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After the significant shaky-cam thriller boom of the 2000s inspired by The Blair Witch Project, the subgenre didn't disappear but rather evolved into different styles. Audiences witnessed the rise of “screenlife” movies, freshly stylized versions of the found-footage concept, and ambitious single-shot films largely taking over the cinemas where unsteady footage and unbelievably persistent filmmakers once reigned.

A major exception to this trend is the continuing V/H/S franchise, a scary-story collection that spawned its own boom in brief scary films and has maintained the first-person vision alive through multiple themed installments. The eighth in the franchise, 2025’s V/H/S Halloween, includes five shorts that all occur around Halloween, connected with a wrapper story (“Diet Phantasma”) that involves a completely detached scientist conducting a set of consumer product tests on a diet cola that kills the participants sampling 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 assembled for a question-and-answer session where director Anna Zlokovic characterized first-person scary movies as “hard as fuck to shoot.” Her co-directors applauded in reply. The directors later explained why they feel filming a first-person film is more difficult — or in one case, simpler! — than creating a conventional horror movie.

The discussion has been condensed for brevity and clarity.

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

One director, co-director of “Home Haunt”: In my view the biggest aspect as an creator is having restrictions by your artistic vision, because everything has to be motivated by the character holding the camera. So I believe that's the thing that's incredibly tough for me, is to distance myself from my imagination and my ideas, and needing to remain in a box.

Alex Ross Perry, director of “Kidprint”: In fact told her this last night — I agree with that, but I also differ with it vehemently in a very specific way, because I greatly enjoy an open set that's 360 degrees. I found this to be so liberating, because the blocking and the filming are the same. In traditional filmmaking, the blocking and the shots are completely opposite.

If the actor has to look left, the camera angle has to face right. And the fact that once you block the scene [in a first-person film], you have determined your shots — that was so amazing to me. I've seen 500 found-footage films, but until you film your first shaky-cam movie… Day one, you're like, “Ohhh!”

So once you understand where the person goes, that's the coverage — the camera doesn't shift left when the actor moves right, the camera moves forward when the person progresses. You shoot the sequence once, and that's all — we avoid get his line. It progresses in one direction, it arrives at the end, and then we move in the next direction. As a frustrated narrative filmmaker, avoiding a standard multi-angle shot in a long time, I was like, "This is great, this limitation proves freeing, because you just need to determine the identical element once."

A third director, filmmaker of “Coochie Coochie Coo”: I think the hard part is the suspension of disbelief for the audience. Everything has to appear authentic. The sound has to seem like it's genuinely occurring. The performances have to appear believable. If you have something like an adult man in a diaper, how do you sell that as plausible? It's absurd, but you have to create the sense like it exists in the environment properly. I found that to be difficult — you can lose the audience really at any moment. It only requires one fuck-up.

Another filmmaker, creator of “Diet Phantasma”: I concur with Alex — as soon as you get the blocking down, it's great. But when you've got numerous physical effects occurring at the same time, and ensuring you're capturing it and not fucking up, and then preparation attempts — you have a limited number of time to get all these elements correctly.

The filming location had a large barrier in the path, and you couldn't hear anybody. Alex's [shoot] seems like great fun. Our project was extremely difficult. We had only three days to do it. It is freeing, because with found footage, you can make some allowances. Even if you make a mistake, it was going to look like low-quality anyway, because you're putting filters on it, or you're employing a garbage camera. So it's good and it's challenging.

A co-director, filmmaker of “Home Haunt”: I would say establishing pace is quite difficult if you're filming primarily single takes. Our approach was, "Alright, this was edited in camera. There's this guy, the dad, and he operates the camera, and that creates our cuts." That entailed a many fake oners. But you really have to be present. You really have to observe precisely your scene appears, because what's going into the camera, and in some instances, there's no cutting around it.

We knew we had only a few attempts for each scene, because our film was highly demanding. We really tried to concentrate on finding different rhythms between the attempts, because we didn't know what we were going to get in editing. And the true difficulty with first-person filming is, you're needing to conceal those edits on moving fog, on various elements, and you really never know where those cuts are going to live, and if they're going to betray your whole enterprise of trying to feel like a fluid point-of-view lens traveling through a three-dimensional space.

The director: You want to avoid concealing it with glitches as much as you can, but you have to sometimes, because the shit's hard.

Her colleague: In fact, she's right. This is easy. Simply add glitches the shit out of it.

Paco Plaza, director of “Ut Supra Sic Infra”: For me, the biggest thing is convincing the audience believe the characters operating the camera would persist, instead of fleeing. That’s also the most important element. There are certain first-person scenarios where I just cannot accept the characters would keep filming.

And I think the camera should always arrive late to any event, because that occurs in reality. For me, the illusion is destroyed if the camera is positioned beforehand, expecting something to happen. If you are here, recording, and you hear a noise and turn the camera, that noise is already gone. And I think that gives a sense of truth that it's crucial to maintain.

Which Is the Single Shot in Your Movie That You're Proudest Of?

Perry: Our character seated at a four-monitor deck of editing software, with multiple clips playing out at the same time. That's completely practical. We shot those clips days earlier. Then the editor processed them, and then we put them on four computers hooked up 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 film, I would be pressing play right now: 'This appears interesting!' But it was more difficult than it appears, because it's like four different art people pressing spacebars at the same time. It appears straightforward, but it took several days of preparation to achieve that image.