Analysis Of The Blair Witch Project

In recent decades, many have argued that the line between realism and fiction in cinematic endeavours has become increasingly blurred. It has not been until recently that the world has truly been exposed to this completely innovative cinematic style, which has captivated audiences with its new approach to filmmaking. This new cinematic style was first introduced in Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick’s The Blair Witch Project. Here I will focus on breaking down the various levels of realism within The Blair Witch Project, in order to convey why it had such a monumental impact on the cinematic world, while still remaining a popular and modern horror film to today’s audiences. In order to achieve this I will pay particular attention to the style of filming, the clever marketing campaign and the combination of fact and fiction, which helped captivate even the most, experienced of cinemagoers.

Speculation of The Blair Witch Project first began before its Sundance Film Festival Premiere in 1999, when word of mouth spread that found footage had been recovered with short clips being posted online, the footage ‘featured three student filmmakers, who had been missing in the woods since October 1994 whilst filming a documentary on the Blair Witch Myth’. The source of this footage came from a website created by the films directors, Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myricks. One of the major roles in The Blair Witch Project becoming such a smash success was due to the combination of fact and fiction within the narrative. This fusion of fact and fiction was further reinforced by the creative marketing campaign, which was cleverly planned to slowly build momentum gearing towards the release on 16th July 1999. From the beginning it had been pla...

... middle of paper ...

...ce success. This series attempted to incorporate fact and fiction through narrative, while incorporating the narrative within the marketing campaign to entice the public. Although it is clearly homage to that of The Blair Witch Project, this shows that the filming style was not just a gimmick and to modern audiences is still very popular amongst audiences when it is pulled off correctly. However although there is a great level of hand-held camera features as of recent, I believe that The Blair Witch Project has been the most successful in accomplishing a mixture of fact and fiction. May it be through the actor’s method techniques and improvised actions and dialogue, or purely down to the manipulating marketing campaign, The Blair Witch has taught the industry how influential the Internet can be when manipulating the public into believing any fictional narrative.