


I will further suggest that these films allow filmmakers to experiment with the acting capabilities of intra-diegetic cameras.ĭrawing on Mark Katz’s notion of phonographic effects-where musicians, during the advent of early recording technology, altered their style of play to be better captured by microphones-this article explores some of the “platform effects” that arise in the shift to platformization and how cultural goods and user practices are re-formatted in the process. Found footage horror crucially hinges upon the survival of the footage. While human characters and individual entities making up the camera assemblage are disposable, the recording is not. In found footage horror the assemblage mode of operation creates suspense, since the vulnerability of the camera threatens the viewer's access to the depicted events. Through a dynamic relational performance, cameras here take on roles as active agents with the potential to affect other elements within the images as well as the films’ audiences. The use of intra-diegetic cameras in contemporary found footage horror films constitutes a particular case of such cinematic actor assemblages. What constitutes an actor is what I will label as a “cinematic actor assemblage,” a term that comprises what is commonly known as human actors as well as material entities that play an active part in motion picture images. This article proposes a reconceptualization of the term “actor” within motion pictures and presents the argument that “acting” is a matter of distributed agency performed by heterogeneous assemblages. From Night of the Living Dead (1968) through Paranormal Activity (2009), these movies pursue their spectator from one platform to another, adapting to suit new exhibition norms and cultural concerns in the evolution of the video subject. Through case studies and close readings that blend industry history with apparatus theory, psychoanalysis with platform studies, and production history with postmodern philosophy, Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens unearths a genealogy of post-cinematic spectatorship in horror movies, thrillers, and other exploitation genres. But instead of offering a history of video technology or reception, Caetlin Benson-Allott analyzes how the movies themselves understand and represent the symbiosis of platform and spectator. Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens examines how prerecorded video reframes the premises and promises of motion picture spectatorship.
VHS MONSTERS INC PLAYALL MOVIE
In short, video has become the structuring discourse of US movie culture. Annual video revenues have exceeded box office returns for over twenty-five years. Since the mid-1980s, US audiences have watched the majority of movies they see on a video platform, be it VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Video On Demand, or streaming media.
