‘Story without end? Found footage in digital media’ an article by Tily Walnes talks of how due to technology and availability the art of found footage film making has changed. In the early days after  Joseph Cornell’s ‘Rose Hobart’ pioneered the art form, found footage filmmaking was significantly harder to do, with many film-makers using ‘scraps’ of previously unused films (often off the editing room floor) as the basis of their new creations. However in today’s day and age found footage is very, very easy to come buy, one website alone ‘Internet Archive has more than 140,000’ found films. An assertion Walnes presented was that the ‘subversive, anti-authorotive’ spirit of found film making was lost due to its presence in modern day culture. This is also supported by the fact that film, sometimes in its original print, isnt phsyically destroyed or cut anymore, it is done in a completely recycable, renewable way, making the artwork produced less risky, with a huge margin of error.

However Walnes did not purely go against the changed artform, stating that due to the amount of film  licensed under creative commons and in the public domain new creation is not only relatively endless, but also allows for a continuous flow of film making. This is because new films made from this footage ar also available to use as ‘pre-existing’ films in the public domain, perfect for new creations.

When reading this article I was thinking about a found footage film I saw in cinema studies by Martin Arnold entitled ‘Alone: Life Wastes Andy Hardy’. In my opinion this was the biggest load of crap I’ve ever seen, in saying that, I can appreciate the way Arnold creates new meanings out of film originally designd to convey completely opposite ones. For example in ‘Alone’ Arnold shows a weird mother/son relationship and in general a dysfunctional, broken family. Even though the footage was from a 1940’s show depicting a happy, healthy and traditional family. I think this is the great thing about found footage filmaking. The filmaker gets the ability to create new meanings and new stories from raw, generic material. I also think the devlopment of easy to use, easily accesible editing software is fantastic to the art form, it lets creators be able to warp, manipulate and cut their images in thousands of different ways, guaranteeing that each new film made is distinct, unique and individual. This is highlighted in Walnes essay by the line ‘Daniel Reeves mixes found footage, photographs, and newly recorded material, using techniques including layering, morphing, and flipping over images, bleaching out color and backgrounds, inserting frames within frames, employing paintbox effects, animation, and slow motion’. Surely, the new technology allows for more creativity, even though the process may not be as organic as physically cutting up the film.