Flipping greasy Big Macs under golden arches, Nick Prueher was just a teenager when, during one of his shifts, he found an employee training video in a McDonald’s break room.

The “Inside and Outside Custodial Duties” depicted a “perky and annoying” employee named Dopey, who performed below McDonald’s standard, Prueher said.

“[The video] was too funny,” he said. “I had to share it with my friends.”

Sixteen years later, Prueher and long-time friend Joe Pickett, both 31, are still watching it, along with nearly two thousand hours of inadvertently funny films that the two have discovered rummaging through thrift stores, garage sales and garbage cans across the country.

The third annual Found Footage Festival on Oct. 5 and 6, highlighted some of the unearthed videos, along with comedic voiceovers from the founders, in a 90-minute presentation of what Pickett called, “Stuff that can only be described as ‘craptastic!’”

According to the duo, the idea of the festival came in the early 90s, when Pickett and Prueher—teens at the time—were trying to entertain themselves during the long Wisconsin winters, in their hometown of Stoughton.

“[We] started to give mini-shows in my parents’ living room,” Prueher said.
Over the course of the next few years, Pickett and Prueher started to splice different videos together and show them to friends on Friday nights.

Now, the two have expanded the idea nationally, showing the unintentionally funny clips across the country, in sold out venues including New York, Alaska, and even Paris.

In its San Francisco screening on Friday night, moviegoers waited patiently outside of Haight’s Red Vic Movie House, in a line extending almost the length of a city block, eating pizza and mingling, to attend the event.

“It’s great to see such a great turnout for Found Footage. I remember when it was just a few people at a local bar,” said Piyush Tantia, Prueher’s close-friend.

The night featured all new found footage, said Prueher, including hilarious home videos, classic celebrity exercise videos from Alyssa Milano and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and an excerpt from the All-American Women’s Topless Arm-Wrestling Championship.

“I was waiting for boobs!” said SF State senior women studies major Amanda Smith, 22.

“Nudity always has the potential to be funny.”

In addition to a little nudity and some vulgarity, there was also a video entitled “Disrobics,” which showed nude men exercising.

“Found Footage had a slow start,” Smith said. “But got funnier after time. It seemed like [Pickett and Prueher] saved their best stuff for last.”

Despite mostly positive feedback on its opening night, SF State Cinema major Laura Valladano, said people should keep in mind what Prueher and Pickett create is not true cinema, but rather a clever process that can be expressive and entertaining.

“[Found Footage] is more about editing than the actual images,” said Valladano, 20, who is also vice president of the Cinema Collective. Every city the Found Footage Festival travels to becomes a place to find material to edit for the next tour.

“Joe and I visit at least the Goodwill in every city to find new videos,” Prueher said, also emphasizing that “Audience members are encouraged to bring us any videos they have found.”

When not taking audiences on a trip through their finds, Pickett works for the Onion and Prueher works at “The Colbert Report,” both based in New York.

The Found Footage Festival has remaining shows on the East Coast. For more information please visit www.myspace.com/foundfootagefestival.