The Blair Witch Project was shown at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, and released by Artisan on 30 July 1999 after months of publicity, including a ground-breaking campaign by the studio to use the Internet and suggest that the film was a real event. It was positively received by critics and went on to gross over US$248 million worldwide, making it the most successful independent film ever. It also had the highest ratio of box office sales to production cost in American filmmaking history.
The Blair Witch concept was developed in 1993 by the filmmakers, who desired to create a movie where the characters are lost in the woods. The script began with a 35 page outline, with the dialogue to be improvised.[Accordingly, the directors advertised in Back Stage Magazine for actors with strong improvisational abilities. There was a very informal improvisational audition process to narrow the pool of 2,000 actors. The working title for the film was "The Black Hills Project".[citation needed] In developing the mythology behind the movie, the filmmakers used many inspirations. Several character names are anagrams; Elly Kedward (The Blair Witch) is Edward Kelley, a medieval mystic. Rustin Parr, the fictional 1940's child-murderer began as an anagram for Rasputin. In talks with investors, they presented an 8 minute documentary presenting the Blair Witch legend as though it was real, along with newspapers and news footage.
Filming began in October 1997 and went for 8 days. Most of the movie was filmed in Seneca Creek State Park in Montgomery County, Maryland, although a few scenes were filmed in the real town of Burkittsville. Many of the townspeople interviewed in the film were not actors, and some claimed to have heard about the Blair Witch, though the story is fictitious. Donahue had never operated a camera before, and spent two days in a "crash course", but her newness with camera control may have influenced the film's shakiness. Donahue said she modeled her character after a director she once worked with, citing the character's self assuredness but then confusion during crisis.
During filming, the actors were given clues as to their next location through messages given in milk crates found with Global Positioning Satellite systems. They were given individual instructions that they would use to help improvise the action of the day. The directors rationed the food of the cast, causing Donahue to suffer eczema outbreaks as filming progressed. Teeth were obtained from a Maryland dentist for use as human remains in the film. Influenced by producer Greg Hale's memories of his military training, in which "enemy soldiers" would hunt a trainee through wild terrain for three days, the directors moved the characters far during the day, harassing them by night and depriving them of food.
Almost 19 hours of usable footage was recorded which had to be edited down to 90 minutes. The process of editing in post production took more than eight months. Originally it was hoped that the movie would make it on to cable television, and the filmmakers did not anticipate wide release.The initial investment by the three Central Florida filmmakers was about US$35,000. Artisan acquired the film for US$1.1 million and spent only US$25 million to market it. The actors signed a "small" agreement to receive some of the profits from the film's release.
Synopsis
Heather's oft-imitated taped apology.Film students Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard go missing in October 1994 while making a documentary about the Blair Witch, a legendary creature believed to haunt the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland. A year later, though their bodies are never found, the footage the students shot has been recovered, and the film in its entirety is composed of fragments of that footage.
Shot in a mixture of color and black and white, with shaky handheld camera movements and only natural lighting, the footage includes material that was intended to be used in the documentary, but the bulk of the film shows the experience of the three students as they wander through the woods. Occasionally, the view switches out to a kind of "mood footage" (footage of no characters, just video of the environment) while the audio track continues.
Soon after setting out, they become hopelessly lost; their situation worsens when Michael, in frustration, kicks their only map of the area into the river without telling the others. Over a period of several days, a number of terrifying, mysterious, and possibly supernatural events occur. In one scene, the crew hikes for more than half of the day only to end up in the same spot where they had started.
Much of the plot is open to the viewer's interpretation, including the finale; few concrete indications are given as to the eventual fate of the three filmmakers.
Release
The film was marketed heavily via the Internet, and parts of the film were aired on the Independent Film Channel's Split Screen TV series, leading to heated speculation on the internet as to whether the film was real or not. Some also wondered if some of the fan enthusiasm was generated covertly by the film studios. It had an unusually receptive audience at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival where it made headlines as the first film sold.
The teaser poster and other advertisements for the film were designed to reinforce the 'documentary' concept, 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. To reinforce this idea, the Sci-Fi Channel aired a fake documentary, Curse of the Blair Witch, that claimed to investigate the legend surrounding the movie right before the film's release. The program contained interviews with friends and relatives of the missing students, paranormal experts, and local historians (all fabricated, of course). This was done so extensively that the three main actors were listed for a time as "missing, presumed dead" on IMDb. While attending the Cannes Film Festival, the producers put up missing posters featuring the three stars of the film, which were removed the next day following the actual kidnapping of a television executive (who was later recovered and returned home safely).
Reaction
The Blair Witch Project grossed over US$ 160 million in the United States and totaled $248 million worldwide. The film was featured in the Guinness Book of Records as having the highest profit-to-cost ratio of a motion picture ever, making back over US$10,000 dollars for every dollar spent.[citation needed]
The Rotten Tomatoes website provides links to 123 film reviews for the film, with 85% of these reviews being favorable. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times gave the film four stars, calling it "an extraordinarily effective horror film". It was listed on Filmcritic.com as the 50th best movie ending of all time. Critics in particular praised Donahue's apology to the camera near the end of the movie, noting its ability to cause "nightmares for years to come", and which Roger Ebert compared to Robert Scott's final journal entries as he froze to death in the Antarctic. Donahue has stated that there was a considerable backlash against the film, which she claims led to her having threatening encounters and difficulty obtaining employment.
The Blair Witch Project is thought to be the first widely released film marketed primarily on the internet. A sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, was released in the fall of 2000 but was poorly received by most critics. A third installment was announced that same year, but as of yet (July, 2008) has not materialized.
Cinematic and literary allusions
In the film, the Blair Witch is, according to legend, the ghost of Elly Kedward, a woman banished for witchcraft in 1785 in the Blair Township (latter-day Burkittsville.) The directors incorporated that part of the legend, along with allusions to the Salem Witch Trials and The Crucible, to play on the themes of injustice done on those who were called witches. They were also influenced by The Shining, The Omen, and Jaws for the technique of showing the antagonist as little as possible to create a compelling psychological drama.
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 The Blair Witch Project was inspired by The Last Broadcast, or if they were conceived separately in isolation.
Jim Knipfel of the New York Press has noted the similarities between Blair Witch and the widely-banned 1980 Italian exploitation film Cannibal Holocaust. In the first part of this film, a rescue team ventures into the jungles of South America to search for a missing group of filmmakers that previously traveled there to film a documentary about cannibalistic tribes. Their footage is eventually found and viewed, which makes up the second half of the film.
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Originally Posted by capncnut
I suppose we haze new-comers a bit, every now and then.
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