Blair Witch Analysis/Inspiration

I have been researching horror films to find inspiration for our trailer, and one of the films I believe is exactly how we want to present our film is the Blair Witch Project. The Blair Witch Project released in 1999 is an American psychological thriller that takes place in the woods of Maryland. The film has the three protagonist who are three young film makers making a documentary about the Blair Witch. The Blair Witch is a scary legend of the town of many young kids being killed. Although the trailer of the movie itself is not how we intend to do our trailer, there are some elements of the trailer I would like to incorporate. One aspect of the trailer which I believe mirrors our intentions is the short hand-held clips of the trailer that show the audience that the film is hand shot, and more of a documentary style of film. The rest of the trailer is just text that explains the film as the movie is based of true events of a real missing peoples case. The style we intend to use in our project is hand held vlog style of a few friends in the woods much like Blair Witch Project. Another thing we would like to include is real shots as well not just a hand-held point of view, we would take shot of the friends recording themselves. This idea was inspiration of the film which has one film student with the digital camera recording everything and another student has the large camera for the film they are making. Although this film did inspire our trailer, our character are not going to be film students, so there will be no footage of the camera recording the group of friends like the Blair Witch Project has. I believe the hand-held style of film in certain points of the film can create much more fear and anxiousness in the viewer because it allows the viewer to place themselves in the character’s shoes because the hand-held vlog creates more of a personal connection between the character and viewer. Another idea I would like to incorporate into our trailer was the use of suspense in the Blair Witch Project created by never showing the “monster” or “bad guy”, but only leaves the idea of what happened to those missing kids to the power of the viewer’s imagination.  I believe this is what creates the true horror of the film, the immense build up of suspense in not knowing who or what are attacking these students, as they go missing one by one. This leads me to make our trailer never show the “monster”, but only the fear in the character faces as they are attacked or killed. This film is a huge inspiration for our trailer and I can’t wait to start filming.

Cover of Blair Witch Project 

A hand-held shot frome the film, inside an abandoned house.