Recommendations of the Editorial team
In the beginning there were an estimated $ 60,000 production costs. Hand cameras. And amateur actors. In the end, revenue of 248 million. One of the greatest profits in the history of cinema.
“The Blair Witch Project” began his triumphal march on January 25, 1999 with the premiere at the “Sundance Festival”. The film pretended to be a documentary based on a so-called “found footage” video. It was claimed that the turning material was real. And of three students come in a forest of the trace of a witch, the “Blair Witch”. The three then disappeared. And never reappeared. For this, the camera was found with blurred recordings. They show the development from a fun trip to a fatal trip.
How could it even happen that some spectators went to the directors of the film, Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick? “The Blair Witch Project” followed a marketing strategy based on new media. Today, film advertising via the Internet is the best of all methods. Back then, in 1999 it was a highlight. The makers opened a “Blair Witch” website with reports about the disappeared teenagers and interviews with “acquaintances” of the three. The stitch with fake reports still works today. If only for the reason that the imagination of the flunkers impresses you.
Still the most popular found footage
For films such as “Cloverfield” (2008), the protagonists who were supposed to be real were created for the then trendy MySpace. Series such as “True Blood” presented themselves with several minisites that were scattered into the plot and on which you could donate money in the fight against vampires.
“The Blair Witch Project” has an effect today. It is the still most popular film in the “Found Footage” genre, and in addition to the camera-in-bedroom strip “Paranomal Activity” published in 2007, the creepiest.
Nothing goes through amateur actors who cry with real fear. And if you want to scare your tent neighbor on an excursion, you only have to put a bundle of sticks before their zipper at night, the surprise follows in the morning. However, the actually horror of the film is not a game with the format, but a twist in the plot: the supernatural, the witch, will no longer play a role in the end, but a real danger that the three students had dismissed as a robber gun at the beginning of the film.
The “Found Footage” principle had its origin in the human-eater film “Cannibal Holocaust” published in 1980. Even then – and that still applies today – one thing was very difficult to justify the viewer: Why does the cameraman keep the “documentary” on it even when the worst things happen in front of his lens? Doesn’t he have to intervene … or at least run away?
Although it is still supposedly justifying dialogues à la today, “How can you only in the face of … filming!”- “But that is important to capture for posterity!” sprinkled. But the dilemma of the point-of-view camera is not completely solved. This is to blame for the viewer invisible to the film protagonists. Who sits on the back of the unfortunate cameraman and wants to be entertained.