When the guys from the Found Footage Festival and Found Magazine discovered the existence of each other, they may have been equally surprised.

Both groups started as a kind of inside joke - taking the most obscure and hilarious video, notes and photos they could find in warehouses and at garage sales and showing them to friends - and both groups found people were so interested in that joke, that they could tour the country promoting it. The only difference was the format of the finds.

"It was sort of like meeting a long lost brother," festival co-founder Nick Prueher said. "Like wait a minute, there's other people out there doing the same weird thing you're doing."

Naturally, the festival and magazine decided to join forces.

The resulting "Found vs. Found" tour will hit 15 cities in 15 days in the U.S. and Canada beginning today, and includes two performances at 8 and 10 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12, at Downtown Cinema, 315 S. Barstow St.

With the Found Footage Festival bringing its best videos and Found Magazine delivering photographs, notes, songs and other oddities, the show is most likely the largest collection of it's kind.

Since its beginnings at UW-Eau Claire, where Prueher and his partner Joe Pickett studied in the late 1990s, the Found Footage Festival's return to the city has been an annual event. Unlike in past years, however, Saturday's show will be the first audience-judged competition of found materials.

The show will be divided into four rounds, with each group presenting their most comical finds.

"We're basically staging it like a boxing match," Prueher said. "So we're each bringing our best stuff."

Without spoiling the show, Prueher said audiences can expect everything from a collection of the best VHS covers to a cassette tape of some Michigan teenagers' attempt at rap called "The Booty Don't Stop."

Davy Rothbart of Found Magazine said in the case of both Found Footage and the magazine, the materials often are a humorous look into the lives of other people.

Rothbart, originally from Chicago, decided to start the magazine after he found a note on his car one night. The note, which had obviously been placed on the wrong car, said:

"Mario, I (expletive) hate you you said you had to work then whys your car at HER place? You're a (expletive) LIAR I hate you I (expletive) hate you. Amber. P.S. Page me later."

Rothbart's new found hobby would later affectionately be called "people watching on paper" and "like reality TV, except real" by his family and friends.

"I just thought it was a really interesting find that gives a little glimpse into someone else's life, so I started showing all my friends," Rothbart said. "And I was surprised how many of them had some great finds to share with me, whether it was a photograph or some kid's drawing they found in the gutter."

And over the years, Rothbart has realized that those kind of random finds are everywhere.

"There's never a lack of material," he said. "And these notes reveal how interesting humans are in such raw and intimate ways."

Hanson can be reached at 715-833-9206, 800-236-7077 or rob.hanson@ecpc.com.