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Beware The Hype, Not the Witch 325

Posted by JonKatz from the internet-casts-a-spell-on-you dept.
Since no studio could possible make a movie as simple or original as the "Blair Witch Project" any longer, they're blaming the success of the movie on the Net, calling it the "first Internet movie. Wait a minute... It's a great movie, but is it worth the cover of both "Time" and "Newsweek?" The hype is getting scarier than the movie.

The movie industry is in shock over the "Blair Witch Project," which is clobbering wannabe blockbusters like "Deep Blue Sea" and "The Haunting."

BWP looks to be one of the most profitable movies in modern times. It cost about $30,000 to make and is expected to earn as much as $140 million.

That kind of profit margin, unprecedented in modern filmmaking, sure gets the attention of the people who run the entertainment industry. And it's also send the media into digital over-Hype once again. The "Blair Witch Project" is a lot of fun. And it's truly original. But it's not a great movie, nor even a particularly frightening one.

It does, however, seem to be the most important story in the world this week. The press is reminding us again that if you can't be first, you might as well try to look hip.

Perhaps to cover their own behinds, chastened Hollywood producers are blaming the success of BWP on the movie's crafty Net and website campaigns. The simple truth may be a lot tougher for them, and for all those overheated reporters to face - this is a more original, contemporary and kid-savvy movie than Hollywood is capable of making.

The embodiment of anti-hype, BWP is now the personification of it, analyzed on evening newscasts, on magazine covers, and pondered by newspapers all over the country. And very quickly, of course, to be mimicked at a movie theater near you.

This film is, in fact, being hailed by its distributors as a cultural landmark, a new kind of Net phenomenon, as if the world could withstand any more.

"There was a young Internet audience out there that hasn't been tapped," says Bill Block, a happy partner at Artisan Entertainment, which distributed the movie. "This movie converges with that audience. They've embraced it. All the kids have seen it on the Internet. In some ways it's the first Internet movie."

There is, in fact, some evidence that the BWP reveals a generational divide. It's drawing hordes of people age 18 to 30, the Net-savviest demographic group in the country. People over 35 are not seeing it in great numbers, nor liking it much when they do.

But is this really an "Internet movie?" Or is it simply a good movie for kids whose real implications are too complex and unpleasant for the disconnected, decidedly non-interactive giant companies that run media, movie and other information and entertainment industries?

The movies website, www.blairwitch.com, has from the first abandoned the traditional line between reality and fiction by displaying updated police reports and video interviews that make the movie and the story on which its based seem true. Discerning readers and viewers will quickly get that this is fiction, but some kids buy -- or perhaps pretend to buy -- the idea that the "Blair Witch Project" is literal and real.

Although it's not clear how many people believe the movie to be a literal documentary, there are still arguments all over the Web, especially on hundreds of mailing lists on ICQ and Hotline (or just type Blair Witch into your search engine) about whether the movie is true.

This is the perfect kind of hype for a movie like BWP. It offers raging controversy and debate over an issue of no real consequence whatever.

In a different way, the temporal furor is reminiscent of the (calculated) scare the late film genius Orson Welles gave the country decades ago when he broadcast "War Of The Worlds" - panic inducing radio reports of a Martian invasion in New Jersey.

Given the ubiquity of modern media, and the communicative nature of the Net and the Web, the fact that the story is fictional will get around soon enough, although there will be pockets of fanatics who don't want to believe it, and the inevitable media reports about how dangerous the Net is to the impressionable young, blah-blah, and how much it needs truth-tellers like the ones in media.

There's no doubt this move marked highly savvy use of the Web. The Blair Witch website logged more than 20 million hits even before the movie came out. Now Block says the number of visits is closer to 80 million.

But the mega hype surrounding a movie that was strikingly minimalist, non-traditional, and non-corporate suggests some grounds for caution, especially about the world's "first Internet movie." As of this writing, there is no such thing as an "Internet" movie, only one that can be touted there. If the "Blair Witch Project" isn't a great movie, it might very well be an influential one. For more than a decade, the indie film movement has been building seadily, nibbling at the edges of the gargantuan studio system. If the BWP results in the making of more innovative films by idiosyncratic filmmakers, then the Net will have, however indirectly, added something else to the culture of the world.

BWP is, in many ways, the perfect teenage/Web movie. It's unnerving without being frightening. It has lots of suspense and little horror. Its young actors were tossed into the woods with no script, clear direction, and dwindling amounts of food. So they were highly credible.

Because it's so fast-moving, grainy and herky-jerky, there are many discussions and disagreements about details of the pictures and the story, including the murky ending. Thus it lends itself to being debated, discussed, seen and re-seen. You can't go see it and not talk about it, or disagree with somebody about what you saw.

The movie was also tailor made for younger kids because it came out of leftfield. The grownups didn't make it, the kids did. Making a $30,000 movie with unknown directors and actors, with no script, special effects or studio support is almost a rebellious act in itself, something anybody under 30 can relate to. This movie is, in fact, a victory for individuality over the corporatism that has captured Hollywood along with publishing and journalism.

By presenting the story line as real, the aura around the movie became more eerie, generated more controversy.

By initially avoiding traditional Hollywood hype - bombardment print and screen campaigns quoting critics, showing trailers, offering marketing tie-ins with fast food chains - the campaign for the movie was refreshing and original.

But the campaign for BWP was tailor-made for this particular movie. For all the hype, the very same campaign wouldn't help woofers like "Deep Blue Sea" or "The Haunting." It doesn't necessarily have universal implications for other films, or speak to the evolution of a new kind of Internet entity.

In conventional media and business, where the Net is continuously either hyped to the skies or demonized beyond all reason, there's a tendency to assume that because a particular project works once online, computer networks are going to revolutionize a subculture or industry overnight.

In this case, the film's distributors noticed the Web-site was drawing crowds, and that kids were loving the idea of the movie, and pumped nearly $20 million into a conventional - and definitely non-digital - advertising campaign. That was quick, but hardly revolutionary, thinking.

By using technology so skillfully --- digital, hand-held cameras, Global (satellite) Positioning Systems that guided the actors through the woods - the makers of the movie also gave it a techno-savvy and jarringly realistic quality.

The actors were believable. They could be the kids next door, or at the next desk. This is a level of reality no longer available to the gazillion-dollar Hollywood offerings which, while they vary wildly in quality, are loud, overpowering and frequently over-written, animated and produced. In lots of ways, the BWP is a rejection of everything about Hollywood, especially the way it makes and hypes movies.

The odd thing is that no Hollywood studio could make a movie like this any more, not matter how jazzy a website they came up with. The studio system - now totally dominated by enormous conglomerates in desperate need of "Titanic" style profits - makes it virtually impossible for a movie like that to come from within. Nor do they necessarily want to make those kinds of movies.

If movies can really be made by unheard of kid directors for tens of thousands of dollars, what does that mean for the hordes of high-priced actors, directors, studio VP's, techs, publicists, marketers, designers and animators involved in the production of even the lowest-budget Hollywood movie?

Small wonder the people in LA are running around claiming that the BWP is an Internet movie: the alternative is unthinkable.

If the Net has had any great impact here, it's typically via connectivity: letting kids find a movie they will love, and vice versa.

The originality of the BWP will be lost soon enough. According to reporters, more "lost" film from the three main actors, Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard will be found for the sequel.

You can bank on this: BWP II won't do as well or be as good.

As producers and journalists scramble to figure out why this movie did so well, they'll almost surely skip the most obvious answer: it deserved to.

Big studio competitors like "The Haunting" haven't stumbled because of their traditional Web marketing campaigns. They are doing poorly because they suck.

You can take this to the bank, too: "Bowfinger," a hilarious spoof of Hollywood movie-making will do just fine, even without a razzle-dazzle Net campaign.

The best way to grasp the success of the BWP is to go to a movie theater and watch the audience watching it. Any movie that can glue 200 teens to their chairs for more than an hour without hardly any of them making a sound understand its audience.

The secret to making an "Internet" movie isn't only marketing it on a Website, it's grasping as well that the cultural sensibility of the Net generation is truly different. If the BWP project was an Internet movie at all, it's because it was creative, surprising, relevant, interactive.

The real question isn't how Hollywood can use the Net to pump its movies; it's whether Hollywood is capable of making movies that people who grew up on the Net and Web will want to see.
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BWP: The first Internet movie? More

BWP: The first Internet movie?

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  • I disagree... ...to a degree... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think that the success of the BWP shows, once and for all, that Independent filmmakers are producing what people want, rather than what people get told they want.

    Did they produce what people want, or something that enough people thought they wanted? As far as I can tell, about half the people going to this movie are only going because everyone else is going -- the herd mentality at work.

    I've seen some rather bad "Hollywood" movies, and I've heard people walk out of them laughing about how much it sucked.... but walking out of BWP I was struck with how many people were actually ANGRY over how rotten it was. Do you think those people will go see the next "indie" film?

    I know I won't.

  • Katz does it again... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    there was a line in this essay that could be applied to most of Katz's articles as well as the Blair Witch media campaign...

    "It offers raging controversy and debate over an issue of no real consequence whatever"

    I can't believe I actually stopped coding to read this...
  • A few weeks ago, Katz lambasted the media by saying that BWP is a new breed of movie.

    Today, Katz lambasts the media for saying that BWP is a new breed of movie.

    Any questions?

  • Well, since people has soooo much imagination (as much as to make BWP a good movie), my next big thing and challenge to hollywood, will be to put up a scary web site that you go read, send me $7.50/ea, and then go home and use all your imagination for 2 hours to scare yourself. Total cost of production:

    8 hr @ $100/hr of writing cheassy story = $800
    8 hr @ $100/hr of building website = $800
    $0 for geocities website = $0

    A whooping $1600!!

    But since I am doing it, I will doing for free!!

    So if I could generate as much hype as the BWP, I could be rich!!!
    _________________________________________ ____________
  • A local radio station here in Maryland actually had a promo where they showed the movie IN the woods... the same woods where the movie supposedly occurred. Now THAT would have been scary.
  • From the first paragraph: "It's a great movie, but is it worth the cover of both 'Time' and 'Newsweek?'"

    From the fourth paragraph: "The 'Blair Witch Project' is a lot of fun. And it's truly original. But it's not a great movie, nor even a particularly frightening one."

    Okay, so is it a great movie or isn't it? This is pretty blatant self-contradiction. I think Katz needs a proofreader or something.

    --
    Kevin Doherty
    kdoherty+slashdot@jurai.net
  • That's because after watching the shoddy camera work, you'll want to puke. I knew I did--my eyes were shut for most of the latter half of the film.

    It's weird--all the reviews that we read say it was a great film, but almost none of the people I talked to liked it.

    Yes, i've gone camping as a kid as well. Yes, I agree with all the other posters who said that there were holes all over the place that destroy the apparent realizm that the director was attempting to build. I mean, if the kids knew any kind of outdoor skills, they wouldn't be so stupid to walk in circles. And they were waaay too emotionally unstable.

    However, even though the movie wasn't that enjoyable, the beginning half of the movie did something that few movies can do. Without the use of any special effects, with just normal hicks talking to our 3-member-hero-team, the movie was able to create quite a bit of anticipation...I mean, it was scary just seeing that woman who looked like the witch. The actual screaming and arguing as their relationship dissolved was a little tedious to watch and listen to, and that was probably the worst part of the movie.

    <tim><

  • BWP II (Score:1)

    by suprax ( 2463 )
    I sincerely hope that the BWP II does not have to be made in some hollywood studio with cheezy effects. While the BWP wasen't exactly the most scary thing on earth, it was a bit tense to watch. And what would they put in the sequel besides? :)

    --
    Scott Miga
  • You know, FreeBWP, you get the script of the Blair Witch Project and get to reinterpret it as you see fit, and add any of your own features.

    Yeah, FreeBWP is the thing! When I read this Katz bit ..

    It's a great movie, but is it worth the cover of both "Time" and "Newsweek?" The hype is getting scarier than the movie.

    .. I thought "oh no, not that Linwp hype again!". :)

  • A true internet movie is this madmans work [asciimation.co.nz].

    And as Episode I opens tomorrow in Germany, let me remind you not to forget to watch this [asciimation.co.nz] entertaining bit too.

  • Here's a brief rundown of the nitpicks:




    1) according to the kids, when they're in the woods, it's supposed to be raining cats and dogs. The only problem with that is that nothing is wet at all. Not their slickers, their bags, or anything around them


    2) Heather's hair is too clean and well-groomed for someone's who spent several days in the woods.


    3) The lead character uses her camcorder almost non-stop for 3+ days with no recharger. That's a lot of batteries not to mention tapes.


    4) Mike, the sound guy, hates the map so much that he manages to steal it away from the girl while she sleeps, get out of the tent while being hunted by a witch in the dark, without waking anyone, he tosses it in the creek. Manages to get back inside the tent without anyone noticing. Yet, the quietest witch sounds wakes them all up.


    5) In the end they hear shouts coming from this house seemingly 30 feet from their tent, as the scene was real-time. If that house was that close they would have seen it in the daytime when they started building their camp.


    6) When they first get that motel room in Burkittsville there are two beds with two of the guys in them. Where did the girl sleep?


    7) Two or three times during the movie one of the guys is holding the video camera and you hear Heather talking. But when they show her she's pitching the tent or crossing a river and her lips aren't moving at all.




  • I couldn't agree more with Katz. The media has constantly and nearly unanimously failed to understand even the most basic points of the New World Connectivity. I wonder if it is possible for them to understand that it is about connection with other human beings and connection to a large source of information. They only point they do seem to get is that global networking has a "newness" for most users. (Although not to many that read /.) Then applying a Post Hoc Ergo Procter Hoc style of argument, everything else that is new and breaks the mold ends up being due directly to the "internet". The mainstream media, and most of the mainstream for that matter, honestly believe that the "net" is the cause of anything new that they come across. Highschool shootings, the most recent Eastern Europe crisis, even terrorism under the guise of "cyber terrorism" (WTF?) are only a few examples of things, if not expressly caused by the arrival of massive internetworking, at the very least have a high correlation which amounts to a causal relationship to most journalists. And if this is not alone enough to send chills down your spine, the very same journalists refuse to do the most basic research into their topic they are reporting on that would give them the necessary information to not make the same mistakes. (Take the "hacker"/"cracker" misuse as an example.) In conclusion, we NEED to find more and better ways of making sure that reporting is done with the understanding of the technologies (at least on a human level) involved in their stories because these journalists report/reflect on the minds of the "masses" and thus ultimately the politician. The rest of that argument is left to the reader.

  • The hype is getting scarier than the movie

    Hype which you helped to create? Weren't you waxing poetic just last week about how revolutionary the film is?
  • BWP appeals and is frightening to those with imagination. It's not what you see and hear that scares you, it's what you don't see and hear. You see enough to know that the characters are scared, and that's enough for some. Kids love it. Adults who haven't lost their sense of adventure love it. Those who have "grown up" beyond their childhood quest for (and fear of) the unknown don't like it. Not enough blood and gore for a "horror" flick.

    So, before seeing it, ask yourself if you have an imagination or not.
  • Come on. This is just a reaction to the changing view on the Blair Witch Project. Thesis: yes the movie is good, but no the studio hype vis-a-vis "internet phenom" is bad.

    To be honest, despite being a Katzenbasher Kid myself on occasion, I kind of liked this article - a lot of hype blurbs I hadn't heard, a little insight. Doublespeak it's not. (Even if somewhat self-contradictory...)

    And yes, I liked the movie - a clever investigation of the word fear, neat camerawork, good premise. I don't watch horror, so I wasn't disappointed by the shocks/lack of shocks.

  • Sadly, I did not view this film where it was intended to be viewed. I saw it in a major movie house, with state of the art *everything*. As such, most of the crowd was 15-year-olds on summer vacation. The entire front section of the theater (after all, we have to sit close, don't we...the special effects will be more exciting!) was chuckling at various intervals that were supposed to build suspense. There was a crowd of adolescent boys MST3King it. This is *NOT* proper theater behaviour, and it honestly spoiled it for me.

    After the film, as we were exiting, a young man spoke to the group I was with, asking why it sucked so bad. After all, we never even see that witch chick. Or did we? He had actually arrived late.

    And while I'm ranting, loose ends??? I didn't notice any. The Blair Witch had the guy standing in a corner, which meant (from earlier dialogue) that s/he was going to kill the other one, and then the guy facing the corner. Fairly straightforward to me. Years later, the footage is found...end of story, no loose ends.
  • This has been the real annoyance about the movie for many of us. We in DALnet's #wicca have had people coming in since before the movie started its theatre run asking us if it was true, if real Witches really eat children, even AFTER we pointed out the coverage on The Witches Voice (http://www.witchvox.com), including the interview with the directors discussing this very truth/fiction issue.
  • >I thought Katz was talking about the Blair Witch >Project, but then he kept mentioning something >called "BWP". Any ideas?

    *thwack*

    groan, laugh

    ;`)
  • "you are in the forest, something is after you, it is scary."

    Hey, it worked for the Zork series of games.

    >get bar
    bar ... bar ... bar ...
  • Ahem.


    ME TOO!


    Modern entertainment culture is totally about funneling canned emotion into your head, so you can shut your brain off for two hours and enjoy the ride. See my comments elsewhere in this thread.
  • *MILD SPOILERS AHEAD*

    Those who love Blair Witch, and those who don't. Personally, I'm in the first category. I saw it for again last night, and I can say that it's better the second time around.

    What I have found, is when you take a sample of those who didn't like it, they seem to fall into four broad categories... "I don't like scary movies", "It wasn't scary", "Why are the characters so stupid", "What's with all the profanity." We can weed out the first category as irrelevant to this discussion.

    The thing which has struck me most about the "it wasn't scary" types, is that they almost universally seem to think the movie would have been better with "something" in it. This is, imo, a direct offshoot of modern Hollywood film making in which computer generated special effects kill the need for active viewing and imagination, resulting in a sort of mental withering which must be provided all its stimulation. The thing which was so horrifying about BWP was it's total paranoia, and dread of the unknown. I am very jaded when it comes to horror movies, but I can safely say, this one scared the shit out of me. The one very mild scene of gore horrified me more than all the blood in all the special effects films ever created. But it doesn't have a horrible CGI monster leaping at at you, so it's not scary. Bah, says I.

    As for the complaints about the characters not knowing how to survive in the woods, and not using the books they were so careful to show at the beginning, and being generally clueless, consider this: They were *film makers*, not survivalists. You get out in the woods, hungry and cold and scared shitless, and see if the first thing on *your* mind is "Let me read this book to find out I need to follow the river to civilization" -- which, by the way, sometimes fails you.

    Then there are the folks who don't like the seemingly complusive profanity. It didn't even hit me, until after I saw it and heard people talking about it, because that is what is normal in conversation for my generation, especially in emotionally tense situations. When I get angry, or scared, or stressed, I probably use 'fuck' excessively, too. It's not the fault of the film makers, it's the fault of the generation, if there is any fault to be had. Personally, I don't give a shit. :)

    The bottom line is, BWP is a great movie which has more psychological tension in it than anything which has come out of Hollywood in a long time, and which has earned some detractors because either they don't understand it, or they are so weaned on mental masturbation with special effects that they can't appreciate good, real horror.

    My two cents.
  • I'm a chaos magician, myself, and have plenty of friends who are "witches", but I wasn't bothered at all by the name of the movie -- no more than I would be if it were the Blair Sysadmin Project, and an evil hacker lived in the woods and beat kids up with a Type 5 keyboard, and stored their heads in a hollowed-out washing machine drive. Stop taking yourself so seriously. :)
  • They were expecting to see _Alien_... Oddly enough, I've seen Blair Witch (filmed about a half hour drive from my house), and recently watched Alien again, and oddly enough, I found the two movies to be quite similar. Alien hardly has any gore in it at all, apart from the chestburster scene. Incidentally, the start of that scene was a surprise to all the actors on the set. Pay attention to their reactions, that's real fear and disgust on their faces. Veronica Cartwright in particular has a good reaction. There was practically no gore in BWP, save one scene. There was *no* soundtrack at all in BWP. Despite the soundtrack available from music stores (allegedly the mix tape Josh recorded for the trip), there was no spooky music in the film itself. There was no warning when something spooky was going to happen; it just happened. Alien also has no score to speak of. There are a few soaring orchestral bits, to accent the unbelievably hugeness of space, but again, when spooky stuff happens, it just does. It may just be the ship's cat jumping out from behind that crate, or it may be a bloodthirsty xenophobe, you never know until it's too late. BWP is perhaps mostly known for the hand held camera shots. Alien also featured a few choice hand held shots to spice up the film. My favourite aspect of BWP is that a couple of people just went out and made a movie because that's what they wanted to make. It cost "as much as a fully-loaded Ford Taurus" film, and it's done better than most movies at the theaters this year. Keep in mind also, that the movie has been playing in many indie movie theaters before the Big Release, which accounts for a lot of the underground buzz that it has attained. When people speak of "the 'net" as the reason this movie is popular, it's not because of www.blairwitch.com. The young, hip, artsy-fartsy types that saw the movie at the underground theatres spread the word. And we heard.

  • It's not what you see and hear that scares you, it's what you don't see and hear.

    I'm getting motion sickness from reading this same tired mantra over and over again in defensive of a minimalist plotline.

    Imagine yourself reading a very scary reply to your message, kid. Think of all the unknown things I could have spelled out for you in this message, but which I'm leaving to your childlike imagination in honor of a $50K flick that made it big because of $15 million in marketing hype.

    Scared yet?

  • First it's a great movie....

    It's a great movie, but is it worth the cover of both "Time" and "Newsweek?"

    Then it isn't......

    But it's not a great movie, nor even a particularly frightening one.

    And finally, he seems unsure.....

    If the "Blair Witch Project" isn't a great movie, it might very well be an influential one

    C'mon, get with the program here. It's obvious that he wrote those sentences while under the control of the Blair witch. The witch was clouding his mind, and may have been doing it for months without our knowledge.

    Well, actually, some of us knew.

  • C'mon, get with the program here. It's obvious that he wrote those sentences while under the control of the Blair witch. The witch was clouding his mind, and may have been doing it for months without our knowledge.

    Well, actually, some of us knew.

  • Artisan Entertainment spent $15 MILLION marketing the film, according to one of the Time or Newsweek stories that ran recently.

    The media (and our resident media whore) seem to have missed this fact. The real genius of the Blair Witch Project occured in Artisan's offices, not with a small group of 20- and 30-somethings with a handheld camera in the woods

  • The phantom menace. It stands for everything wrong with the film industry today. What a colossal piece of shit that movie was.

    BWP is at least interesting because of the budget and the fact that it wasn't pushed by the huge media corporations. No, it isn't a very smart movie, but what the hell. Nothing could be worse than the vacuous trash like Phantom Menace or the latest Adam Sandler tragedy. Occaisionally the industry produces a pop movie that is actually pretty good, like The Matrix, but god, there is so much crap. The hype behind Phantom Menace was just unbelieveable. We are victims of corporate "synergy".

    It's a shame the film industry has so many stupid rules. Especially length. Why don't we see any long movies? Would The Fifth Element have been a great movie (as opposed to good) if the director could made it the 4 hour epic he'd wanted? I don't know about you guys but George Lucas and the whole media hype industry can go to hell. I'm waiting for David Lynch to make another movie.

  • Boy, did those guys get screwed!

  • He's well over 50. Saw him on C-SPAN several months ago, very surprised to find a Charles Kuralt-ish figure where I was expecting someone younger, skinnier, and a cross between Steve Thomas (of PBS series "This Old House") and one of those guys from Internet Cafe or the old MSNBC "The Site" (which died about the same time as Lady Diana). I like him a lot better on TV than on the 'net (kinda like the reverse of the way I feel about Cringely).

  • It's called satire(In ABC's case).

    In the late 60's/early 70's when ABC "appropriated" the "look and feel" of the ending of 2001 for their promos it would have been called something else (no humor involved, so not satire)but since so few of the general population had seen 2001 it went mostly unnoticed by anybody with access to a public forum.

  • So how long 'till we get to see BWP on MST3K?

  • Which causes greater motion sickness--hand-held cameras or Katz?

  • I didn't really care for this movie either. I didn't know about the webpage but a lot of people have been discussing this movie.

    I haven't read any critical reviews but did anybody else see some contradictions in the plot?

    Also, the scipt mistook forshadowing for beating the audience over the head with what is going to happen next.

    I'm not sure it was net hype but it was definately over-hype.
  • The ending was the best part of the whole movie. I was sitting there hoping as the final fade happened that they wouldn't go into come cheesy newstory type of ending that tidyed the whole thing up. They didn't and I was happy. But as the credits rolled, a vast number of people groaned and shot obcenities at the screen as they left the theatre.

    This led me to a thought. People have been spoonfed the emotions that they are supposed to have for so long that they no longer have the imagination to scare the living shit out of themselves. I personally find it pathetic.

    I thought it was a great movie... instantly went on my top ten of all time.

    --bc
  • Suspension of disbelief is a lot simpler when the whole premise isn't that it's "real". If the BWP hadn't been promoted as a true story, it would be easier to take it in and not analyze the parts that seem ridiculous and far from reality.

    But it *wasn't* real! It was a film! Argh. I saw the film before I'd heard much of the hype surrounding it. I still knew that it wasn't real. I recognized it as a scary campfire story repackaged as a 'documentary.'

    Speaking of documentaries and reality... Do you really believe that most of the supposedly true documentaries actually reflect reality? How about those newscasts you see in the evenings? Just because it looks and is presented as real don't mean that it is... (not going off on a paranoidal conspiracy tangent, just pointing out that a lot of what is presented as reality by the media should be subject to some critical thought)

    Yes, the Blair Witch Project was presented as a documentary. No, there were no obvious cues that it was a made-up story, other than the glaringly obvious fact that it was playing in movie theaters across the country.

    I dunno. I guess some people just like things to be spelled out for them. I don't mean that derisively. I just can't grok that worldview, just as those types can't grok mine.

    Oh, and it seems to me, that "film students making a documentary" would:
    a) Know how to use a camera.
    b) Attempt to present things in the clearest way they could

    Again... It's part of the story. They were never made out to be world-class filmmakers. They were were a group of scared, hungry, and nic-fitting college kids. They also didn't get along very well with each other. Hard to do quality work in that environment.

    Eh. Why am I bothering?

    --
    A host is a host from coast to coast...

  • If you can't figure out to follow a river downstream when you're lost in the woods, you [sic] diserve to die.

    Uh... Bueller? You missed one of the major premises of the film... The woods were HAUNTED! I see this point brought up over and over. "What a bunch of morons, to get lost in the MD woods." Well, the whole story was about the investigation of this thing called the Blair Witch, which, ya know, supposedly haunted the woods and stuff?

    You ever hear of a crazy concept called suspension of disbelief? Yeah, yeah... You, like, watch (or listen to, or READ (remember that?)) a story, and go along with the storyteller's version of reality.

    Sheesh. You people amuse me... What boring, black-and-white, cut-and-dried lives you must all live, if you can't step out of your normal frames of reference every once in a while.

    Bah.

    --
    A host is a host from coast to coast...

  • The movie was scary (frightening) for a large number of viewers. Perhaps Katz doesn't find it so, but many others do. The movie had the biggest per screen opening in film history, beating out (again, per screen) Jurassic Park and Titanic. For between $10k - $100k invested, depending on who you quote, that's even better than buying rh stock!
  • They should make a prequel to BWP. The witch is still just a little girl, and not evil yet. She builds all the stick-men we see in the first movie, and even helps save the innocent settlers of Blair from the evil British governors by piloting her broom into battle... But then her mother is killed, and an old hag decides to train her in the ways of witchcraft. And Jar-jar gets his ass whooped. :-)
  • According to Roger Ebert's interviews with the directors, the movie was indeed made for roughly $30,000. Also, though they didn't have a detailed script, they did provide the characters with rough notes telling them what they should be doing. So it was a mix of directed acting and improvisation.
  • First, I noticed some folks, in their replies, complaining that it didn't have enough action (or should that be blood). Has *anyone* here *ever* watched a Hitchcock movie? How 'bout the scene in Aliens, where the corpscum gets his...he opens the door, and there's an alien...cut the scene. It said it *all*, without the gore.

    Second, from what y'all say, it sounds like the ending is taken from Spielberg (who I loathe)... such as the ending of Close Encounters, where Spielberg's spent around two hours saying, "I've got something REALLY IMPORTANT, and mystical to say"...and then says *nothing*.

    Oh, yes, and third: d'you suppose this would have had the same response, had it been titiled something like, "The Blair Vicar Project"? As someone with a lot of friends who *are* witches... and many of whom are *also* programmers, sysadmins, physicists, etc, this obthers me a bit.

    mark
  • Whoa, up to a whopping 1755 words this time.

    Chuck
  • Jon katz, in trying to backpeddle fom his hypemonger stance of a few days ago, is now defending and contradicting himself left right and blue. He crys foul to those making HYpe, well at least those making hype with more circulation than his own. Its all about JOn Katzs universe of bloat, and we get to watch the stinky pile of poop grow with each word count busting fluf piece. What we are now seeing is Jon Jatz trying ever so hard to pretend he is not part of the MEDIA "we" he likes to set up as a straw man. Jon katz is not just a movie reviewer he is OUR SAVIOUR, he will help all kids become as cool as he is...without the threat of habing to htink for themselves. To wit, Jon katz seeks to place Blair Witch Marketing Project as THE BEST ORIGINAL indie film ever...replaceing Clerks, Last Broadcast, and a slew of others. He wants us to forget about the idea of it being a Good movie or a BAD movie and instead only see it for its marketing. "dont look at its flaws, see how shinny it is" I was loking forward to having a movement of thought on slashdot, not more of the same fluff and nutters. Jon katz, the john the baptist of the Corporate Hype Machine , seeks to guide our tastes away from such concetps as truth in reivews, originality and content in lieu of his over blown verbosity that is full of sounf and fury and stinks like a rotting pile of baba ganush. I cant wait to see how he backpeddles on this backpeddle when people call him on his stupidity. Jon KAtz, if you are reading this (does he even read the forums here or is it just a drive by bullshit spray from his "hipster" vw bug?), if and when you can review a thing on its content and self rather than your hypefilled marketing mask, let me know. I would be interested in seeing some of your real writtings again.
  • You are as likely to find a true statment in jon katz's fluff pieces as you are to find relavent news in industry computer magazines:)- In the mean time, to see real great films of orginality...Go see Clerks, El Mariachi, Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil etc etc.
  • Instead of looking to JOn katz or other Hype machines to tell you what to watch...go see some real films of worth like Evil Dead I and II (low budget horror film that makes blair witch project seem like a afternnon visit with Mr Rodgers) Night Of the Living Dead Most Early John Carptener films For non horror go rent out Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil(the newly released directors cut) ANYTHING by akira kerasua, Dr Strangelove..... Go nuts, head to a movie store and pick titles you never heard of before. EXPLORE, use your own mind. Waiting for hollywood to MAKE YOU a good film is as pointless as waiting for someone to teach you perl.. \ Do for yourself. If jon katz were realy into this so called "revolution" he would be yelling that louder than how hip he thinks he is.
  • So you have never seen the LAt Broadcast, Or evil dead I??

    I will support indie films that are orginals, not ones that are blatant rip offs of others and then try to seel themselves as something truly unique.

    Thats the same type of Big Hollywood spin that I am seeking NOT to support in films. If you can be fooled by this obvious tactic it speaks to the general decline of real support for real films and more to the Hypinization of the mindset
    'well aint that america for you and me'

  • The press is reminding us again that if you can't be first, you might as well try to look hip.

    Hee hee... I don't suppose you need to be reminded of this. Nor do i suppose WIRED ever had to be reminded of this.

    This film is, in fact, being hailed by its distributors as a cultural landmark, a new kind of Net phenomenon, as if the world could withstand any more.

    What, any more than the article *you* wrote a week or so ago saying that it was a cultural landmark, Net phenomenon, magical wonderful technology film, etc?

    And then we get the following:

    BWP is, in many ways, the perfect teenage/Web movie...

    But is this really an "Internet movie?" ...

    There's no doubt this move marked highly savvy use of the Web. The Blair Witch website logged more than 20 million hits even before the movie came out. Now Block says the number of visits is closer to 80 million...

    Perhaps to cover their own behinds, chastened Hollywood producers are blaming the success of BWP on the movie's crafty Net and website campaigns...

    It's a great movie...

    But it's not a great movie...

    Jon, has your brain completely fragmented? Do you proofread these things, or even make an outline before composing the article?

    For extra fun, compare this article Katz wrote about BWP to the last one he wrote about BWP. It really looks like he's just upset that other media outlets are writing these sorts of articles. If competant writers in other media outlets cover these sort of subjects, maybe Jon's "insights" won't be able to pass themselves off as anything but re-hash anymore.

  • What's this...Mr. "Xmovie-is-the-next-great-geek/internet/nerd/contr oversy-movie" saying that BWP is NOT the next great internet movie?

    (Ok, I haven't seen BWP, but seeing as how this is not directly related to the movie, I am qualified to post)

    Mycroft
  • Am I the only one that thought the movie was a real great novel twist?

  • I, from time to time, enjoy Katz's articles. That's why I keep reading them. The last couple in particular, though, I feel could have been written by a Katz-bot. Something like:

    Recent event of media attention + [Hollywood | media barons] + cultural revolution + [post-Columbine | geeks] + Internet

    Add some filler verbage, some cosmetic details that could be gleaned from 15 minutes of a newswire, and blammo, another cookir-cutter article.

  • I thought it was a relevant article. I don't like everything Katz writes, but I do like some of his stuff.

    I don't know what Jon's age is, but I'd guess between 35-45. Although /. started out as a deep technical forum, it has mutated over time to include issues more fitted to print in Salon or some other similar outfit. I'd say that Jon is getting hip, or at least pecking about hip-ness. He's trying to connect to a younger generation, and understand what life is like through your eyes. And occassionally he brings up some interesting points.

    I thought the BWP was all hype, because it didn't percolate in to my attention until the media really latched on to it. Ok, so there's art, and a 'thumb your nose' attitude at Hollywood, and shrift for lots of discussion. Cool! There shouldn't be a sequel, so if there is one, it will suck.

  • Who unchecked my "exclude stories from..." box? Now that's scary...

  • Most of the people disappointed with _Blair Witch Project_ probably went into it with a lot of expectations, and/or a closed mind. They were expecting to see _Alien_ or _Terminator_, and were disappointed because BWP was not what they were used to. BWP was a horror film, not a thriller, not an action movie, not a slasher.

    Think about it this way. A person who uses Windows their entire life, dips his toe in the water and tries Linux, and instantly hates it. Why? It's not as candy-coated as they expect. All these magazines touting Linux as new and improved, with a great new UI, but really it is still a primarily command-line oriented OS (a good thing IMHO). Linux is an operating system. Not a game, not an application, not a toy.

    The point is, advertisements may have made BWP seem to be some kind of blockbuster summer thriller, when all it really was and all it was meant to be was a spooky story. If you expected the movie to spoon-feed you your emotions, you would have been better off going to see _Runaway Bride_.
  • OpenBWP offers far greater security, though, and has a much cooler graphic than FreeBWP or LinWP.
  • Well, I suppose Katz didn't read the comments on his last article, because he still doesn't seem to have noticed that there are hundreds of `low-budget,' `out-of-left-field' films made every year, and this has been the case for a long time. Katz appears to be claiming that BWP is significantly better, as a film, than what Hollywood puts out or the other independent stuff released recently, but he provides no support whatsoever for this argument. Also, he doesn't address the points made in the Salon [salon.com] article ``Did "The Blair Witch Project" fake its online fan base? [salon.com]''; has he even read it? I agree with the Salon article take on things; I think that the whole advertising campaign was a very sophisticated and effective version of the ``trolls'' you used to see in usenet groups that would start a massive series of postings and get everybody involved.

    What makes BWP different is that its promoters were not part of the huge corporate marketing machine, yet they managed to do a sophisticated, professional job of promoting the film, a job that Madison Avenue marketing types would be proud of. But individuals being able to market shlock just as well as Madison Avenue can market shlock doesn't seem to me to be a cause for celebration. The customers fitting the particular demographic profile this film was marketed to are getting the same thing, they're just getting it from some people who aren't yet part of Hollywood, rather than Hollywood itself. The folks who really are interested in good independent film are still seeing it, as they have been for years, and BWP didn't register any more than Titanic.

    cjs

  • So what's your point? The poster I was responding to said he couldn't believe people would act that way. I, in contrast can. I don't find it very hard to believe that college age kids would act like that at all, as, IMHO (and I was no better at the time and never suggested I was), most people that age are self-absorbed and most people used to city-life (as I took these characters to be, an occasional hike in the woods does not make you a "woodsman"), would not behave in a very rational fashion and would very easily get lost....(a point which you seem to agree with.)

    So again I ask, what's your point? Are you able to imagine 3 people this age acting like this or not?

  • So what's your point? The poster I was responding to said he couldn't believe people would act that way. I, in contrast can. I don't find it very hard to believe that college age kids would act like that at all, as, IMHO (and I was no better at the time and never suggested I was), most people that age are self-absorbed and most people used to city-life (as I took these characters to be, an occasional hike in the woods does not make you a "woodsman"), would not behave in a very rational fashion and would very easily get lost....(a point which you seem to agree with.)

    So again I ask, what's your point? Are you able to imagine 3 people this age acting like this or not? I can also imagine 3 "adults" acting like this as well, but since that wasn't what was being discussed, I didn't feel this overwhelming need to point it out. The urge to point out the flaws in one group (ie adults) to mitigate or rationalize the flaws in another (ie college kids) is not a form of debate that I use much. It's pointless and detracts from the orginal topic.

  • ...One of the many things that bugged me was the attitude of the 3 kids. Since this was supposed to be a "realistic" movie, I expected them to act and behave in a rational way. But, after a while they just came across as boorish, annoying kids with no survival skills in face of a daunting situation.

    This is what made the movie believable for me. I find most kids these days to be boorish and annoying, and I really don't expect them to act like much more than driveling idiots when confronted by a situation any tougher then sneaking a sip of Daddy's beer from the fridge or perhaps getting lost on the way to the mall.

  • While a sizable percentage of people might just not like this film..due to, whatever, camera usage, plot, etc, etc., at least they have a valid complaint. They went, they experienced, they made their judgement. That's good, that's what is supposed to happen. The problem I see is all of the non-thinkers out there who go to movies and *expect* the movie to live up to their preconceived notions of it's scariness, funniness or coolness. This attitude of "It didn't live up to the hype." Well DUH! NOTHING lives up to it's hype, get over it moron, and next time don't be such a frickin sheep to buy into the "BEST MOVIE OF ALL TIME!" headlines.

    People who walk into movies with preconceived notions on the "hype" are bound to lead a bitter and disappointed life. These are the same type of people who sit at home and complain that their favorite laundry detergent doesn't get their clothes "100% BRIGHTER THAN THE LEADING BRANDS!!"

    Expectations...they'll be the death of us yet.

  • The number I've been hearing from everywhere is $40,000. In Katz's (I think it was his) last article (the one where blair witch was going to revolutionize film making) he said $50,000. Now he says $30,000, average the two and you get $40,000 which seems to be the real number. I'm more impressed with "The Last Broadcast" a movie of similar nature, except it was the jersey devil and it came out a year and a half before blair witch did. It was made for only $900, hell, I could afford that.
  • The two guys who did "The Last Broadcast" were on a local radio station this morning talking about it. The movie will be available soon to purchase, amazon.com supposedly has it available for pre-order, just go there and seard for "The Last Broadcast"
  • Now that the actors are doing interviews maybe he'll believe you. It's kinda hard to do an interview from beyond the grave, right?
  • writing is like any other creative endeavor, painting, programming, whatever.

    You do one article (painting, program, whatever).

    you do another one

    etc...

    some are gonna be good.
    some are gonna suck.

    When you look back at your creative career, you can only hope that the good ones out-number the ones that suck.

    Even Michael Jordan had bad games. (though not many :-)

    personally, I liked this piece. ('course, I didn't read his other BWP piece)
  • Dude!
    That was funny!

    -geekd
  • My wife and I saw it, and said that because of all the hype, the interviews with the actors, the articles, the tv story about the directors being 'the witch', etc, she left the movie saying, "I wasted an afternoon for this?" The information age can ruin some things...

  • I've seen Blair Witch. In fact, since I live in Orlando, I've saw it at the same small theater that the file makers hang out at. (Or used to before they became big stars.)

    If you think the hype is hot in the rest of the country, you can't even begin to understand what it's like here. Every newscast. Every newspaper. Every radio show. The University of Central Florida is now using the BWP to attract students.

    The movie, in my every so humble opinion, wasn't that great. The last five minutes were novel for an American film but the sort of stuff you find in European films on a regular basis. Ie: There was no happy ending. The loose ends weren't tied-up.

    However, no one seems to want to compare this film to major films.

    They want to say it was made for $30k and, thus, that five minutes make up for all the rest of the film. For me, that just is not acceptable. I want more out of a film.

    Sure, the movie may have been made for cheap but I still had to pay $7 to see it and that's more than I'm willing to pay for five minutes of fun.

    InitZero
  • Suspension of disbelief is a lot simpler when the whole premise isn't that it's "real". If the BWP hadn't been promoted as a true story, it would be easier to take it in and not analyze the parts that seem ridiculous and far from reality. But since they go to extremes to make the watcher want to believe it's real, all you can really think is "This has got to be the biggest bunch of bumbling idiots I have ever seen."

    Oh, and it seems to me, that "film students making a documentary" would:
    a) Know how to use a camera.
    b) Attempt to present things in the clearest way they could

    Any film student goes out of their way to improve the production quality of their work, because they know that it is what they will be evaluated on. I'm not saying that it should be studio-perfect, but I think some stability in a camera, at least most of the time, isn't all that much to ask for.
  • I can't say I agree. The familiarity of the setting may be a small contributing factor, but the thought of being unprepared in the woods is hardly as frightening as you make it sound. Especially when the thing you are afraid of is a witch for crying out loud. Now, Deliverance is a film that makes people really frightened about being alone in the middle of nowhere, and it's far more "real" and "believable" than BWP. To this day, I'm not comfortable driving down mountain roads at night alone...
  • Well, that would have been the smart thing to do. But I think part of their getting lost was supposed to have been due to the witch clouding their minds.
    I'll try using that plot device the next time my writers' workshop meets. "The heroes acted like complete idiots, but that's not because I can't write a sensible plot; it's because the villain was clouding their minds!"
  • They were *film makers*, not survivalists. You get out in the woods, hungry and cold and scared shitless, and see if the first thing on *your* mind is "Let me read this book..."
    Perhaps that's part of the reason why How To Stay Alive in the Woods includes suggestions on what to do before you leave civilization.

    Besides, it's not like the instructions in HTSAitW are rocket science. How much intelligence or concentration do you need to set up signal fires, or to look up how to make them if you've forgotten?

    "...to find out I need to follow the river to civilization" -- which, by the way, sometimes fails you.
    Which, by the way, HTSAItW recommends against. But folks wiser than myself have argued for and against this point on previous BWP threads.
    BWP is a great movie which has more psychological tension in it than anything which has come out of Hollywood in a long time,
    True, but this is like calling someone "a better jazz musician than anyone in Iowa."
  • Just to correct one misstatement of minor consequence: BWP was filmed and taped on 16mm and Hi-8, and audio was recorded on DAT. The Hi-8 camera was a consumer-grade, old-model RCA. Jon's statement that it was filmed with "digital, hand-held cameras" is incorrect.

    For more technical details on the production, check the new issue of Res Magazine. (disclosure: I'm a contributing editor)
  • If you want to see the website, and don't want or can't use the plugin that the main page requires, go to http://www.blairwitch.com/mythology.html, you can access the content of the site without needing plugins (just don't hit the "Home" link). [blairwitch.com]

    ----
  • There seems to be a lot of BWP bashing going on here, so I figured I'd put my two cents in in support of the movie. Yes, the movie was cheaply made, but a lot of research and planning went into it, it wasn't just a throwaway piece. The pre-release marketing (the Sci-Fi channel mockumentary and the website) were well targeted, and not as annoying as most marketing. The hype after everyone realized how well the movie was doing is very very annoying, but that doesn't make the movie any less good.

    I'm not saying everyone will like the movie, but I certainly did. The actors were very beleivable (not necessarily sympathetic or competant, but they weren't supposed to be). The director set the mood well, and left enough to the imagination to scare the wits out of me. Seeing Freddy jump out of the shadows and disembowel sombody doesn't scare me. Seeing a pile of rocks outside a tent, that is scary, but only if you have some idea what the rocks are. At the theater I went to, only two people left during the credits; I'm used to seeing only two or three people remain to watch the credits (one's usually me).

    I fear that a lot of the movie went above people's heads, and those are the people bashing the movie or yawning. Others haven't even seen the movie and are just bashing the hype. Bash the hype all you want, but the movie was well done.

    ----
  • BWP stands for Bristol Workshops in Photography [brigidi-bwphoto.com]. I guess Katz is afraid of wedding photos. I never realized the profit margins of photo studios could be that high. :-)

    ----
  • Ok, anybody else out there like the film?

    It scared me. It was creepy and it gave me the willies. The actors didn't *look* like actors (in fact, they all vaguely look like people I know), the woods looked like any woods I've ever been in, etc. The film was a huge relief after all the crappy slasher movies I've seen in the past few years.

    Sure, it had its problems (specifically, I thought that the part at the end felt much more scripted than the rest of the film did). Still, it was fairly original and well done. I also liked the fact that it didn't go for the typical movie cliches -- the interaction between the three felt really genuine.

    What I don't get is all the people (and there always seem to be a oddly high number of these on /.) who ruin the movie for themselves because they can't suspend disbelief. Why did they end up in the same place after heading south all day? BECAUSE THE WOODS WERE FRICKIN' HAUNTED! (I can just see a /.'er sitting in front of his monitor right now saying to himself "Ha! The moron! There are no such things as haunted woods!"; I'd hate to see a movie a person like that would actually enjoy).

    I heard a guy in the theater complaining that "we never even see the friggin' witch". Any maybe that's the problem -- everyone's so used to having the camera shoved into the gore that people don't appreciate a more subtle approach. Maybe we can't be scared without a special-effect laden 30 foot iguana running around eating people. Maybe we live in a world where many people don't appreciate Hitchcock anymore and think that "I Know What You Did Last Summer II" is a good example of the horror genre.

    Now that's scary.

    ----

  • One big problem with the survival book: no chapter about being stalked by supernatural entites. However, I understand that they are planning to rectify this in the next edition. Here's a sample:

    Redirection: If you find yourself walking in circles when you should not be -- after heading in one compass direction or following a terrain feature, for example -- you are likely the victim of a redirection hex. The patch for this involves smearing yourself in the blood of a newly sacrificed black lamb and chanting "Cthulhu en vek tatty" five times while facing toward the east. Should this fail, your next best solution involves lighting a major forest fire and waiting for the firefighters to gets there...

    ----

  • Not that anybody noticed, but he died back in June. When I was a kid one of our neighbors had a bunch of his stuff. All I remember is that it was as saccharine as Doris Day and about as filling (sheesh, anybody remember "Que Sera Sera"? If not, count your blessings!).

    -E
  • First off, I've not seen BWP, but I've heard enough to convince me that it is a genuinely innovative and original story. Just not one I'd care to watch, but that's ok as I don't have to like everything.

    Second, I agree that Hollywood (as it stands) is not capable of producing stories of this kind. I'm not so sure it's a case of "over-writing" as a case of "over-glossing". Shine is fine, but when you have no texture, nothing to grasp onto, it's a mess.

    Third, BWP is no "Internet Movie". It was promoted on the Internet, sure, but the movie itself was never tied in any way to the Internet.

    (I'll sneak in a quick plug for the Free Film Project [cjb.net], where volunteers are working together to produce genuine Internet Movies, for even less than the BWP cost.)

    I think that the success of the BWP shows, once and for all, that Independent filmmakers are producing what people want, rather than what people get told they want. This -may- shake up the film industry, in a big way. If Independent film starts being played more in the big cinemas, Hollywood is in for a rough ride, and one it might not survive, for all it's money and glamour.

  • Well of course that was all just a hoax. Nothing ever happened at Grovers' Mill, NJ in 1938. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work here at Yoyodyne.

    --John Parrot (forgot my passwd)
  • Wait a minute... It's a great movie, but is it worth the cover of both "Time" and "Newsweek?"

    Maybe this should be:

    Wait a minute... It's a great movie, but is it worth the cover of Slashdot...again?

  • I know that's what the audience is SUPPOSED to believe, but you have to be really dumb with an overactive imagination to actually have such a silly interpretation.

    *sigh* I don't get it...

    Why did you watch the film, then? Why do you watch any film? If reality is what you want, with maybe some action or gore, why not just go sit on a street corner downtown some Friday night? Barring that, I guess you could watch COPS from the comfort of your couch.

    Do I really believe in haunted woods? No. Do I believe in demented psychopaths who screw with campers and amateur filmmakers in various ways, including chopping up their friends and leaving body parts as presents? It's possible.

    The wonderful thing about storytelling, though, is that it doesn't have to reflect reality 100 percent. In this particular story, they tried twice to get out of the woods by seemingly foolproof methods. They walked due south all day, and wound up in the same place. They followed a creek all day, and wound up in the same place. Could they have messed up because they were inexperienced? Of course. In the world that the storyteller has created, though, it could also be that the Blair Witch was messing with them via supernatural forces.

    But I guess that some people can't deal with the idea that the world OF THE STORY doesn't necessarily coincide with their own version of reality. To each their own.

    --
    A host is a host from coast to coast...

  • I've enjoyed some of Katz's writing, and felt they were appropriate here. But this one's a miss I thought. What was the point of this article? Hollywood sucks? Well, umm, if you're the sort of person who thinks about film, you already knew this. And if you're not, I guarantee you won't care. And either way, throwing"internet" into every other sentence didn't really make me think that this was what I come to Slashdot for.

    Yeah, yeah "there's a filter" yadda yadda. I'm not saying Katz sucks here, I'm just saying this particular article didn't seem to have any real [point || relevance || interesting ideas].

    Not to even mention the specific bits I'd take issue with. "Not a good movie... not scary..." Bullshit. Some people are scared by this movie, some just aren't (hint: it seems to have something to do with how developed your imagination is). But either way, it is a very very "good" movie, by any sort of artistic, filmic standards. You don't get much of it the first time, but on a second viewing (when I could stifle the terror somewhat and pay attention to what the movie was actually 'doing'), I was amazed by how well put together it actually was.

    I could go into more detail, but, much like the article itself, it would be the sort of thing that not many people here would care about. And, I'd be hard pressed to squeeze "the internet" in there every other sentence. So I won't. :-)

  • GRR (Score:2)

    by K. ( 10774 )
    %s/30,000/1.5 million including marketing/g
    How come there's an "open source" entry in the
  • For some interesting insights on independent movie making and movie costs, I recommend 'The Unkindest Cut' by Joe Queenan. Hatchet-man film critic tries to make his own movie, spends $ 65,000, falls flat on his face. Oops.

    D

    ----
  • The big difference is that they used digital video, not film. Rent a DV camera at $ 100-150 a day, buy ten MiniDV tapes at $ 15.99 each, and use the balance for props and lunch for the cast and crew. (I'm not joking about that last; read any book about small-time filmmaking, and you'll find one of the most essential things to provide in even the lowest-budget production is good meals. Have Spago cater your film and all else is forgiven).

    Blair Witch used at least some 16mm film. 90 minutes or so of 16mm film costs about $ 7,000 to purchase and develop. In addition, you have to use an expensive to rent film editing studio instead of being able to use your $ 3,000 PC [including editing hardware/software] for the editing.

    Rodriguez [sp] made his $ 7,000 movie by buying the film and developing it, buying a small number of props, and begging, borrowing and/or stealing everything else. Unfortunately, one of the consequences of this was that he didn't have the funds for synch sound equipment. As a result, when the film was released, Columbia had to pay $100,000 to fiddle with the sound track in order to make it acceptable. Rodriguez planned originally to release it only on video, so he edited it using free video editing time from a public access TV station. So the film had to be re-edited for release.

    I should really put a link to my DV FAQ here: http://www.amazing.com/dv/dv-faq.html . Lots of information for DV fans.

    D

    ----
  • Could be the filmmakers made it for $ 30k and the studio then massaged it for $ 270k. Something like that happened to Rodriguez's Mariachi movie (I have a slightly more detailed explanation elsewhere in this discussion).

    Of course the important thing is that $30k was all the filmmakers needed to raise to get the movie to the point where the studio was interested. So from their point of view, it took $30k of their money to do the film.

    Still a pretty good return on investment.

    D

    ----
  • You're way overstating the case here.

    Mr. Showbiz interviewed the Last Broadcast team [go.com] and while there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that the BWP people saw the other film, BWP had been filming off-and-on for at least six months before the film of LB was available. There's nothing in this article saying anything about 'reviewing options with lawyers', either; the LB guys are very cordial. Actually, if they're smart, they realize that the BWP success is the best possible thing for their movie -- at this point THEY might be the beneficiaries of a million-dollar deal.

    No matter your feelings on the paper trail here, there have been dozens of student-film projects along the same lines. The cinema-verite-made-cheaply-with-videocams idea is certainly not new; the student-actors-on-a-roadtrip idea is not new; and the we-aint-tellin-if-its-true idea is not new. In fact, the only thing BWP has going for it is technique ... and some effective grassroots marketing.
  • And films like _Blair Witch_ killed it -- or at least, that's what a lot of critics have felt for some time.

    There was a brief flowering of truly original, offbeat product, culminating in the success of studios like Miramax and New Line -- which were then bought by mainstream studios (Disney and Time/Warner, respectively), eventually leading to more mainstream product.

    The most prominent indie film festival is Sundance, and Robert Redford, its founder, just quit on the grounds that it no longer showcases innovative product. The films brought to Sundance aren't original films by people who would never get work in Hollywood, but derivative low-budget fare made by people trying to GET work in Hollywood. Just look at the decline in ethnic faces and the rise in white faces in so-called indie movies, and you'll see that marketing forces have had their say. Perhaps a film like _Office Space_ or _In the Company of Men_ is worthwhile, but they no longer represent cutting-edge filmmaking using ideas Hollywood would never touch.

    Also, the rise of what probably should be called "alternative" moviemaking has all but obliterated the market for any kind of foreign film in the US. It's no coincidence that some of the most intriguing films lately have been made by directors in such odd places as Iran or Croatia: the corporate Hollywood product practically doesn't exist there, so there's a market for local films.

    It's really sad, because you're right -- BWP is more innovative and interesting than standard H'wood fare such as _The Haunting_, which despite a highbrow cast chose to rely on expensive CGI to make itself scary. On the other hand, a standard studio film such as _The Sixth Sense_ also makes the same point, effectively telling a scary story without lazily relying on effects, and generating some of the strongest word-of-mouth referral business in some time. So it's not impossible.
  • I wouldn't worry about the anwhere-it's-not-popular crowd, they don't make up that much of any group, especially not hte linux crowd. I've been on the mailing lists of a number of open source programs, and believe me, the important people there are doing it for love, protection from boredom, personal gain, personal need (people who want tools and thus are writing them), etc. I've yet to see one group where anyone who made significant contributions was concerned with the fact that what they were doing was popular or not.

    What you say about the slashdot crowd may be partially true, but remember that that portion of the crowd that you are talking about doesn't contribute much anyhow.

    Those who want to be in the minority will, thankfully, always be the minority. You don't really have to worry about them.

    Btw, I don't remember his last post about this, but I think that Katz is a lot closer to the mark on this one, what he said was more or less true. BWP wasn't revolutionary any more than any successful movie was revolutionary. It was largely in the right time at the right place. From what I heard it's a well told ghost story, told in an original style. The fact of the matter is that people can get used to just about anything, hence you always need new styles, or old styles which are now new again. Ii sure hope that hollywood doesn't start trying to imitate BWP. I like movies where I can make out the actors much better than ones where half the time I might as well close my eyes. :-)
  • There's no other explanation. Katz is a robot.
    He is clearly CmdrTaco's AI project, searching the web and net for hype, and then making obvious commentary based on it's input from various sources. Taco has deftly incorporated the geek value system into the AI's processes allowing it's algortihms to always make seemingly legitimate tie-ins to things the people on /. hold dear.

    Excellent work Rob!

    -Rich
  • Is it just me, or does it seem like this doesn't quite qualify as "news for nerds"? I think Katz is a good writer, but it seems like his submissions belong at Salon, or somewhere else. Look at it this way: If this article were posted on Salon, and I submitted it, would it get posted on /.? I tend to think not... I realize I could filter out all the John Katz articles, but then I'd miss the occasional one that he writes that actually is news for nerds. Just my .5/25 of $1.00 ...
  • This is only mildly related to the topic, but did anybody hear Howard Stern on Monday? Some moron from Memphis called in, she said she worked at a magazine, and she asks Howard, "Did you see the blair witch project? Was that real?" and Howard mutes her and makes fun of her and stuff, and then he goes, "Yes, it was all real. The director of the FBI called me and the president of Artisan, the company that distributed the movie, in to a meeting to talk about this." He went on and on, and the moron was like, "Oh wow. Are you serious?" and Howard goes "Honey, I am totally serious." She goes, "You know, I thought it was real, but I wasn't sure, because some people are saying it isn't." Howard goes, "have you ever seen any of those actors before? If this was just a movie, would they hire somebody with a big ass to play the girl?" So he mutes her again and he goes, to the mic, "Watch this, I'm going to sell her the Brooklyn Bridge." And you know what? He actually sold her the Brooklyn Bridge. He told her for an investment of $300 a month, she could make up to $1500 per month from her cut of the tolls. "Are you serious?" Anyway, he did it. It was hilarious. Then he told her they're building a bridge from NY to VA, but he told her she couldn't get in on that deal, because he was buying the entire bridge.

    Like I said, only remotely related to the topic, but it was hilarious. Hopefully E will show this one. Also on the show were a guy who had his Mom and wife strip to promote a movie, and a midget porno star.
  • Here's an article from The Philadelphia Daily News comparing BWP to something that screened a year earlier at Sundance called The Last Broadcast.

    Both are very similar movies. BWP got popular.

    http://www.phillynews.com/daily_news/99/Jul/16/f eatures/FCOV16.htm
  • I have another 'internet movie' for you to consider. You all have heard of it, if you haven't, you haven't been reading Slashdot.

    There were dozens of fan-run websites, the 'official' movie site provided a party-line, and let the other fan sites run wild with rumor and conjecture. Video and audio clips abounded, and fan art proliferated. There was almost no television advertising -- at least very little that I saw. The interest in this movie was entirely fan based. The studio noticed this early on, used it, and encouraged it.

    Of course, I refer to Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. It's an 'internet movie' just as much as the Blair Witch Project is. Remember Men in Black? They created a 'UFO sightings and ET conspiracies' website to hype their movie (before they even admitted it was a movie!), and when they were ready to announce the movie, they rolled the www.MenInBlack.com site into the movie site. Many serious X-Filers were seriously pissed.

    The Hollywood glitterati is just mad that they didn't think of this first. The fatcats are mad that they didn't get their mega-million-dollar cuts of the 'production costs'. It's not like they've tried to do something like this before...

    Hollywood, you got beat at your own game. Suck it up and deal.

  • I wonder how much of the complaints here are due to the fact that it is popular. This is why I fear the "geek community;" so many of them seem to quickly betray their own beliefs if they happen to coincide with the opinions of the masses. If Linux takes over, I think most of the /. community will drop it.

    Katz, and other shifty geeks out there: get your own mind. Like the movie, or dislike it; but don't dislike it because others like it. "I took the road less travelled by/And that has made all the difference." Bah! The only difference it makes is trashing your life on the whims of others.

  • Excuse Me!!! (Score:3)

    by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Wednesday August 18, 1999 @05:07AM (#1740572) Homepage Journal
    Mr. Katz,

    Are you forgetting that you yourself were touting this movie as a revolution in filmmaking only a week or so ago? Why do you fuel the hype then feel it necessary to criticize major publications for publishing what (in theme) is very similar to your original article about the movie? Sure, I think the media is putting too much emphasis and importance on this movie (which I didn't find particularly revolutionary, ingenious, or frightening) but I'd rather read about the success of the Blair Witch Project rather than most of the other trash that magazines publish!

    ~GoRK

  • Blair Witch (Score:3)

    by daviddennis ( 10926 ) <david@amazing.com> on Wednesday August 18, 1999 @05:26AM (#1740573) Homepage
    I haven't seen it and don't want to - I hate scary movies. Give me a funny one any day of the week.

    What I admire about the production is that they took their disadvantages and made them into advantages. Have a cameraperson who can't shoot? No problem - fold bad shooting into the plot. Have only 16mm and cheesy video equipment? Fine, make sure the plot requires it. Fantastic idea. Wish I'd thought of it.

    However, I don't see this as being an easily duplicatable success, since it's really a one-idea movie. Copies of it are just that, cheap copies of a cheap concept. I'd only make a $30,000 movie (and yes, I could if I wanted to) if I had a unique concept. Too many clones of this will appear, and they'll all fail.

    Thinking about this, I wonder how a parody of this would do? Seems like you could do almost the same thing, play it totally for laughs, and have a watchable movie that could still be made for next to nothing.

    Arriflex 16mm cameras are for sale cheap on eBay ... volenteers should be easy to find ... only problem is the cost of film. And the script.

    With all the competition about to bleed out of the woodworkd, it had better be good. Bear that in mind if you want to do one of your own.

    D

    PS This might not be news for nerds, but I think it is stuff that matters. I appreciate Jon' coverage of this issue. Just wanted to say that due to the large number of people slamming him about this story.


    ----

  • Katz-o-meter (Score:5)

    by smileyy ( 11535 ) <smileyy@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 18, 1999 @05:18AM (#1740574)

    Word/substring counts:

    • Columbine: 0
    • [Gg]eek: 0
    • [Ii]nternet: 9
    • [Rr]evolution: 2
    • [Cc]ulture: 2
    • Hollywood: 11

    All in all, a pretty week showing by Mr. Katz. Nothing even close to his masterpiece of:

    The geeks at Columbine created an Internet culture revolution that forced Hollywood culture to take into account the revolutionary power of geeks on the Internet. (Columbine Columbine Columbine)

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