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Blair witch project explained5/16/2023 ![]() ![]() And then they start to find increasingly sinister objects with magical or ritualistic purposes (rock cairns, stick-men hanging from trees), as nerves start to fray as they become desperate to find their way home. They camp in the woods, not intending to stay long, but soon become lost. The students interview townsfolk in Burkittsville (a small community in the area where the witch supposedly lived) and later traipse into a local forest to find a murder site from the 19th-century allegedly involving the sorceress. Only the footage you’re about to see was found a year later, inexplicably buried beneath a house. The movie consists of the footage they’d recorded on two devices (a Hi8 video unit and a 16mm film camera), as an opening title notes the students were never seen again after entering the woods to work on their documentary film. Three film students from Montgomery College in Maryland-Heather, Josh, and Mike-are making a documentary about a local legend dating back to the 19th-century: the Blair Witch. The premise of The Blair Witch Project is incredibly simple. Similarly, because the film doesn’t definitively say that a witch exists, that-perversely-makes us less likely to deny the possibility outright. The negligible production values and the fact no effort is made to conceal it only contributed to our suspension of disbelief: audiences unconsciously thought “no professional filmmaker would deliberately shoot a film so badly, or script dialogue so clumsy, so it must be real“. The handheld cameras weren’t just cheap stand-ins for more sophisticated equipment, they’re at the heart of the story. It was guerrilla filmmaking taken about as far as it could be, combined with a fictional narrative that shaped the entire movie. Although the filmmakers and crewmen didn’t directly accompany the actors during shooting, there was occasional contact being made through notes, infrequent face-to-face encounters, and a CB radio.Įven so, Blair Witch’s style felt novel. Donahue, along with her equally unknown co-stars Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams, obviously knew she was making a movie and presumably surmised the stick-men and ghastly noises were part of an elaborate set-up by her directors. Just as it’s questionable how many people in the audience truly believed this film was telling “a true story” despite the media hype. Of course, the extent to which they “really” lived these experiences is debatable. ![]() They genuinely trudged through thick forest and stumbled upon sinister stick-men… they camped out overnight while being kept awake by strange sounds… they grew cold, hungry, and tired… and all the while they filmed themselves going through hell. This emotion, too, is part of cinema legend because the three main actors endured, as close as humanly possible, the actual experiences being depicted. Most importantly, Heather’s terrified and her desperation feels real. Terror lurks in the vast dark space stretching beyond the edges of the screen… as unknown to the characters as it is the audience watching them. The rest of the image is completely black-there’s no lighting because there’s no crew around, and the pervasive eeriness of Blair Witch comes from what’s not seen. Most of her face isn’t even visible in the frame because Donahue held the camera at the wrong angle, but her error made the final cut. There was an unknown and ordinary-looking actress, sans makeup, turning the camera on herself. It remains divisive to this day a modern classic people either love or hate, but one rarely has no feelings about The Blair Witch Project.Īs iconic as the film itself is, its most famous segment-a monologue to the camera, where actress Heather Donahue apologises for misjudgements she believes have doomed her and her friends-encapsulates what was remarkable about Blair Witch. Although some found it boring, incomprehensible, or plain annoying. This 1999 hit was the progenitor of endless parodies and a whole academic subculture, but also a classic case of a zero-budget film created by amateurs that swept aside Hollywood blockbusters.Ībove all, it deeply disturbed much of its audience with a kind of visceral terror rarely encountered before. Still controversial after two decades, it brought a horror subgenre to mainstream attention: the found-footage movie. “Iconic” is the most overused word in journalism today, but The Blair Witch Project is a rare case where it applies. ![]()
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