Blair Witch Trials

, The Blair Witch Project can be said to be a landmark in the history of the horror film. It introduced a new kind of horror, as it gave us the story of real people in real situation filming real events.

This had not been done before, and it scared people in a completely different way than previous horror films. It brought back the audience screams that came about during screenings of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (1960.) It is said that people watching The Blair Witch Project were vomiting and passing out during the screening.

For the first time in a horror film, the entire film was filmed on hand held camera. This added extraordinary realism to the film as there was no script, only scene direction. Even more strangely, the actors in the film did all the filming themselves, which was totally unheard of until this film was released. Again, this can be seen as disturbing for the viewer as the aspect of realism is even more evident.

Where Blair Witch Project Was Filmed

The Blair Witch Project was an independent film produced by Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick. The story revolves around three film students filming a documentary on the myth of The Blair Witch. Subsequently, they disapeer whilst filming the documentary, and the footage they filmed was found a year later in a duffel bag also containing empty film cans, and personal items. This footage is what is shown in the film.

The Blair Witch Project was created extremely well as Sanchez and Myrick only had a budget of $25,000 and eight days to film, using low cost 16mm black and white film.

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On the closing day of the film at cinemas across the globe, the film had taken an estimated $140,000,000. Making it the most successful film of its kind.

Sanchez and Myrick chose not to use a script, but to intentionally scare their actors, and film what reactions they received. It is said that on one night of filming, when the actors were asleep in their tent, Sanchez and Myrick went up to the tent and played a recording of children screaming and crying and banged the sides ofd the tent in. the reaction of the actors is great. They get out of the tent and run off into the woods screaming and shouting. This is just one example of how Sanchez and Myrick developed a new kind of filming.

Even more cleverly, a website was set up in 1998, www.blairwitch.com which included TV reports of three missing film students in the woods near to Burketsville, interviews with the family of the students, aswell as with members of the search party sent out to look for them. Scientific analysts were also interviewed. They gave their views on what was found in the duffel bag. Photographs of the students and places they visited can also be seen on the website. Even posters were put up around the USA informing people of the student’s disappearance . Although the town of Burketsville is fictional, the town that was used for filming has received thousands of visitors thanks to the success of The Blair Witch Project .All of the above made people believe that the film was true and that three students had actually gone missing. This website received over 50,000,000 hits even before the film had been released.

As, you can expect, with all the hype surrounding the film, a large amount of money was taken on the films opening weekend. $1,500,000 to be exact.

The actors used in the film used their real names to add realism to the story. If they had been given false names then the USA might not have believed the story to be true.

According to the website www.aintitcoolnews.com The Blair Witch Project is the scariest film ever produced. They claim that because the film plays with your mind, you are more likely to be effected by it rather than if it was a film with lots of blood and gore content. They also go on to say that because many boy scouts and families go camping in the woods, it has an unbelievable effect on the USA. As, the film is filmed in a real environment, such boy scouts and families have visited such places and this helps the reality of the film to hit home hard.

The Blair Witch Project can be said to have re-invented the horror genre as it can be held responsible for the rise in audience figures for horror films post Blair Witch Project. E.g. Freddy Vs Jason has just been knocked of the top of the box office chart after a month at the top.

So, who knows what the future holds for horror? I anticipate that more experimental films will be produced following the success of The Blair Witch Project, helping to keep the genre alive and as strong as ever.