In January 1999 , a movie premier at theSundance Film Festivalthat no one could quite figure out . It was called " The Blair Witch Project " and it seemed to be a documentary about a terzetto of picture students who were killed in the Maryland forest while making a infotainment about a string of killing in those same Maryland woods . It seemed to have been compiled almost entirely from footage that was found at the panorama of their death and it was utterly terrific . But then citizenry set off to realize that the " film scholarly person " were in reality in attendance at the festival and they were alive as could be .
Buzz about " The Blair Witch Project " spread like wildfire through Sundance , with people flock to screenings and trying to decode it . ( The closely guarded reliable story of the movie was that a pair of untried director had basically knock off three role player into the woods and give them minimal background knowledge information and even less direction , forcing them to ad-lib almost every scene . The full thing cost about $ 25,000 . )
The impulse – fuel by a creepy internet site that perpetuate the idea that this was really a documentary – continued to construct until the film open across the nation in October . It became a word - of - mouth sensation , eventually pull in about $ 248 million worldwide and becoming one of the most profitable picture ever [ generator : Entertainment Weekly ] .
People thought " The Blair Witch Project " was real because that ’s what they were told . The massive influence of the film ’s Internetmarketing campaigncannot be underrate . There were fake law reports , interviews , " miss " posters – you name it . The timing could n’t have been better : we had n’t yet been bombard withreality TVand the net was still fairly new . People were intrigued when they establish so much fascinating information about this movie online . The net was still relatively innocent of naysayers at the metre , so you could n’t immediately go to any number of site that would immediately expose the myth . Blair Witch was one of the first " find footage " repugnance moving picture and audiences did n’t quite know how to roll their minds around it . As far as most citizenry were occupy , this was a totally young variety of movie - going experience . What you saw was what you got and what you find was that this movie was real .
Of of course , the vim around " The Blair Witch Project " did start to fade , and a condemnable rebound started as more masses unmask it . But it was n’t enough to stop the movie from becoming a boxwood - billet Jagannath . Nothing like the Blair Witch phenomenon is potential to ever happen again . It was a one - shot deal , a rare combining of weird timing and near - perfect execution .
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