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It’s never been easier for people to generate video, of whatever they want and in staggering levels of detail and variety. One hundred hours of video are added to YouTube alone – every single minute. You could watch day and night, for a hundred lifetimes, and still see but a fraction. The bad news is it’s mostly terrible, and a good chunk of the terrible is being marketed pretty heavily at you.

Found Footage trawls through the internet’s endless sprawl to collect the best short films, sketches, home movies, ads, training videos, newscasts, cell phone footage, and other obscurities. We’re looking for the brightest gems and the strangest mundanity. We seek out the videos that fell through the cracks,  and missed out on the attention they so richly deserved.

 

FOOTAGE FOUND: “WHO AM I?” (1988)

Faith Hubley and her husband produced 21 films together, and Faith produced another 25 solo works following his death. “Who Am I?” is a later work from the second half of her career, from the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. This short presents a child’s discovery of the senses, putting ambient noise and fluid animation to magical effect.

The content is as heartwarming and gentle as the art itself, running over with the wonder and imagination of a child’s mind. The images are simple and colourful, without sharp edges. The recurring motifs are of nature, or of simple pleasures of the senses like smelling fresh food. A beautiful “smell” segment has a flock of disembodied noses moving from one delightful meal to another.

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Don Christensen’s largely percussive soundtrack is both playful and primal, tying itself to the short’s recurring use of animals and animal calls to illustrate the senses. The focus on the natural world is also matched with Hubley’s long-standing commitment to hand-drawn animation even in the advent of CG.

Have an amazing video we’ve missed, or a project you’d like to shed a little limelight on? Let us know. We’re happy to oblige.

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