English

Noun

found footage ‎(uncountable)

1. (film) Misplaced, forgotten, archived, or privately-owned motion picture recordings which document past events and which are subsequently rediscovered and made available for public viewing.
   • 2006 May 30, Joe Leydon, "One Day In People's Poland," Variety (retrieved 16 Oct 2012):

     Shrewdly mixing found footage, historical record and dramatized re-creation, One Day in People's Poland is an intriguing curio.

   • 2009 Dec. 1, Manohla Dargis, "Movie Review: Film ist a Girl & a Gun (2009)," New York Times (retrieved 16 Oct 2012):

     Austrian director Gustav Deutsch complicates this witty, deceptively simple formula with a wealth of found footage (material shot by others for other purposes) borrowed from film archives from around the world.

2. (film) A motion picture, or a segment of one, photographed in the style of an amateurish or unedited documentary.
   • 2009 Oct. 10, Richard Corliss, "Paranormal Activity: A Horror Phenomenon," Time:

     Yes, they knew it was only a movie—one that, like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield and plenty others before it, used "found footage" to give a patina of realism to the fanciful events.

References

• found footage at OneLook Dictionary Search