Into the Woods – The Blair Witch Project revisited

We came up with the basic premise for what even­tu­al­ly became The Blair Witch Project back in the ear­ly ​’90s. We were study­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cen­tral Flori­da at the time, and like most col­lege stu­dents we didn’t have any mon­ey. So we’d pret­ty much just hang out and do what­ev­er we could afford to, which often involved watch­ing movies. Our favourite hor­ror movies were things like The Exor­cist, The Shin­ing, The Ami­tyville Hor­ror and Jaws. One day we got to talk­ing about this show called In Search of…, which Leonard Nimoy host­ed in the ​’70s. We start­ed think­ing about all these pseu­do-doc­u­men­taries like The Leg­end of Bog­gy Creek, In Search of Noah’s Ark, Char­i­ots of the Gods, explorato­ry, inves­tiga­tive films linked to para­nor­mal encoun­ters, and how they real­ly freaked us out as kids. So we rent­ed a bunch of those movies and we were sur­prised how much they still freaked us out.

We want­ed to do the same thing for mod­ern audi­ences. So we came up with this idea of a group of stu­dent film­mak­ers inves­ti­gat­ing some local leg­end; they dis­ap­pear, and their footage is found years lat­er. That’s how the orig­i­nal con­cept was born, but we shelved it to con­cen­trate on oth­er projects we were work­ing on at the time. Then in ​’96 we returned to this ​“Woods Movie”, as we were still call­ing it up to that point. We pitched it to Gregg Hale, who was one of the first pro­duc­ers to come on-board, and he imme­di­ate­ly got the ball rolling. But we still didn’t have a name. Ed’s old­er sis­ter had gone to Blair High School, and we were both huge fans of Lin­da Blair… It just seemed like a believ­able name, and it end­ed up sticking.

Our orig­i­nal vision was very much like an In Search of… episode. It was sup­posed to be more of an inves­tiga­tive doc­u­men­tary about the Blair Witch, fea­tur­ing inter­views with the par­ents and the inves­ti­ga­tors. We shot the movie in two sec­tions: phase one, which is every­thing in the woods, and then phase two, which end­ed up being used for the Curse of The Blair Witch TV doc­u­men­tary. The phase one stuff was shot over about eight pret­ty inten­sive days. It was a con­tin­u­ous shoot, where the actors were the cam­era­men and all the dia­logue was improvised.

Peo­ple don’t realise how much work went into cre­at­ing the stage for the actors to per­form. The logis­tics of nav­i­gat­ing three actors through the woods was a con­stant chal­lenge. Every­thing had to be metic­u­lous­ly thought out and planned. We were in those woods work­ing on pre-pro­duc­tion for almost a month, using GPS sys­tems to set up all the dif­fer­ent way­points where the guys would be camp­ing. We want­ed to lim­it our con­tact with them, so at first we just sort of shad­owed them. We set up these areas – we thought of them as direct­ing nodes – where we could watch the actors. But then we couldn’t actu­al­ly hear them, so we aban­doned that pret­ty quickly.

At that point it became about build­ing a world around the actors, giv­ing them only the most basic logis­ti­cal infor­ma­tion they need­ed. We had to make sure they had food and water, the bat­ter­ies in the cam­era had to be charged – all that tech­ni­cal stuff. Most of the time we were either prep­ping the next scene – putting stick men in the trees for exam­ple – or plan­ning the next day. It was very tir­ing and exhaust­ing for all involved. Of course, it was also a very excit­ing time for us. It’s the only time in our careers where we didn’t even know the rules we were breaking.

But we still didn’t have an end­ing. We hadn’t quite fig­ured out what would hap­pen in that house. How do you shoot a sat­is­fy­ing end­ing to this movie? That was a big thing for us. The end­ing we even­tu­al­ly came up with was a very spon­ta­neous idea which we exe­cut­ed very quick­ly. That’s real­ly the sto­ry of the film: it was all done very quick­ly and spon­ta­neous­ly. We still kept around 95 per cent of the orig­i­nal beat of the movie and the script. Some­how we man­aged to get all those orig­i­nal ideas on video.

We end­ed up with so much footage – some­thing like 20 hours – that could have been edit­ed to make a much longer film, and we wouldn’t have had to repeat any­thing. There were only two scenes that required us to do mul­ti­ple takes. So it became a case of hav­ing to decide what to cut. For exam­ple, with Heather’s con­fes­sion at the end, Mike did a con­fes­sion too. We had to fig­ure out which one was more rel­e­vant, and we went with Heather’s because she was leader of the project and she had more to apol­o­gise for than Mike did.

After edit­ing phase one into a rough three-hour cut, we put on a test screen­ing for some of our clos­est friends at the Enz­ian The­ater in Orlan­do, most­ly to help us decide how much back­sto­ry to put in and how much of the doc­u­men­tary stuff did we need­ed. We had every­one fill in a ques­tion­naire about the film – what addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion they want­ed to know about the sto­ry. Peo­ple were like, ​‘Well, I want to know if it’s real and who the Blair Witch is.’ Based on that screen­ing, after a lot of soul search­ing and some cre­ative back and forth, we end­ed up scrap­ping all of the phase two stuff. That’s when The Blair Witch Project real­ly start­ed to take shape.

Our wildest dream was to make some­thing as suc­cess­ful as Clerks or El Mari­achi. But real­ly we just want­ed to get our names out there and build a career for our­selves. When­ev­er we pitched the film to any­body there was always a vis­cer­al response. But it was still very exper­i­men­tal. We hon­est­ly didn’t know whether what we were doing we just a big mess, whether it was actu­al­ly scary or not. We just knew that we want­ed it to feel as real as possible.

It wasn’t until Sun­dance that we start­ed to realise what we had. The first screen­ing was on the Fri­day night, and there was this huge line out­side the the­atre with peo­ple wait­ing to see if some­one didn’t show up. Every­one want­ed to get in, it was unbe­liev­able. Lat­er that night, after some pret­ty lengthy nego­ti­a­tions, we sold the movie to Arti­san Enter­tain­ment. We had sold our first movie on the first night of the fes­ti­val. It was crazy, and a lot of fun after that. Most­ly though we spent the rest of the fes­ti­val try­ing to keep it togeth­er and stop our jaws from hit­ting the floor.

When it came to pro­mot­ing the movie Arti­san paid for some ads to appear on a show called Split Screen. The show’s web­site had a dis­cus­sion board which blew up with all these threads about the Blair Witch. Peo­ple want­ed to know whether it was real or not. Ed had a lit­tle web build­ing expe­ri­ence from a pre­vi­ous job, so we cre­at­ed a web­site and came up with this nar­ra­tive that Heather’s moth­er had hired us to edit the footage in order to fig­ure out what had hap­pened to Heather and her friends. That was the basis of the whole site. We made up the his­to­ry of the Blair Witch leg­end, and we had pho­tos of the crime scene, pho­tos of Josh’s car, even pho­tos of Heather’s child­hood. We treat­ed it like a real inci­dent and peo­ple start­ed dis­cov­er­ing the site. Before long there were thou­sands of sub­scribers, fans send­ing each oth­er ques­tions and shar­ing their enthu­si­asm for this movie which nobody had ever heard of.

We weren’t genius­es. There were total­ly prag­mat­ic rea­sons for why we mar­ket­ed the film the way we did. The only thing we could afford was a web­site because it cost 16 bucks a month. It was sim­ple, but it worked and we were able to cap­i­talise on it. We were tap­ping into what the inter­net would even­tu­al­ly become, but back then it was slow and small enough that peo­ple couldn’t imme­di­ate­ly dis­prove the sto­ry. IMDb had Heather list­ed as ​‘miss­ing, pre­sumed dead’ for a year after the film’s release – nowa­days some­one would upload a pho­to with­in min­utes say­ing, ​“I just had lunch with Heather, she’s alive!”

But even when peo­ple found out it was a hoax, they still cham­pi­oned the movie. There was this strange, pal­pa­ble desire for it to be some­thing more. It’s the same rea­son why Loch Ness mon­ster is still pop­u­lar. We’re explor­ers, we love mys­ter­ies, and what we cre­at­ed was a great mys­tery that peo­ple felt they could be a part of. And every­one was eager to believe it. It’s like a reli­gion. Peo­ple love the idea of things they can’t explain, and the idea of it being tied to his­to­ry. This town that killed this woman because they thought she was a witch, and now this woman is com­ing back to take revenge. Peo­ple love that shit.

We gave peo­ple enough infor­ma­tion to get into it, and they filled in the gaps. The rea­son most Stephen King adap­ta­tions aren’t as good as the books is because there’s some­thing about read­ing a sto­ry and build­ing that world in your head. It’s always a lot more scary that way. The Blair Witch Project proved that. You’re not real­ly see­ing any­thing, your imag­i­na­tion is doing all the work. That’s more so much effec­tive and more ter­ri­fy­ing than any­thing we could have done.