "realism," with an intentionally amateur aesthetic typified by obscured camera angles and a reliance on unsteady handheld cameras. The scholarship on the sub-genre frequently discusses the camera, but the emphasis of these analyses stays on how the human characters use the camera (the footage they produce), as well as audiences' affective reactions to the camera aesthetic. Thus, the existing scholarship on the sub-genre does not question the camera's function within the text; it merely suggests that cameras are essential to the sub-genre.

Instead of considering the camera as a mediating tool for the human characters (or the sub-genre’s filmmakers), I want to consider the camera as a central figure of the found-footage film. To emphasize this centrality, I am seriously considering the notion that the camera is not merely a tool for recording the circumstances of the human protagonists, but rather it is a character that is just as significant as (or even more so than) the human protagonists themselves. Utilising a post-human, new materialist perspective, I address the agency of the non-human camera. Alongside the work of Barad (2007), I use theoretical stances from STS (Science and Technology Studies) and the philosophy of technology to challenge the social aspects of human-technology relations that serve as the foundation of the sub-genre. These connections are crucial to comprehending the horror found-footage films produce.

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