Found footage”

  “Found footage” filmmakers mimic the ways that events are now captured on video by surveillance cameras, mobile cameras, dashcams, webcams, and so on. Compare the techniques used in The Bay and Cloverfield to convey a sense of verisimilitude, or documentary-like accuracy. In Cloverfield, for example, what effect does Hud’s control of the camera have on the level of distance or intimacy the audience feels toward the action occurring onscreen? Does this strategy of hyperrealism—or simulating the techniques of documentary—change the audience's perspective on or position about mediated violence? Why does Barry Levinson suggest, in his Mother Jones interview, that it is more persuasive to “scare an audience with a story that is 80 to 85 percent science and facts” than it is to produce another documentary about the subject of environmental pollution? Levinson implies that storytelling serves an important function. What is that function?