The found footage subgenre of horror has recently seen a comeback, with some films like V/H/S Halloween and even Shelby Oaks. Despite the differences in concept, the visual ideas around found footage still have much potential. For an indie movie like Man Finds Tape, it certainly proves that belief.
Man Finds Tape follows Lynn, who discovers that her brother, Lucas, and his YouTube channel are wrapped up in a mysterious murder and a string of cryptic phenomena. As the two siblings dig deeper into their family’s past, they find themselves in the sight of a dangerous monster.
I recently spoke with the film’s writer-director duo, Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman, about the inspirations for Man Finds Tape, approaching found footage, and its disturbing practical effects.
For Hall and Gandersman, the idea behind Man Finds Tape came from several different ideas, which included a journalistic investigation into footage that no one can remember and the people involved. Over time, the two were able to find a substantial story to tell with the film’s format.
“It’s the pursuit of truth that both of those formats have,” Hall began. “It’s this idea that you can use the medium as a way to search for a specific truth and craft a story around it, versus if this has just been a traditional narrative, the themes of it might not emerge until later.”
“This fake documentary format wasn’t so baked into how we view documentaries and expect to learn things from them and know the limitations of them and how they work and what they show and what they don’t show.”
“We really wanted that meta layer of the film you’re watching is almost without spoiling things in question itself, based on questions that pop up towards the end of the film,” Gandersman added. “We need to present it as truth to make you ask the question, ‘Well, is it true?'”
Additionally, Hall and Gandersman looked to very specific mockumentaries and other films to build upon the film’s meta ideas. Specifically, there were two films that stood out to both of them.
“The number one documentary that we were inspired by is probably surprising because it’s not genre in any way,” Gandersman said. “It’s Sarah Polly’s Stories We Tell. It’s a documentary about her investigating this story within her family that this untruth in her family history, and interviewing her family members, and trying to get to the bottom of it.”
“It was a two-handed one where it’s the real documentary that was most influential with Stories We Tell,” Hall noted. “Within the genre of found footage-slash-fake horror documentaries, it was the Australian film, Lake Mungo.”
“It never broke into the mainstream and whatnot, but this one person had seen it,” Hall continued. “She thought it was a real documentary. She didn’t realize that Lake Mungo was fiction. We always use that as a comparison point, but I don’t think anyone’s going to watch Man Finds Tape and think it’s real.”
Given the film’s ideas of testing the audience’s perceptions of what’s real or not, Hall and Gandersman sought to find the right balance to ensure viewers would always be kept on their toes.
“It was something that we were conceptualizing early on was that the movie, by its nature of being this documentary and the initial footage that we’re presenting to the audience, is somewhat mundane,” Hall said.
“We’re building out a ceiling of how the movie is going to get there. Then, you don’t realize that slowly the story is going to break through that ceiling and get bigger and weirder in the second half.”
Man Finds Tape also deals with a lot of supernatural elements as its main narrative is driven by darker forces at play. With the technological elements of the film, getting the right setup for filming and production was key for Hall and Gandersman.
“For us, it’s just scale and trying to make something that we feel is going to reward the audience for their time,” Gandersman explained. “We recognize we’re making a small indie genre movie and it takes up the same space on a digital shelf as James Cameron’s Avatar.”
“If you’re giving us 84 minutes of your time, we want to make sure that you have a satisfying rollercoaster ride by the time you get to the end.”
“We also wanted to make a very intentional choice of keeping things as practical as possible so that we’re escalating that gap where there is a very practical, physical effect moment in it or moments in its makeup, appliances, and creature work, and stuff that was all done in the real world,” Hall added.
Speaking more on the film’s production, Hall and Gandersman played heavily with using practical effects for some of the more disturbing moments of Man Finds Tape. Hall described how using practical effects benefited them and those visually tongue-biting scenes.
“I think there’s something really charming and endearing when you can tell that how something was done practically,” Hall said. “We’re not trying to fool anyone into thinking like, ‘This person actually did have 200 holes on their back or like these these redacted things did come out of their body.'”
“The fact that you can tell the actors had something to act against, that there was a real thing in there that they could touch and could squirm around, I always think that’s really fun!”
Due to the fact that Hall and Gandersman had to rely on a small budget, there was only so much that could be accomplished with the film’s effects. However, the directing duo had some great help to make those effects and scares truly pop.
“We definitely wrote something that punches way above the weight of what you could usually pull off at this budget,” Hall said. “Thankfully, we worked with an incredible makeup effects team led by Meredith Johns here in Austin, Texas. There’s elements of things coming out of people’s bodies and stuff like that!”
“There’s no hiding that we are a low-budget indie horror movie,” Gandersman continued. “It’s also extra hard to do in a documentary-slash-found footage format, because normally you don’t just have single inserts or whatever.”
“Everything had to be able to play as wide as possible. There’s a couple of moments in it where we have some pretty spouty gore gags of blood squirting out and stuff. We had to be very meticulous in where we staged Meredith so that she’s in that shot,” Gandersman said.
“Having to work with those restrictions on top of the budget of just what the camera can see, that was actually probably one of the bigger challenges.”
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Man Finds Tape releases in theaters on Friday, December 5.
