This is real kids getting lost in the woods and becoming desperate to find a way out as someone hunts them down. This isn’t some obvious contrived Hollywood world. Not because these filmmakers couldn’t frame correctly but because the “wrong” frame tells the audience these characters are real people in harsh physical and emotional surroundings.īy starting with an undramatic world, the contrast to the super-dramatic at the end of the film is more extreme and more believable. The characters talk about the shoot, the equipment, the filmmaking process. More importantly, video makes this world very undramatic. Why not make the use of video part of the story? By making the main characters documentary filmmakers, the video look is not a constant reminder of what is missing, but seems totally appropriate for the characters and the situation.
BLAIR WITCH PROJECT REAL STORY HOW TO
They took their knowledge of the horror genre and figured out how to turn their production weakness into a story strength. All they’d end up with is a film that looks like all the others in a genre that doesn’t have much respect.īut these two writers had an ace up their sleeve. But that takes money to do in a believable way.Īnd even if they had the money, these writers didn’t want to do the standard Hollywood horror pic. The average horror picture is highly stylized, with a number of precise story beats that are usually presented with gory special effects. In a time-honored tradition, these writers decided to use the horror genre for their first film. The film looks video cheap and maybe the audience will overlook that and maybe it won’t. Most indie screenwriters tell their story and if money problems mean they have to shoot on video, that’s too bad. That meant their script had to have few characters and would have to be shot on video. What were the writers faced with as they approached this project? They had very little money and a lot of trees.
What appears to be sloppy filmmaking by amateurs is really just one element of a strategy that turns weaknesses into strengths. The Blair Witch Project is a textbook example of how to write a successful script for the independent market.
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