From Spectator to Participant: Point of View Shots from Halloween and The Blair Witch Project John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s The Blair Witch Project (1999) are both films that use first-person point-of-view shots in different ways to cause discomfort in the viewer. By showing us the perspective of the killer in Halloween and by encouraging the audience to embody the characters of The Blair Witch Project, these films use camerawork to further the gothic genre’s ability encourage the spectator to identify with the characters. Found footage horror films, such as The Blair Witch Project, use camerawork in order to involve the audience in the story through the subjective point-of-view of the characters.
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The involvement of the viewer created by the subjective point-of-view enhances the Gothic story experience: “The audience participation required is not merely through character identification. […] Rather, they must participate as themselves” (Bunnell 81). The camerawork encourages the viewer to experience the story vicariously and influences a personal reaction by following Michaels actions with a panaglide. Instead of using this technique to create sympathy with the victims in Halloween, we are forced to witness the acts of the perpetrator through his point-of-view, embodying the character without knowing who’s actions we are seeing: “In the opening sequence of Halloween I, ‘we’ are belatedly revealed to ourselves, after committing a murder in the cinematic first person, as a six-year-old boy” (Clover 216). The I-camera creates the first-person perspective of the killer in the opening scene (0:02:22). By showing the audience the events through the subjective vision of a character rather than an omniscient third person view prompts a sense of involvement in the viewer: “As a result of this shift in perspective from a disembodied, narrative camera to an actual character's eye, though, we are forced into a deeper sense of participation in the ensuing action (Telotte 141). This perspective deepens the audience’s role from bystander, witnessing the events to participant by embodying the
The involvement of the viewer created by the subjective point-of-view enhances the Gothic story experience: “The audience participation required is not merely through character identification. […] Rather, they must participate as themselves” (Bunnell 81). The camerawork encourages the viewer to experience the story vicariously and influences a personal reaction by following Michaels actions with a panaglide. Instead of using this technique to create sympathy with the victims in Halloween, we are forced to witness the acts of the perpetrator through his point-of-view, embodying the character without knowing who’s actions we are seeing: “In the opening sequence of Halloween I, ‘we’ are belatedly revealed to ourselves, after committing a murder in the cinematic first person, as a six-year-old boy” (Clover 216). The I-camera creates the first-person perspective of the killer in the opening scene (0:02:22). By showing the audience the events through the subjective vision of a character rather than an omniscient third person view prompts a sense of involvement in the viewer: “As a result of this shift in perspective from a disembodied, narrative camera to an actual character's eye, though, we are forced into a deeper sense of participation in the ensuing action (Telotte 141). This perspective deepens the audience’s role from bystander, witnessing the events to participant by embodying the