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After the massive shaky-cam thriller boom of the 2000s following The Blair Witch Project, the subgenre didn't fade away but rather transformed into new forms. Viewers saw the emergence of “screenlife” movies, freshly stylized interpretations of the first-person perspective, and ambitious single-shot films dominating the cinemas where shakycam shots and improbably dogged filmmakers once ruled.

One significant outlier to this pattern is the ongoing V/H/S series, a horror anthology that spawned its own boom in short-form horror and has maintained the first-person vision alive through seven themed installments. The latest in the franchise, 2025’s V/H/S Halloween, includes several short films that all take place around the spooky season, strung together with a framing narrative (“Diet Phantasma”) that involves a brutally disengaged researcher leading a set of product experiments on a soda drink that eliminates the participants trying it in a variety of chaotic, extreme 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 characterized first-person scary movies as “extremely difficult to shoot.” Her co-directors applauded in response. They later explained why they believe shooting a found-footage project is more difficult — or in one case, simpler! — than creating a traditional scary film.

The discussion has been edited for concision and understanding.

Why Is Found-Footage Horror So Challenging to Shoot?

One director, co-director of “Home Haunt”: In my view the most challenging thing as an artist is having restrictions by your artistic vision, because everything has to be justified by the person operating the camera. So I believe that's the part that's hard as fuck for me, is to separate myself from my imagination and my concepts, and having to stay in a confined space.

Another director, director of “Kidprint”: I actually mentioned to her recently — I concur with that, but I also disagree with it vehemently in a particular way, because I greatly enjoy an unrestricted environment that's 360 degrees. I discovered this to be so liberating, because the movement and the coverage are the identical. In conventional movie-making, the positioning and the shots are completely opposite.

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

So once you know where the character moves, that's the coverage — the lens doesn't shift left when the character goes right, the camera moves forward when the person moves forward. You shoot the sequence once, and that's it — we avoid get his line. It progresses in a single path, it arrives at the end, and then we proceed in the following path. As a frustrated narrative filmmaker, avoiding a standard multi-angle shot in a long time, I was like, "This is great, this restriction proves liberating, because you only have to figure out the same thing once."

A third director, director of “Coochie Coochie Coo”: I think the hard part is the suspension of disbelief for the audience. Everything has to appear authentic. The sound has to feel like it's actually happening. The performances have to appear believable. If you have an element like an adult man in a nappy, how do you sell that as realistic? It's absurd, but you have to create the sense like it exists in the environment correctly. I found that to be difficult — you can lose people easily at any point. It just takes one fuck-up.

Bryan M. Ferguson, director of “Diet Phantasma”: I agree with Alex — once you get the blocking down, it's excellent. But when you've got numerous physical effects happening at one time, and ensuring you're panning onto it and not making errors, and then preparation attempts — you only get a limited number of time to get all these things correctly.

Our set had a big wall in the way, and you were unable to hear anybody. Alex's [shoot] sounds like great fun. Our project was extremely difficult. We had only three days to do it. It can be freeing, because with first-person filming, you can take certain liberties. Although you do fuck it up, it was going to look like trash regardless, because you're putting filters on it, or you're employing a garbage camera. So it's beneficial and it's bad.

A co-director, filmmaker of “Home Haunt”: I would say finding rhythm is quite difficult if you're filming primarily single takes. Our approach was, "OK, this was edited in camera. We have a character, the dad, and he operates the camera, and those are our edits." That entailed a many simulated single shots. But you really have to live in the moment. You really have to observe precisely your shot feels, because what's going into the lens, and in some instances, there's no editing solution.

We were aware we only had a few attempts for each scene, because ours was highly demanding. We attempted to focus on finding varying paces between the takes, because we were unsure what we were would achieve in post-production. And the real challenge with found footage is, you're needing to conceal those cuts on shifting mist, on various elements, and you cannot predict where those edits are will be placed, and if they're going to betray your entire project of trying to feel like a seamless first-person lens traveling through a three-dimensional space.

The director: You should try to avoid concealing it with digital errors as often as possible, but you must occasionally, because the process is difficult.

Norman: In fact, she is correct. This is easy. Simply add glitches the content out of it.

Paco Plaza, director of “Ut Supra Sic Infra”: For me, the most challenging aspect is convincing the audience accept the people operating the device would continue, rather than fleeing. That’s additionally the most important element. There are some first-person scenarios where I simply don't believe the characters would keep filming.

And I think the camera should always arrive late to any event, because that happens in reality. For me, the magic is destroyed if the camera is already there, expecting an event to happen. If you are here, recording, and you hear a noise and pan toward it, that noise is no longer there. And I think that creates a feeling of authenticity that it's crucial to maintain.

What's the Single Shot in Your Movie That You're Most Satisfied With?

One director: The protagonist seated at a multi-screen setup of video editing, with four different videos running at the same time. That's all analog. We shot those clips previously. Then the editing team treated them, and then we put them on four computers connected to four monitors.

That frame of the person sitting there with four different videotapes playing — I was like, 'That is the visual I wanted out of this film.' If it was the sole image I saw of this movie, I would be starting it right now: 'This appears interesting!' But it was harder than it appears, because it's like four different art people pressing spacebars at the same time. It appears straightforward, but it took several days of preparation to achieve that shot.