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The Blair Witch Project
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IMDB Page (external link) | |
| Writer: | Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sánchez |
| Starring: | Heather Donahue , Joshua Leonard , Michael Williams |
| Director: | Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sánchez |
| Music by: | Tony Cora |
| Distributor: | Artisan Entertainment |
| Release Date: | July 30 1999 ( USA wide) |
| Runtime: | 86 min. |
| Language: | English |
| Awards: | 2000 Golden Slate , Best Horror Movie, Best Movie; 1999 Golden Trailer , Best Best Horror/Thriller, Best Voice Over |
The Blair Witch Project is a low budget 1999 horror film in which three young film students mysteriously disappear from the face of the earth after being stalked through the woods, lost and kept awake by an unseen antagonist. The film is a mockumentary, purporting to be the film and video footage shot by the vanished students.
This film was a huge success because its makers did heavy marketing via the Internet, spreading rumors and suggesting or allowing people to think that the material they shot was authentic and that the three protagonists really disappeared. This has caused problems for the police department of Burkittsville, Maryland, the setting of the movie. A similar problem occurred after the movie The Amityville Horror was released.
After the movie's success, a good share of merchandise was sold, like computer games and all sorts of memorabilia. Despite this commercial success, subsequent movies have not matched the success or innovation of the original movie, which some say has inspired the creation of a whole new way of filmmaking: the Method Film-making (named after method actingMethod acting is the endeavour to apply natural rules and laws to the theatre and film acting which can aid an actor with the process of playing a role. This approach, characterized by lack of any specific or technical approach to acting, is usually the a).
The technique used was to give the three actors only a vague idea of what to do—basically "You are three student film makers doing a documentary on the legend of the Blair Witch"—then turn them loose with a professional camera for the documentary and an amateur camera to document the "making of the documentary". The script was almost entirely ad-libbed; the townspeople interviewed were mostly real townspeople acting, and the three actors had only a minimal contact with the real film crew who did not provide any of the footage and played the role of mediators. The real film crew's only task was to prod the actors in the required direction and edit the film using only the footage taken by the actors. The result has the look and feel of an authentic documentary.
The film-makers also created a complex, detailed backstory told through the movie's website and in spin-off books.
The estimated production cost of the film was about $25,000. The movie grossed over $150 million at the box office, making it the most profitable motion picture of all time in terms of the ratioIn algebra, a ratio is the relationship between two quantities. It is expressed as the quotient of one magnitude divided by another, or as a relation between several variables. Examples: If a school has a twenty-to-one student-teacher ratio, that means th of production costs to box office proceeds.