Today, we watched the Blair Witch Project. As we are planning to produce a horror style fiction film opening, I found it very interesting and I have produced an analysis of the films, production, distribution and exhibition.
The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project is an American horror genre movie which was released in 1999. The plot is portrayed as a documentary put collectively from amateur recording, filmed in an actual period of time. The motion picture depicts the narrative of three teenage student amateur film producers who climb into the eerie Black Hills of Burkittsville, Maryland to produce a documentary concerning a local myth recognized as the Blair Witch, and consequently go missing. The spectator is told that the three were never recovered, even though their video recorder and noise gear (alongside with the majority of the recording they shot) was exposed a year afterwards. This "recovered footage" is offered as the movie the watcher is examining.
The marketing material and Web site for The Blair Witch Project implied that the film consists of actual documentary footage shot by three missing student filmmakers in the woods. I could possibly integrate this technique into my movie, as it would be something simple to re-create.
The reality was that “The Blair Witch Project” is no documented drama. It is an inexpensive, 87-minute, self-regulating feature film made by Haxon Films. The project's unique method of production and postproduction-meant to resemble unrehearsed, documentary footage-may seem more unusual than any supernatural phenomenon, real or imagined. The inexpensive nature means that amateur film producers such as us could re-create this genuine and amateur, yet professional style of the film. Moreover the small cast would be something which would be easiest for us; the handheld camera is perfect as we have these cameras at our disposal.
Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez directed, co-wrote, and edited the movie, which took an altered route than what they had initially designed. As we would be working in a group of two, this film is perfect example of small scale direction, pre-production and post-production, however we would probably have the same changes and alterations to our original plan, which something we must consider. Daniel Myrick said "We had this premise of shooting it like a documentary for years,"- "As it grew; we embellished it and came up with this legend of the Blair Witch-a whole back-story about a ghost haunting these woods. Besides the 'found' footage, we also shot footage with experts and family members to craft it as a more conventional documentary. The footage we got in the woods, however, was so strong that it told a narrative story by itself. Therefore, we dumped our plan to put other elements into it and ended up using much of that extra footage on the Web site and in other materials we are creating [including a comic book series and a book]. The film uses only the footage shot by the cast." The fact that the footage shot was by the cast members is something we must consider too, as our group size doesn’t allow us to only have directors and editors, we must also star in the film. Additionally, I think the point about removing unnecessary content is crucial because it is only a film opening, and it must state a clear narrative and fast pace (due to the action scenes in horror).
In order to attain their original aims, the producers engaged what they entitled "method filmmaking." Members of the cast captured all the footage over a period of days. Additionally, rather than meticulous scripting, the stars were all provided with outlines, and encouraged to improvise with lines through their character. Moreover, this is something we should consider, detailed scripts are burdening and waste valuable planning time, and we could possibly integrate improvisation and vague scripts in order to receive more genuine, spontaneous and natural acting.
The film incorporates no visual effects to signify the paranormal component of the film, yet incorporates mental stimuli and props, allowing the actors to be the only source of fear for the audience. Myrick and Sanchez confess that the single motive for this was their tremendously small finances. "This was definitely a credit card film, about as much as a decent new car," concedes Sanchez. But motives for preceding effects were for creative purposes-The Blair Witch Project is a response film primarily. The lack of visual effects is something we could utilize in our film opening, although we have the editing facilities to incorporate visual and filmic effects. Personally, as someone who would like to edit the film I feel that our movie would require visuals in order to communicate the opening narrative.
Moreover, the film incorporated low production values which decreased the film creative requirements. The film appeared to be in harsh conditions; furthermore the amateur feel was created by the low production value.
However, I do feel that the low production values did have an effect on the overall quality. Numerous scenes were in terrible lighting and appeared grainy; moreover several scenes are very shaky and make it hard to follow. In our film opening, I believe our production values would have to be much higher in order to produce a quality and understandable film opening. The poor lighting did however create eerie effects in the darkness and produced a more genuine feel to the film, although I feel it did distort the quality at parts.
From my additional research I found the film's cutting and postproduction procedure was very conventional, although it was still strange for an inexpensive, indie movie. Firstly, Myrick and Sanchez had to select throughout 19 hours of movie (which had taken 8 days to film) and video recording to produce the 87 minutes depicted in the motion picture. The editing processes was very long; it took roughly eight months to edit the whole thing. This is something we must contemplate, the editing process could be the hardest part and we must reserve time for editing our recorded footage.
However, the movie's auditory mix was the individual region where distinctive, Hollywood production values were put into the development. The mix was produced by Dana Meekss. Meeks delicately removed and improved a great deal of the audio recorded by the camcorder and DAT machine. Audio editing is something we must integrate too, as well as enhancing and cleaning certain components of the captured audio I felt non-diegetic music and sounds should be integrated into our production.
Budget
The budget for the film was unusually low, around $20-$25 thousand before certain aspects of exhibition and distribution. The small budget here is encouraging as our film would be low budget and we have our own amateur editing facilities which will ultimately reduce costs.
Reaction
Despite its small budge “The Blair Witch Project” grossed $248,639,099 globally. Which is a huge contrast between its final and initial budgets.
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