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For those who have not seen this movie yet, don’t read this article. Spoiler ahead. 

I don’t only call The Blair Witch Project as a horror movie, I call a PHENOMENON too. I instead appreciate its filmmakers’ ingenuity in coming up with an extremely low-budget movie to haul in extremely huge profits. From a budget of $22,000 (a menial amount in movie land), it cupped $240.5 million. Talk about good investment!

You might ask how they got to finishing this film with a super low budget in hand,  well the geniuses behind this record-breaking independent film practiced  supreme frugality. For starters,  Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez combined their intellectual powers to direct and write the screenplay themselves. And the script was not even the kind that would warm the hearts of people, all lines were improvised, probably made on the spot. And the fact that the actors were shot even on those candid moments, didn’t need much direction and script, for the actors were already throwing in the best of scenes on their own. There were several scenes in the movie where the acting was no longer an act.

Another thing that gave the producers much savings was to get your sister to play as the waitress, or the have the house of the production assistant serve as the house prop itself, so there’s no need to rent. Also, give the actors less and less food as the shooting days go by, which in this case, completed in just 8 days. Yes, just 8 short days of shooting.

About marketing the movie, the stunt was simple – make the entire nation believe that The Blair Witch Project is a montage of amateur video footages recovered from a group of hikers lost in the woods purportedly chasing a legendary witch in Blair, Maryland . Print out flyers that declare the actors MISSING, and even declare in the internet that they are missing, in turn igniting the public to see the scary footage that got them missing. The stunt paid off and many people were conned. It was only months after the movie was released did the filmmakers admit that it was all just a show. Well, this case of raw creativeness won several awards, and was the subject of so many movie and TV spoofs. This just goes to show that even the poorest of budget coupled with unique imagination can get you so far.  

Now is the time to watch again the movie that conned you. I’d say, this is the truest form of REALITY TV…yet it’s not… go figure.