This paper will explore the concept of ‘personal imagining’ in relation to the viewer’s cognition while watching horror films that utilise the diegetic camera as a narrational and aesthetic strategy. By looking at the cinematographic techniques in a range of scenes from found footage horror films, I will establish how the viewer is encouraged to have very specific imaginings about what is occurring behind the camera in off-screen space.
I will build on the ideas of Gregory Currie and Noël Burch and particularly Currie’s claim that the viewer does not simply imagine the events of the film occurring, but in the case of point-of-view shots, imagines seeing the events from that particular perspective. I believe that viewers of diegetic camera horror films are forced to imagine seeing (personal imagining) because their perception of the film is limited to what Edward Branigan calls a continuing point-of-view shot.
