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Following the massive found-footage horror surge of the 2000s inspired by The Blair Witch Project, the subgenre didn't fade away but rather transformed into different styles. Viewers saw the rise of computer-screen films, newly designed interpretations of the found-footage concept, and showy one-take movies dominating the screens where shakycam shots and unbelievably persistent filmmakers once reigned.

A major exception to this pattern is the ongoing V/H/S series, a horror anthology that created its own surge in short-form horror and has kept the found-footage dream alive through seven seasonal releases. The latest in the franchise, 2025’s V/H/S Halloween, includes five shorts that all take place around Halloween, strung together with a wrapper story (“Diet Phantasma”) that involves a brutally disengaged researcher leading a set of product experiments on a diet cola that kills the participants trying it in a range of messy, over-the-top ways.

At V/H/S Halloween’s world premiere at the 2025 version of Austin’s Fantastic Fest, each of the V/H/S Halloween filmmakers assembled for a post-screening Q&A where director Anna Zlokovic described first-person scary movies as “hard as fuck to shoot.” Her co-directors applauded in response. They later explained why they feel shooting a first-person film is tougher — or in some instances, easier! — than making a traditional scary film.

The discussion has been condensed for concision and clarity.

Why Is Found-Footage Horror So Difficult to Shoot?

Micheline Pitt, co-director of “Home Haunt”: I think the most challenging thing as an creator is being limited by your artistic vision, because each element has to be justified by the character operating the camera. So I believe that's the part that's incredibly tough for me, is to separate myself from my creativity and my concepts, and having to stay in a confined space.

Another director, filmmaker of “Kidprint”: I actually told her recently — I concur with that, but I also differ with it vehemently in a very specific way, because I greatly enjoy an unrestricted environment that's 360 degrees. I discovered this to be so freeing, because the blocking and the filming are the identical. In traditional filmmaking, the positioning and the coverage are completely opposite.

If the character has to look left, the coverage has to face right. And the reality that once you set up the action [in a found-footage movie], you have determined your coverage — that was so amazing to me. I have watched 500 first-person movies, but until you shoot your initial shaky-cam movie… Day one, you're like, “Ohhh!”

So once you know where the character goes, that's the coverage — the camera doesn't shift left when the character moves right, the camera moves forward when the person moves forward. You film the sequence once, and that's it — we avoid capture individual dialogues. It progresses in one direction, it reaches the end, and then we move in the next direction. As a storyteller seeking simplicity, who hasn't shot a standard multi-angle shot in a long time, I was like, "This is great, this limitation actually is freeing, because you just need to figure out the same thing once."

Anna Zlokovic, director of “Coochie Coochie Coo”: In my opinion the difficult aspect is the suspension of disbelief for the viewers. Everything has to feel real. The sound has to seem like it's actually happening. The acting have to appear believable. If you have an element like an adult man in a diaper, how do you sell that as realistic? It's ridiculous, but you have to create the sense like it exists in the environment correctly. I discovered that to be difficult — you can lose people easily at any moment. It just takes one fuck-up.

Another filmmaker, creator of “Diet Phantasma”: I concur with Alex — as soon as you get the blocking down, it's great. But when you've got so many physical effects happening at one time, and trying to make sure you're panning onto it and not fucking up, and then setup takes — you have a limited number of time to achieve all these elements correctly.

Our set had a large barrier in the path, and you were unable to hear anyone. Alex's [shoot] seems like great fun. Our project was very hard. I only had 72 hours to do it. It can be liberating, because with found footage, you can make some allowances. Even if you make a mistake, it was destined to appear like low-quality anyway, because you're putting filters on it, or you're employing a low-quality camera. So it's good and it's bad.

R.H. Norman, filmmaker of “Home Haunt”: I would say establishing pace is very challenging if you're filming primarily oners. The method we used was, "OK, this was edited in camera. There's this guy, the father, and he turns the camera on and off, and that creates our cuts." That required a many fake oners. But you really have to live in the moment. You really have to see exactly how your shot appears, because what's going into the camera, and in certain cases, there's no cutting around it.

We knew we had only two or three attempts for each scene, because ours was very ambitious. We attempted to focus on discovering varying paces between the attempts, because we didn't know what we were going to get in editing. And the true difficulty with found footage is, you're needing to conceal those cuts on moving fog, on various elements, and you really never know where those edits are will be placed, and if they're going to betray your entire project of attempting to create like a fluid first-person camera traveling through a three-dimensional space.

Zlokovic: You should try to avoid trying to hide it with digital errors as much as you can, but you have to occasionally, because the shit's hard.

Her colleague: Actually, she is correct. This is easy. Just glitch the shit out of it.

Paco Plaza, director of “Ut Supra Sic Infra”: For me, the most challenging thing is convincing the audience accept the characters using the camera would persist, rather than running away. That’s also the key thing. There are some found-footage fields where I just cannot accept the characters would keep filming.

And I think the camera should always arrive late to any event, because that occurs in reality. For me, the magic is destroyed if the camera is already there, anticipating something to happen. If you are here, filming, and you detect a sound and pan toward it, that noise is no longer there. And I think that creates a sense of truth that it's very important to maintain.

Which Is the One Scene in Your Movie That You're Proudest Of?

One director: Our character sitting at a four-monitor deck of editing software, with four different videos running at the same time. That's completely practical. We shot those videos days earlier. Then the editing team treated them, and then we loaded them on multiple devices connected to four monitors.

That frame of the person sitting there with multiple recordings playing — I was like, 'That is the image I wanted out of this film.' If it was the sole image I viewed of this film, I would be pressing play immediately: 'This appears interesting!' But it was harder than it appears, because it's like multiple crew members activating playback at the identical moment. It looks so simple, but it took three days of planning to achieve that image.