The Blair Witch Project

[Cutter John]

I never understood how anyone could be fooled either. Don't you think three white kids vanishing in the woods would have made national headlines? Not to mention what family would would let the last surviving footage be released as a movie?

That beign said, I thought was a pretty decent movie, although it really doesn't hold up to repeated viewings once you realize the filmakers didn't 'hide' any clues in the background. I think the problem most people had was it required a bit of empathy and imagination to 'get' it. Plus it didn't end with a scary rubber monster.

The ending still gives me the creeps. Even before I saw it you couldn't get me to spend a night in the woods on a bet.

 

[TGTheodore]

Crappy film, excellent marketing.

I wasn't fooled, but they were pioneers in abusing, er, using the internet to pre-hype a film.

--Ted

 

[suarezguy]

Having watched it in 2007, knowing that it had writers and spawned a sequel, I knew that it wasn't real but I did think it was pretty effective in its scariness.

 

[Winterwind]

Never fell for it. Found it boring. Well marketed but the marketing didn't get me into the theatre. My gf at the time did. And I made sure she made it up to me for making me sit through it.

 

[Garibaldi O'brien]

Blair witch has a special place in my heart because I happened upon a personal copy of the film way before the hype, and while I can't say my cynical nature didn't figure it was a hoax, I was impressed with what they tried to do, and ended showing it to quite a few friends, as possible lost footage, still months before the real hype began.

I'd dare say I had a bakers dozen of friends pretty convinced that it might be the real mccoy until the actors started showing up on late nite-TV.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I remembered the hype at the time. I remembered being told it was real footage. At the time I didn't consider it outside the realm of possibility for two reasons:

1. I was 12. Maybe old enough to know better, but possibly old enough to use age as an excuse.

2. I didn't actually seen the movie (either then or now) so I didn't know the extent of what was shown to know whether it was plausible.

 

[Middle Earther]

I always thought of it as fictional - it never occured to me that it could be real. Anyway, this film did creep me out. I would say it is the scariest movie I've seen! Loved it!

 

[jefferiestubes8]

So did you fall for it?

No I saw it when it came out on DVD and I'm glad I waited. The handheld camerawork annoyed me on a 26" TV screen. At the cinema I heard they actually had signs posted about motion sickness.

As far as a business product it holds a record in history:

If you take into consideration the amount a movie cost to make vs. how much money it made, The Blair Witch Project is by far the most profitable ($60K to make vs. approx. $248 Million made to date = 4133 times the cost)

SOURCE
This includes the costs to the distributor of a video-to-35mm film transfer for release and I believe the license fee to Dolby Laboratories, Inc. for Dolby SR encoding on the sound mix.

The most profitable movie of all time is "The Blair Witch Project" (1999). This low budget movie was around $35000 and profit was 7107 times the initial investment and reached a top of $ 248,662, 839. No joke!

SOURCE

 

[TGTheodore]

I must, of course, briefly interject that the most most profitable movie of all time pre-internet, is American Graffiti.

Back to the thread.

--Ted