Blair Witch Project

[75Live]

I still remember even my brother got sucked into this and it's one of the few movies we have seen together as adults and it was at midnight.  He was kind of freaked out by it and I loved it, as well.

 

The run was incredible obviously.

 

Still the best use of internet promotions ever.  No one has still come close.  Even The Ring tried it a few years later and it didn't work at well promotion wise into trying to see it as "real".  Obviously once people saw TBWP, they knew it was just a movie, but it was still very effective. 

 

The only real complaints I ever heard about the film at that time was the shaky cam as it was shot in "real footage" style as it wasn't as prevalent then.

 

Overall, this is very influential movie and BO run.

Edited February 5, 2017 by 75live

[Barnack]

On 2/3/2017 at 9:03 PM, franfar said:

A horror film with just one camera and a 60k budget ended up having a 4.8x multiplier. 

 

That's unheard of nowadays. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekend&id=blairwitchproject.htm

 

The different rumored budget are a bit misleading, the Sundance print had a 60-70k cost, but that was not the movie we saw in theater, after the movie was bought at Sundance, they made reshoot (lot of it was not used thought), professional high level sound editing and mix was made and so on, it was more a 500 to 750k movie. Not that it matter, making 160.75 million in profit or 160.06 million in profit is pretty much the same.

 

Some element of it was extremelly good, for example lot of people knew that the movie was fake but still thought it was about a real rural legend, it was all 100% made up, but the level of detail was just enough to make it feal real.

 

The exposition made by interviewing people of the town instead of being in a library was also really well done, apparently some of the interview were not made with actor but with real local people that were making stuff on camera, like they often do if you ask people if they have seen UFOs and so on.

 

The production and acting felt also really real, it was shot a bit like in Tropic Thunder, GPS destination, message in milk box about the scene, didn't sleep or ate much during the shoot.

 

On a technical level having 2 different camera, and 2 different source of sound, one on a camera, the other independant you do not always hear the sound from the current camera point of view, it shift, notably in the last scene at the house, made a interesting edit and visuals. For that and for the marketing that was part of the experience, it is one of the interesting art piece of the 90's imo. That aged really well imo, in part because the similar output released since has rarely been good.

Edited February 8, 2017 by Barnack

[baumer]

The additional costs were post production, after it was picked up.  The cost was around 60K.  That how much it cost to actually get in the can.

[Barnack]

Getting it in the can was probably only 20 to 25k, the 60k-70k people talk about include the post-production to generate the Sundance version (and is a bit on the low side).

 

But after it was bought, they also did some additional photography/re-shoot not just a new sound work (not sure how much ended up in the final movie thought).

 

http://ew.com/article/2009/07/09/blair-witch/

 

SANCHEZ: Well, the original budget to get the film in the can was probably between $20,000 and $25,000. Then, once we got to Sundance to make a print and do a sound mix, we were probably more in the neighborhood of $100,000. And then once Artisan Entertainment bought the film, they put another half-million dollars into it. They did a new sound mix, and they had us re-shoot some stuff. They didn’t like the original ending with Mike standing in the corner. They asked us to shoot some new endings — Mike hanging by his neck; Mike crucified on a big stick figure; Mike with his shirt ripped open and all bloodied. We shot them but ended up staying with our original ending. So the budget of what you saw in the theaters was probably $500,000 to $750,000.

[Maxmoser3]

Internet marketing, and acting like it really happened boost the film's appeal. 

Something that couldn't happen again, and releasing it on a summer for counter programming was a smart idea. 

And it was something that unfortunately, Artisan Entertainment never saw the success ever again.