Film advertising
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
The Blair Witch Project features 3 film students who go into the
woods, hoping to make a documentary on the legendary ‘Blair Witch’. But the
students never return and their footage is discovered a year later.
With the poster release your initial expectation of The
Blair Witch Project is that it is a horror with its typical horror codes and
conventions; Dull colours, mainly black to demonstrate the theme of death, red
writing which emphasizes blood and a woods which are typical locations in
horror films. We also see a symbol which is another devise used in horrors. The
picture in the foreground below is also chilling and thriller-like with the
shadow but also gives us our first insight into it being a found footage film
due to the poor lighting and position of the image. ‘Blair Witch’ hints at its
horror genre and ‘project’ also gives the audience a clue that it could be in a
documentary style or self-filmed. The image of the girl in the hat is also the
only official poster to be released, this would have been done to further the
audiences belief was real was real and they didn’t have professional pictures
taken for a poster. I think this poster gives you a good expectation of what
the film will be like leading the audience to enjoy it.
The feedback at the first screening of The Blair Witch
Project to an audience of the general public which was 2 and a half hours at
the time came back to be a bit slow, too long and boring. The directors Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrick decided to cut the film to
81 minutes and knew they’d need something else to make the film a success. The
film incidentally was a success due to its massive interactive and viral
marketing campaigns, being one of the first to cleverly use this way of
advertising which created such a large buzz and ground breaking campaign.
The makers advertised the film
as being entirely true and the footage used was actually real footage found in
the woods. They listed the characters in the film as missing/dead and posters
and websites were created for their safe return/mourning of the 3 film
students. The images below show posters used in the advertisement of the
campaign.
Telephone numbers and websites were
created for anyone who had any information or sightings of the 3 to contact.
This made the audience truly believe that the footage was real and these ‘characters’
were missing. The directors knew that ‘If enough believed it, then it had to be
true’. The posters were spread around the Sundance and Cannes film festivals on
their first release and they even went as far as listing the actors as dead on
IMDb. With such huge publicity, 3 months on the low budget film of just $60,000
made and incredible £750,000 on opening weekend in the UK.
When it was eventually and slowly
discovered that the actors were in fact alive and well the directors still
insisted the legacy and story of the Blair Witch to be true. The website www.blairwitch.com
giving detailed descriptions of real backpacks and reels of film tape and cans
found in the woods. Also claiming that it was re-in acted on the true story of
what was found in the diary Heather kept, also discovered in the woods.
The diary was a part of the merchandise
also used as replicas being sold as a way to promote the film. Along with other
types of merch like caps, t-shirts, hoodies etc and also beanies similar to
those in the poster with the Blair Witch symbol printed on them. The Blair Witch video games are a trilogy of action-adventure games
based on the back story of the movie The Blair Witch Project, another set of merchandise sold with the advertisement
of the film. There was also a series of 8 books ‘The Blair Witch Files’
by Cade Merrill based on the film, which became increasingly popular after the release of the
film. There was also a set of limited edition comic books released after the
film as collector’s editions showing the films popularity. In addition, the
film was also originally in a documentary style with clips of
the case after the film makers disappearance with interviews with the police
and family etc. The producers decided to cut this out and concentrate on the
story. The additional footage was used on the dvd release "The
Curse of the Blair Witch" and "The Blair Witch Legacy" and titled as ‘newly discovered
footage’, also with director and
producer commentary,
production notes, cast & crew bios, and trailers. This extra footage on the
dvd was advertised so it would make the audience want to buy it to find out
more about the disappearance. A sequel of the film, ‘Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2’ with a similar story line to the original was
released by a different director a year later but without the backing of the
campaign, it was poorly received by critics. A third film was written but never
made due to the failure of the second film.
There has been many reviews of the
film, with most often being about the campaign rather than the actual film. The
image below shows the review from Rotten Tomatoes.
As you can see the film received a very
high rating from critics but an average rating from the general public
audience. I think this is because the audience were mainly focusing on the
viral campaign and because it had such a big buzz about it they expected the
film to be better than it was. If the film hadn’t had such a successful advertising
it may have received a higher score. Most horror fans also like gore and
violence so may have been disappointed with its slow pace and lack of blood. In
addition, found-footage style films were also only starting to be introduced,
so many people were not used to this type of film and found them confusing and
disorientating. The film received a higher review from critics because when
they may have watched the film before the cinema release so the advertisement
wasn’t at its peak yet. The critics would’ve also been more interested in the
new age of found footage films and enjoy how the directors had adapted this new
‘amateur’ style to their film. Critics would also have a greater background
knowledge of the film so would of have better idea of the small budget and been
impressed with the film they managed to produce.
There are many spoofs of The Blair
Witch Project such as ‘The Blair Thumb’, ‘The Bunk Witch Project’ and ‘The Tony
Blair Project’ some of which affiliated with the original. There are also some references to the film in
other films and TV shows. In ‘The Simpsons’ there are several references to the
film with one of them being when Lisa is shopping for a camping trip and buying
‘Blair Witch repellent’. There are also some parts of The Blair Witch Project
that mirror other films, for example when the map is misplaced and sudden
realisation that they are lost reflected Sartres ‘No Exit’. These examples of
intertexuality’s show how popular the film has become with the question of
whether it is still real or not arising today.
The distributors set a very wide
release date across the world. For the US, it was first shown at the Sundance
Film Festival on the 25th of January, it was then released in
cinemas on the 30th of July. Just over 2 months later it was first
shown in the UK at the Raindance Film Festival then premiered on the 22nd
of October. The large gap between the US and UK release was to build up more
anticipation for the UK release, It was so widely acclaimed in the US that the
opening weekend in the UK was mostly sold out. With a gap of nearly 3 months
between each release it gave the distributors time to concentrate properly on
each release.
In conclusion, the success of the
campaign of the film is said to be more of a success than the film itself. It
is one of the largest budgets to gross ratio films, showing the advertising of
the film was very well and cleverly executed.
resources:
http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0185937/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/mobile/m/blair_witch_project/
http://www.blairwitch.com/
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blair_Witch_Project
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