Humor is often found in unexpected places, but it is still rare to seek it out in corporate training videos and bizarre home videos lost to the yard sale. That hasn’t stopped the Found Footage Festival from trying, however.
The festival will stop by the Arlington Cinema ‘N’ Drafthouse at 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 7.
“Basically it’s a guided tour through our collection of videos we found over the years at thrift stores and garage sales and other out of the way places like that,” festival co-founder Nick Prueher said.
Prueher and co-founder Joe Pickett describe themselves as curators and hosts for the festival, playing the 90-minute compilation of video clips in different segments and categories and providing a live, running commentary as they play.
According to Prueher, choosing the videos can be difficult.
“The criteria for us is it has to be found somewhere,” he said. “Most of the videos are things that weren’t meant to be shown in public, so [they are] home movies, exercise videos, training videos, promotional tapes — you know, things that you’d watch at home in your living room or in a break room somewhere at your corporate job.”
The festival is broken down into an average of 15 to 16 segments. Even if the audience finds one segment boring, at an average length of four minutes each, the next segment isn’t far behind.
“You never have to wait more than a few minutes,” Pickett said.
Often, the segments are chosen based on themes. Common themes of the festival’s various incarnations have included montages of exercise videos, VCR games and computer how-to videos. Pickett describes many of the videos as “painfully outdated and hard to watch.” That is, until he and Prueher get their hands and snarky comments on them.
Approximately six months out of the year, Prueher and Pickett hit the road with the festival, described as a live version of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” They edit the 90-minute show out of an estimated 150 hours of video they have amassed over the years. The same venue never sees the exact same show twice, although they will show the same incarnation at different stops on their state-to-state tour, expecting to perform close to 100 screenings this year.
To let the humor of the videos shine through, Prueher and Pickett allow the videos to speak for themselves.
“We try not to overdo it with making comments,” Prueher said. “Sometimes we let them stand on their own, other times we feel like they needed a little bit of help.”
The two aren’t afraid to make the subjects of their films the butt of a joke.
“Having watched thousands of hours of videos to cull these videos down to just 90 minutes of stuff, we feel like we’ve earned the right to make fun of them a little bit,” Prueher said.
Segments that audiences can look forward to this Saturday include one called “Heavy Metal Picnic.” Filmed in D.C., “Picnic” is a home movie of a heavy metal weekend in 1985 full of “drunken debauchery” — the kind that, when you see it, “you’re just happy that you’re not there,” according to Pickett.
Another popular segment that will be featured Saturday is “Andrew’s Grab Bag.” When the festival was in Denver last year, the curators ran into the segment’s namesake, a man who Pickett describes as “a real life Peewee Herman.”
Andrew had a massive collection that included a number of videos that he donated to the festival. Pickett and Prueher compiled the donated collection into a montage of videos Pickett describes as truly bizarre, including a how-to guide on throwing horseshoes and a training video on masturbation. An unwritten rule of the show has become to always have a non-erotic depiction of full frontal male nudity.
Premiering at the Drafthouse screening will be a new segment called “VHS Cover Slideshow,” featuring “our favorite, funniest VHS covers,” according to Pickett. The first non-video the festival has ever played, it will feature promising or funny covers and titles.
In order to find their four-minute gems, Prueher and Pickett comb through huge amounts of video looking for laughs.
“We don’t wish it upon anybody to have to sit through all the videos we do,” Prueher said. “We’re sort of masochists — we’re willing to suffer for other people’s entertainment, but we don’t expect other people to do the same. So we try to pare it down to just the most entertaining stuff.”
The show is currently on its fourth volume. When they tour, the pair are constantly looking for new videos at garage sales, thrift stores and the like.
“The more we do this, the more videos we come across,” Pickett said. Oftentimes audience members will come up to them and offer their own videos for the festival.
The festival has been playing in the D.C. area for three years. The founders chose the Arlington Drafthouse for its unique characteristics. “It’s a movie theater and comedy club that serves beer,” Prueher said. “That’s pretty much the perfect venue for us. It’s been great, we’ve had all sold-out shows every time we’ve been there.”
A single art deco theater, the Drafthouse boasts a movie screen and stage for live comedy. With comfortable chairs, tables and a full bar and restaurant, the Drafthouse fits 295. This time, however, the audience will be capped at 275 in order to keep the feel “packed but comfortable,” according to Greg Godbout, one of the owners.
The Drafthouse attempts to book the festival three to four times a year, according to Godbout.
“The whole thing is very humorous and fun,” Godbout said. With Saturday marking the festival’s fifth time at the Drafthouse, it has been playing there for the last year and a half.
Friends since the sixth grade in Madison, Wis., Prueher and Pickett have been collecting eclectic videos for 17 years, giving an early incarnation of the festival at home and in their college dorm room.
“Nothing much has changed,” Pickett said of their routine.
In the spring of 2004, the two decided to try and turn a profit on what had by then become a staple among their friends and share their unique videos and colorful commentary on these videos with the world.
With the technological switch to DVDs and people getting rid of their old VHS tapes, “I don’t think we’re in danger of running out of footage,” Prueher said. “We’ve barely scratched the surface.”
The festival can be found online at http://www.foundfootagefest.com, where a new video is posted everyday.
You can reach this staff writer at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
