Movies - The Blair Witch Project

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	Movies - The Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project is a low budget American horror film released in 1999. It tells the story of three young student filmmakers who get lost in the woods while filming a documentary about the eponymous local legend. After being terrorized by an unseen presence for several days, they mysteriously disappear, one by one. Neither the students nor their bodies are ever found, although their video and sound equipment (along with most of the footage they shot) is eventually recovered. Though the film is entirely fictional, the narrative is presented as a documentary pieced together from that footage.

Marketing and method

The film was a huge success, in part because it was marketed heavily via the Internet. The teaser poster and other advertisements for the film were designed to reinforce the 'documentary' conceit, leading many people to think the film was an actual documentary, and that the three protagonists really had disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland. This has caused problems for the real-life Burkittsville's police department.

In addition, just before the general release of the film, The Sci-Fi Channel aired a mockumentary, Curse of the Blair Witch, that claimed to investigate the legend surrounding the movie. The program contains interviews with friends and relatives of the missing students, paranormal experts, and local historians (all fabricated, of course).

In addition, while attending the Cannes Film Festival, the producers put up missing posters featuring the three stars of the film (whose real names are used in the movie, further reinforcing the charade). They were removed the next day following the actual kidnapping of a television executive (who was later recovered and returned home safely).

During filming, the actors were given only vague direction, usually in the form of notes that the trio would stumble upon as they wandered through the woods (Heather discovers the map is missing, Josh and Heather get into an argument, etc). As a result, a large portion of the film's dialogue and action were essentially improvised, further contributing to the tone of realism. The townspeople interviewed near the beginning of the film were mostly real townspeople, not actors. The directors used GPS technology to move the actors from location to location, so that interaction between actors and crew would be kept to a minimum.

The filmmakers also crafted a complex, detailed backstory involving the history of the town and the 'Blair Witch' legend that was largely only hinted at in the finished film, unfolding mostly via the film's website, tie-in books, comic books, computer games, and of course, the Sci-Fi Channel mockumentary.

The estimated production cost of the film was about $25,000. The movie grossed over $248 million worldwide, making it the most profitable motion picture of all time in terms of the ratio of production costs to box office proceeds. (Some believe that Deep Throat
, which cost about the same to make, grossed $600 million.)

Similar films and influences

The Blair Witch Project is somewhat influenced by The Bell Witch legend, a series of disturbing and allegedly inexplicable, real events associated with the family of Adams Station, Tennessee (Robertson County) settler John Bell, between 1817 and 1821.

The concept of incorporating the camera and crew into the film's plot is not entirely new. Other films to utilize this technique include the Danish Dogme95 movies, and most notably, the Belgian pseudodocumentary Man Bites Dog
.

In addition, The Blair Witch Project bears many similarities to the film The Last Broadcast (1998), written and directed by Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler. Both are faux-documentaries dealing with characters who set off into the wilderness in search of legendary figures (in this case, the mythical Jersey Devil in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey) and vanish; however, the endings are quite different. It is unclear whether one project was inspired by the other, or if they were conceived separately in isolation. Cult film buffs also claim a further inspiration for the film is a notorious exploitation picture entitled Cannibal Holocaust
, filmed in 1978. This fictional documentary tells the story of a filmmaking crew that journeys to the jungles of South America in search of a tribe of cannibalistic natives, only to end up being devoured by the cannibals themselves.

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