Blair Witch
When Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick set out to make a horror film, they had little money, but wanted to make something genuinely scary. They’ve succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. The Blair Witch Project has done more than just scare audiences across America; it’s also put fear into the very heart of Hollywood.
The Blair Witch Project tells the story of three film students who go to Maryland’s Black Hills Forest to make a documentary about the legendary Blair Witch that haunts the area. The three vanish never to be seen again, but a year later their video tapes and film footage arefound containing a record of their last days in the woods. Sanchez and Myrick along with their partners Robin Cowie, Gregg Hale and Mike Monello made the film for a reported $40,000, with unkonwns in front of and behind the camera and without fancy special effects. With daring and innovative marketing campaign by the indie distributor Artisan Entertainment, The Blair Witch Project has earned an astonishing $135,123,221 at the box office to date. It is now the most profitable film in cinema history and it has executives in Hollywood frantically trying to figure out the secret of its success.
Myrick and Sanchez conceived a way of making a virtue of their lack of funds. The film has a mix of Hi 8 video and 16mm film making up the documentar-in-progress footage. Myrick and Sanchez coached their cast, Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard, on how to use the equipment and sent them out into the woods to shoot. The actors improvised their scenes according to outlines from Myrick and Sanchez. The co-directors would view the footage as shooting progressed and refined performances by giving notes and advice to the actors as they tracked them through the forest.
The buzz on the film began last year when excerpts were screened on The Independent Film Channel’s Split Screen. John Pierson, the show’s host and former independent producers representative for such titles as She’s Gotta Have It, Clerks and Roger & Me had met the filmmakers in 1997 at the Florida Film Festival and hired Haxan to shoot a segment for his TV programme. Pierson initially thought the footage he was looking at was a real documentary. Viewers flooded the Split Screen website with e-mail about the film. Myrick and Sanchez realised that they were tapping into something out there over the Net. In response before editing was complete they set up their own website providing basic information on the film. Soon a debate was raging over the Net: whether or not the film was fact or fiction.
In January, at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Artisan Entertainment bought the film for $1 million in the early hours of the morning after its midnight screening. Artisan has acquired a reputation as an innovative market maker selling niche films to a slightly younger demographic than the traditional arthouse audience. So far they’ve had some interesting and unlikely successes with this approach. At last year’s Sundance Festival, they paid $1 million for the rights to Darren Aronofsky’s *. Most industry pundits believed the arty, black-and-white math thriller was unreleasable. But Artisan guided * to $3 million at the US domestic box office.
Capitalising on Blair Witch’s Internet buzz, Artisan took the bold move of creating a low cost grass roots marketing campaign centred around the website. They enhanced the website building on the extensive back story that Sanchez and Myrick had developed for the film, adding a chronology of the legend of the Blair Witch dating back to the 19th century, interviews with the missing students’ parents, interviews with police investigators and excerpts from Heather’s diary. The move paid off. By the time the film opened on July 16th, its website had registered over 20 million hits.
Artisan then took another gamble and decided not to open the film in New York and Los Angeles first before platforming to other markets. New York and Los Angeles are the most expensive markets for opening a film. It can cost as much as $100,000 to open an independent film in each of these markets. Instead they opened the film simultaneously in 24 markets outside New York and LA in order to make the film an event. In its first week, The Blair Witch Project earned an astonishing $1,572,173 million in just 27 theatres for a per screen average of $58,228. It was reported in Variety that at this point, Disney offered Artisan $25,000,000 to buy the distribution rights to the film.
Despite this phenomenal opening, Artisan resisted the temptation to open the film wider and only increased to 31 screens for its second week. The film took in another $2 million. Artisan then made plans to spend $8 million on marketing the expansion into 800 theatres. They in fact went from 31 screens to 1,101 in their third week. The film then broke the record for the highest per screen average for a wide release film by taking in $24,347,345 Million for a per screen average of $22,113. A risky, daring marketing campaign and the power of the Internet have made what would have been little more than a cult movie into one that is sure to be one of the most profitable pictures iever. It’s hard to tell what the success of The Blair Witch Project will have in the long run on film marketing practice but it has certainly shredded the Hollywood ‘rule book’ regarding what’s necessary for a successful film. Is it just a fluke or is it the new model for filmmaking?
At a time when Hollywood studios are facing ever shrinking profit margins, this film has shown that it’s possible to achieve blockbuster status without the stars, special effects and huge marketing and promotion budgets that studio philosophy has steadily maintained are necessary. As the summer comes to a close, Blair Witch ranks seventh for the season. It has outgrossed Eyes Wide Shut, Notting Hill, and Wild, Wild West. Blair Witch is the complete antithesis of these big budget star vehicles. It shows what’s really great about the film business: that the little fish can swim with the sharks. The Blair Witch Project has its London premiere at the Raindance Film Festival on October 8th and is now on general release.
Editorial
So that was '99
Don
Letts
Producer
Lincia Daniel dances verbally with Don Letts
Thomas Allen Crossing the boundaries
Sister
I'm Sorry
A highlight of the festival - get your VHS copy
(c)Black Filmmaker Publications
1999:
All right reserved
