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After the massive shaky-cam thriller surge of the 2000s inspired by The Blair Witch Project, the subgenre didn't disappear but rather evolved into new forms. Audiences witnessed the emergence of “screenlife” movies, freshly stylized versions of the found-footage concept, and ambitious single-shot films dominating the cinemas where shakycam shots and improbably dogged camera operators once reigned.

A major exception to this trend is the continuing V/H/S series, a horror anthology that spawned its own boom in short-form horror and has maintained the found-footage dream alive through multiple themed installments. The latest in the franchise, 2025’s V/H/S Halloween, includes several short films that all occur around Halloween, strung together with a framing narrative (“Diet Phantasma”) that follows a completely detached researcher leading a series of consumer product tests on a soda drink that eliminates the people trying it in a range of chaotic, over-the-top ways.

At V/H/S Halloween’s world premiere at the 2025 edition of the Fantastic Fest film festival, all seven V/H/S Halloween filmmakers gathered for a post-screening Q&A where director Anna Zlokovic described first-person scary movies as “hard as fuck to shoot.” Her co-directors cheered in response. The directors later discussed why they feel shooting a found-footage project is tougher — or in some instances, simpler! — than making a conventional horror movie.

This interview has been edited for brevity and understanding.

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

One director, director of “Home Haunt”: In my view the most challenging thing as an creator is being limited by your artistic vision, because everything has to be motivated by the character operating the camera. So I think that's the thing that's incredibly tough for me, is to distance myself from my imagination and my concepts, and needing to remain in a confined space.

Another director, filmmaker of “Kidprint”: I actually mentioned to her this last night — I concur with that, but I also disagree with it vehemently in a very specific way, because I really love an unrestricted environment that's 360 degrees. I found this to be so liberating, because the movement and the coverage are the same. In traditional filmmaking, the blocking and the coverage are completely opposite.

If the actor has to look left, the coverage has to look right. And the reality that once you set up the action [in a found-footage movie], you have determined your shots — 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 understand where the character goes, that's the coverage — the camera doesn't shift left when the character moves right, the camera advances when the character moves forward. You film the scene one time, and that's it — we avoid capture individual dialogues. It moves in one direction, it arrives at the end, and then we proceed in the following path. As a storyteller seeking simplicity, avoiding a standard multi-angle shot in a long time, I was like, "This is cool, this restriction proves liberating, because you only have to determine the same thing once."

A third director, director of “Coochie Coochie Coo”: In my opinion the difficult aspect is the audience's acceptance for the viewers. Each detail has to appear authentic. The audio has to feel like it's genuinely occurring. The performances have to appear believable. If you have something like an adult man in a nappy, how do you make that as realistic? It's ridiculous, but you have to make it feel like it exists in the environment properly. I found that to be challenging — you can lose people really at any point. It just takes one fuck-up.

Another filmmaker, creator of “Diet Phantasma”: I concur with Alex — once you get the blocking down, it's excellent. But when you've got so many physical effects happening at the same time, and trying to make sure you're capturing it and not fucking up, and then setup takes — you only get a certain amount of opportunities to get all these things correctly.

Our set had a big wall in the way, and you couldn't hear anyone. Alex's [shoot] seems like very enjoyable. Our project was extremely difficult. We had only 72 hours to complete it. It is liberating, because with first-person filming, you can take certain liberties. Even if you do fuck it up, it was going to look like low-quality anyway, because you're adding effects, or you're using a garbage camera. So it's beneficial and it's bad.

A co-director, co-director of “Home Haunt”: In my view establishing pace is very challenging if you're filming mostly single takes. The method we used was, "Alright, this is filmed continuously. There's this guy, the father, and he operates the camera, and that creates our cuts." That required a many fake oners. But you really have to be present. You really have to see exactly how your scene appears, because what is captured by the camera, and in some instances, there's no cutting around it.

We knew we only had two or three takes per shot, because ours was highly demanding. We really tried to focus on finding varying paces between the attempts, because we didn't know what we were going to get in post-production. And the true difficulty with found footage is, you're needing to conceal those edits on moving fog, on all sorts of stuff, and you cannot predict where those edits are will be placed, and if they're going to betray your entire project of attempting to create like a seamless first-person lens moving through a three-dimensional space.

Zlokovic: You want to avoid concealing it with digital errors as often as possible, but you have to sometimes, because the shit's hard.

Her colleague: Actually, she's right. It is simple. Just glitch the shit out of it.

Paco Plaza, creator of “Ut Supra Sic Infra”: For me, the most challenging aspect is convincing the audience believe the characters using the device would persist, instead of running away. That’s additionally the key element. There are certain first-person scenarios where I simply don't believe the people would continue recording.

And I think the camera should consistently be delayed to whatever's happening, because that occurs in real life. For me, the magic is ruined if the device is positioned beforehand, expecting something to occur. If you are present, filming, and you detect a sound and turn the camera, that noise is no longer there. And I think that creates a sense of authenticity that it's very important to maintain.

Which Is the Single Shot in Your Movie That You're Most Satisfied With?

Perry: The protagonist sitting at a multi-screen setup of editing software, with four different videos running at the identical moment. That's completely practical. We shot those clips previously. Then the editing team treated them, and then we loaded them on multiple devices hooked up to four monitors.

That shot of the character positioned there with four different videotapes running — I was like, 'That is the visual I wanted out of this film.' If it was the only still I saw of this film, I would be starting it immediately: 'This appears interesting!' But it was more difficult than it looks, because it's like four different art people activating playback at the same time. It looks so simple, but it took three days of planning to get to that image.