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Following the significant shaky-cam thriller boom of the 2000s inspired by The Blair Witch Project, the subgenre didn't fade away but rather evolved into different styles. Audiences saw the emergence of “screenlife” movies, newly designed versions of the found-footage concept, and ambitious single-shot films largely taking over the cinemas where shakycam shots and unbelievably persistent camera operators once ruled.

A major exception to this trend is the continuing V/H/S franchise, a horror anthology that spawned its own surge in brief scary films and has maintained the first-person vision alive through seven themed installments. The latest in the series, 2025’s V/H/S Halloween, includes several short films that all occur around the spooky season, connected with a framing narrative (“Diet Phantasma”) that involves a brutally disengaged researcher leading a series of consumer product tests on a soda drink that kills the people trying it in a variety of messy, extreme ways.

At V/H/S Halloween’s global debut at the 2025 edition of Austin’s Fantastic Fest, all seven V/H/S Halloween directors assembled for a post-screening Q&A where director Anna Zlokovic described found-footage horror as “extremely difficult to shoot.” Her co-directors applauded in reply. The directors later explained why they feel shooting a first-person film is more difficult — or in one case, simpler! — than making a conventional horror movie.

This interview has been condensed for brevity and understanding.

Why Is First-Person Scary Movies So Challenging to Film?

Micheline Pitt, co-director of “Home Haunt”: I think the most challenging aspect as an artist is being limited by your artistic vision, because each element has to be motivated by the person operating the camera. So I think that's the thing that's hard as fuck for me, is to distance myself from my imagination and my ideas, and having to stay in a box.

Another director, director of “Kidprint”: In fact mentioned to her recently — I agree with that, but I also differ with it vehemently in a particular way, because I greatly enjoy an open set that's 360 degrees. I found this to be so freeing, because the movement and the coverage are the identical. In traditional filmmaking, the positioning and the coverage are completely opposite.

If the actor has to look left, the camera angle has to look right. And the reality that once you block the scene [in a first-person film], you have determined your coverage — that was so remarkable to me. I've seen numerous first-person movies, but until you film your first found-footage project… Day one, you're like, “Ohhh!”

So once you know where the character moves, that's the coverage — the camera doesn't move left when the character moves right, the lens moves forward when the person moves forward. You shoot the scene once, and that's it — we don't have to get his line. It moves in a single path, it reaches the conclusion, and now we move in the next direction. As a frustrated narrative filmmaker, who hasn't shot a traditional-coverage scene in years, I was like, "This is cool, this limitation actually is liberating, because you just need to determine the identical element once."

A third director, filmmaker of “Coochie Coochie Coo”: In my opinion the difficult aspect is the audience's acceptance for the audience. Each detail has to appear authentic. The audio has to seem like it's genuinely occurring. The acting have to feel grounded. If you have something like an grown man in a nappy, how do you sell that as realistic? It's absurd, but you have to create the sense like it fits in the world properly. I found that to be challenging — you can lose people really at any moment. It only requires one fuck-up.

Bryan M. Ferguson, director of “Diet Phantasma”: I agree with Alex — as soon as you get the blocking down, it's excellent. But when you've got so many physical effects happening at one time, and trying to make sure you're capturing it and not making errors, and then setup takes — you only get a certain amount of time to achieve all these elements right.

Our set had a big wall in the path, and you couldn't hear anybody. Alex's [shoot] seems like great fun. Our project was very hard. I only had 72 hours to complete it. It is liberating, because with found footage, you can take certain liberties. Although you do fuck it up, it was going to look like trash regardless, because you're adding effects, or you're employing a garbage camera. So it's beneficial and it's bad.

A co-director, filmmaker of “Home Haunt”: In my view establishing pace is quite difficult if you're shooting primarily oners. The method we used was, "OK, this was filmed continuously. We have a character, the dad, and he turns the camera on and off, and those are our cuts." That entailed a many simulated single shots. But you really have to live in the moment. You need to observe precisely your shot appears, because what is captured by the camera, and in certain cases, there's no editing solution.

We were aware we had only two or three attempts for each scene, because our film was highly demanding. We really tried to focus on finding different rhythms between the takes, because we were unsure what we were going to get in post-production. And the true difficulty with first-person filming is, you're having to hide those cuts on moving fog, on all sorts of stuff, and you really never know where those cuts are going to live, and if they're going to betray your entire project of attempting to create like a fluid point-of-view lens traveling through a realistic environment.

The director: You want to avoid trying to hide it with glitches as often as possible, but you have to occasionally, because the process is difficult.

Norman: Actually, she is correct. It is simple. Simply add glitches the shit out of it.

Another filmmaker, creator of “Ut Supra Sic Infra”: For me, the biggest aspect is convincing the viewers believe the people operating the device would continue, rather than running away. That’s additionally the most important element. There are certain found-footage fields where I just cannot accept the characters would continue recording.

And I think the device should consistently be delayed to whatever's happening, because that occurs in real life. For me, the illusion is ruined if the camera is already there, expecting something to happen. If you are present, recording, and you hear a noise and turn the camera, that noise is no longer there. And I think that creates a feeling of truth that it's crucial to maintain.

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

One director: The protagonist seated at a four-monitor deck of video editing, with four different videos playing out at the same time. That's completely practical. We shot those clips days earlier. Then the editing team treated them, and then we put them on four computers hooked up to several screens.

That frame of the person positioned there with multiple recordings playing — I was like, 'This is the visual I wanted out of this project.' If it was the only still I saw of this movie, I would be pressing play right now: 'This appears interesting!' But it was harder than it appears, because it's like four different art people pressing spacebars at the identical moment. It looks so simple, but it took several days of preparation to get to that shot.