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Following the massive shaky-cam thriller surge of the 2000s following The Blair Witch Project, the subgenre didn't disappear but rather evolved into new forms. Audiences saw the rise of computer-screen films, freshly stylized versions of the found-footage concept, and showy one-take movies largely taking over the screens where unsteady footage and improbably dogged camera operators once reigned.

One major outlier to this trend is the ongoing V/H/S franchise, a horror anthology that created its own surge in short-form horror and has maintained the first-person vision alive through multiple seasonal releases. The eighth in the franchise, 2025’s V/H/S Halloween, includes five shorts that all occur around the spooky season, strung together with a wrapper story (“Diet Phantasma”) that follows a completely detached scientist conducting a series of product experiments on a soda drink that kills the participants trying it in a variety of chaotic, extreme ways.

At V/H/S Halloween’s global debut at the 2025 version of Austin’s Fantastic Fest, each of the V/H/S Halloween directors gathered for a post-screening Q&A where filmmaker Anna Zlokovic described found-footage horror as “hard as fuck to shoot.” Her fellow filmmakers cheered in response. They later explained why they believe 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.

What Makes Found-Footage Horror So Difficult to Film?

Micheline Pitt, co-director of “Home Haunt”: I think the most challenging thing as an creator is being limited by your artistic vision, because everything has to be justified by the person holding 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 ideas, and having to stay in a box.

Another director, director of “Kidprint”: In fact told her this last night — I concur with that, but I also differ with it strongly in a particular way, because I greatly enjoy an unrestricted environment that's all-around. I discovered this to be so freeing, because the movement and the coverage are the same. In traditional filmmaking, the positioning and the shots are completely opposite.

If the actor has to look left, the camera angle has to look right. And the fact that once you set up the action [in a found-footage movie], you have figured out your shots — that was so remarkable to me. I've seen 500 first-person movies, but until you shoot your first shaky-cam movie… The first day, you're like, “Ohhh!”

So once you know where the character goes, that's the filming — the camera doesn't move left when the actor moves right, the lens moves forward when the character moves forward. You film the scene one time, and that's all — we don't have to capture individual dialogues. It moves in one direction, it arrives at the end, and now we proceed in the next direction. As a storyteller seeking simplicity, avoiding a traditional-coverage scene in years, I was like, "This is great, this restriction proves freeing, because you just need to figure out the identical element one time."

Anna Zlokovic, filmmaker of “Coochie Coochie Coo”: I think the hard part is the audience's acceptance for the audience. Everything has to appear authentic. The sound has to seem like it's actually happening. The acting have to feel grounded. If you have an element like an grown man in a diaper, how do you sell that as realistic? It's absurd, but you have to make it feel like it fits in the world correctly. I found that to be difficult — you can lose the audience really at any point. It only requires a single mistake.

Bryan M. Ferguson, director of “Diet Phantasma”: I concur with Alex — once you finalize the movement, it's excellent. But when you've got numerous practical effects happening at the same time, and trying to make sure you're capturing 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 big wall in the path, and you couldn't hear anyone. Alex's [shoot] seems like very enjoyable. Ours was very hard. We had only 72 hours to complete it. It is liberating, because with first-person filming, you can make some allowances. Even if you do fuck it up, it was destined to appear like low-quality anyway, because you're adding effects, or you're using a garbage camera. So it's beneficial and it's bad.

R.H. Norman, co-director of “Home Haunt”: I would say establishing pace is very challenging if you're shooting mostly single takes. The method we used was, "Alright, this is filmed continuously. 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 must live in the moment. You really have to see precisely your scene feels, because what is captured by the camera, and in certain cases, there's no editing solution.

We knew we only had two or three attempts for each scene, because ours was highly demanding. We attempted to concentrate on discovering different rhythms between the attempts, because we didn't know what we were going to get in editing. And the real challenge with first-person filming is, you're needing to conceal those edits on moving fog, on all sorts of stuff, and you cannot predict where those cuts are will be placed, and whether they're will undermine your entire project of trying to feel like a seamless first-person camera moving through a realistic environment.

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

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

Paco Plaza, director of “Ut Supra Sic Infra”: For me, the biggest aspect is convincing the viewers believe the people operating the device would persist, instead of fleeing. That’s also the key thing. There are certain found-footage fields where I simply don't believe the people would continue recording.

And I think the device should consistently arrive late to any event, because that occurs in reality. For me, the illusion is destroyed if the camera is already there, expecting an event to happen. If you are here, filming, and you detect a sound and turn the camera, that sound is no longer there. And I think that gives a sense of authenticity that it's very important to preserve.

Which Is the One Scene in Your Movie That You're Most Satisfied With?

Perry: Our character seated at a multi-screen setup of video editing, with multiple clips playing out at the same time. That's all analog. We filmed those videos previously. Then the editing team processed them, and then we loaded them on multiple devices connected to several screens.

That shot of the person positioned there with four different videotapes running — I was like, 'This is the image I envisioned out of this film.' If it was the only still I saw of this movie, I would be pressing play immediately: 'This looks cool!' But it was more difficult than it looks, because it's like four different art people activating playback at the identical moment. It looks so simple, but it took several days of preparation to achieve that shot.