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After the significant found-footage horror boom of the 2000s inspired by The Blair Witch Project, the category didn't fade away but rather evolved into different styles. Audiences saw the emergence of computer-screen films, newly designed versions of the found-footage concept, and showy one-take movies largely taking over the cinemas where shakycam shots and improbably dogged camera operators once ruled.

One significant outlier to this pattern is the continuing V/H/S franchise, a horror anthology that created its own surge in brief scary films and has kept the found-footage dream alive through seven seasonal releases. The latest in the series, 2025’s V/H/S Halloween, features several shorts that all take place around the spooky season, strung together with a wrapper story (“Diet Phantasma”) that involves a completely detached scientist leading a series of consumer product tests on a soda drink that eliminates the participants trying it in a variety of messy, extreme ways.

At V/H/S Halloween’s world premiere at the 2025 edition of Austin’s Fantastic Fest, each of the V/H/S Halloween directors assembled for a question-and-answer session where director Anna Zlokovic described first-person scary movies as “extremely difficult to shoot.” Her fellow filmmakers applauded in response. They later discussed why they feel filming a first-person film is tougher — or in one case, simpler! — than making a traditional scary film.

The discussion has been condensed for concision and understanding.

What Makes First-Person Scary Movies So Difficult to Shoot?

Micheline Pitt, director of “Home Haunt”: In my view the most challenging aspect as an artist is having restrictions by your creative ideas, because everything has to be justified by the person operating the camera. So I believe that's the thing that's hard as fuck for me, is to separate myself from my creativity and my ideas, and needing to remain in a confined space.

Another director, filmmaker of “Kidprint”: In fact mentioned to her recently — I agree with that, but I also differ with it strongly in a very specific way, because I really love an open set that's 360 degrees. I discovered this to be so liberating, because the movement and the filming are the same. In conventional movie-making, the blocking and the coverage are completely opposite.

If the character has to look left, the coverage has to look right. And the fact that once you block the scene [in a found-footage movie], you have figured out your shots — that was so remarkable to me. I have watched 500 first-person movies, but until you film your initial found-footage project… Day one, you're like, “Ohhh!”

So once you know where the character goes, that's the filming — the lens doesn't shift left when the actor moves right, the lens advances when the person progresses. You film the scene once, and that's it — we don't have to get his line. It progresses in a single path, it reaches the conclusion, and then we proceed in the following path. As a storyteller seeking simplicity, who hasn't shot a standard multi-angle shot in years, I was like, "This is cool, this restriction actually is freeing, because you just need to determine the identical element once."

Anna Zlokovic, director of “Coochie Coochie Coo”: I think the difficult aspect is the suspension of disbelief for the audience. Each detail has to appear authentic. The audio has to seem like it's actually happening. The acting have to feel grounded. If you have an element like an adult man in a nappy, how do you sell that as realistic? It's ridiculous, but you have to create the sense like it fits in the environment correctly. I discovered that to be difficult — you can lose the audience really at any moment. It just takes a single mistake.

Bryan M. Ferguson, director of “Diet Phantasma”: I agree with Alex — once you finalize the movement, it's great. But when you've got numerous practical effects occurring at the same time, and trying to make sure you're capturing it and not making errors, and then setup takes — you have a certain amount of time to get all these elements right.

The filming location had a big wall in the way, and you were unable to hear anybody. Alex's [shoot] sounds like great fun. Ours was very hard. We had only 72 hours to complete it. It is liberating, because with found footage, you can make some allowances. Although you do fuck it up, it was going to look like low-quality regardless, because you're adding effects, or you're employing a garbage camera. So it's beneficial and it's bad.

R.H. Norman, filmmaker of “Home Haunt”: In my view finding rhythm is very challenging if you're shooting mostly oners. The method we used was, "OK, this is edited in camera. We have a character, the dad, and he operates the camera, and that creates our cuts." That entailed a lot of simulated single shots. But you really have to live in the moment. You need to observe exactly how your shot feels, because what's going into the camera, and in certain cases, there's no cutting around it.

We were aware we only had two or three attempts for each scene, because our film was very ambitious. We really tried to focus on finding varying paces between the attempts, because we didn't know what we were would achieve in editing. And the real challenge with found footage is, you're having to hide those cuts on shifting mist, on various elements, and you really never know where those edits are will be placed, and if they're will undermine your whole enterprise of attempting to create like a seamless point-of-view lens traveling through a realistic environment.

The director: You should try to avoid concealing it with glitches as much as you can, but you have to occasionally, because the shit's hard.

Her colleague: Actually, she's right. It is simple. Simply add glitches the content out of it.

Another filmmaker, director of “Ut Supra Sic Infra”: For me, the most challenging aspect is convincing the viewers accept the characters operating the device would persist, rather than running away. That’s additionally the key element. There are certain first-person scenarios where I simply don't believe the characters would keep filming.

And I think the device should consistently arrive late to whatever's happening, because that occurs in reality. For me, the illusion is destroyed if the device is already there, expecting an event to happen. If you are present, recording, and you hear a noise and turn the camera, that sound is already gone. And I think that gives a sense of truth that it's crucial to maintain.

What's the One Scene in Your Movie That You're Most Satisfied With?

Perry: Our character sitting at a four-monitor deck of editing software, with four different videos running at the identical moment. That's completely practical. We filmed those videos previously. Then the editing team treated them, and then we put them on four computers connected to several screens.

That frame of the character positioned there with four different videotapes playing — I was like, 'That is the image I envisioned out of this film.' If it was the sole image I viewed of this film, I would be starting it immediately: 'This looks cool!' But it was more difficult than it looks, because it's like four different crew members activating playback at the identical moment. It looks so simple, but it took several days of planning to get to that shot.