Bums on Seats - UNIT 26 - FILM STUDIES
A documentary about three film students going to the woods to investigate the myth of the Blair Witch Legend. The students end up vanishing and leaving their footage behind.
Audience research:
Once film makers have found their target audience, they start to think about how they can access their audience and what type of things can get their attention. The Blair Witch Project used social media to get to their target audience, as youngers are the main users of the internet. The producers created an elaborate back story and online presence for the film before it was released. This attracted their target audience and they began to develop an interest in this new-found footage which no one knew about and whether the myth of the Blair Witch was true.
The film was also shot in a brand-new style which would interest younger people who would be more excited to see something done in a distinctive style as opposed to the older generation which like to keep things more traditional.
The film was also shot in a brand-new style which would interest younger people who would be more excited to see something done in a distinctive style as opposed to the older generation which like to keep things more traditional.
Target Audience:
The Blair Witch Project is targeted at young adults aged 15-25. It is appealing to this age group because the characters are of a similar age. This means the audience can relate to the experiences the characters face and the feelings they faced. This film could also appeal to people who have an interest in the Sci-Fi, horror, supernatural or government conspiracy theories as this film is set in a restricted zone.
Distribution:
The films premiered on January 25th, 1999 at the Sundance Film Festival and had a limited weekend release on July 14th before going wide afters months of publicity. The distribution strategy for the film was created and performed by Artisan Studio executive, Steven Rothenberg. On the film’s limited released it earned $1,512,054, the film then went on to earn $140,539,099 in the United States at the end of its Theatrical Run and worldwide had a total gross of $248,639,099 against a production budget of $60,000.
The film was released on DVD on October 26th, 1999 by Artisan and on Blu-ray on October 5th 2010 by Lionsgate.
The film was released on DVD on October 26th, 1999 by Artisan and on Blu-ray on October 5th 2010 by Lionsgate.
Publicity:
The Blair Witch Project gained huge publicity due to its great marketing campaigns and is still known to be one of the best film market strategies to this day. They knew how to get to their target audience and gave out no information on the film or actors to anyone. The production team kept silent and turned down interviews to keep the audience believing in the myth and story behind the so called ‘missing people’. This made their publicity grow as no one knew much about the film or myth of the Blair Witch, their marketing campaign got their target audience talking and wondering whether they came across something unknown.
The Blair Witch Project earned 3 awards. Independent Spirit John Cassavetes award, NME Award for best film and PGA most promising producer in Theatrical Motion Pictures.
The Blair Witch Project earned 3 awards. Independent Spirit John Cassavetes award, NME Award for best film and PGA most promising producer in Theatrical Motion Pictures.
Marketing:
Missing person’s posters:
They planted stories amongst the public by handing out missing person leaflets, shared photos from the police reports and also had fake news stories written by local papers to make the public believe that these people really had gone missing. Website: The website was an extension of the storyline, created by the co-director. It describes the myth of The Blair Witch and giving more information on the missing people. This marketing technique did not manage to get people interest in seeing the film but it did scare potential viewers by focusing on the myth. As this was 1999, website browsing was not popular back then so the website for the film did not work as well as their other marketing strategies but still got some popularity. Still the producers kept adding content and information over time, containing footage and more stories about the myth. Message boards and chat rooms: The producers of the film planted seeds in online chatrooms about the film. They pretend to be the typical online users and stirred up questions about the film, they began to get other users interest. Even on IMDB records, it lists the actors as missing or presumed dead. Rumours of this film and the missing people gained peoples interest and left them confused. Documentary and Trailer: The trailer was not shown on mainstream outlets, which emphasizes the fact that this was a low budget film, making the missing people stories more believable and the legendary myth. Their aim was to make people believe that they have discovered something unknown to most of the public and share the new with friends to get the word out. A mini documentary was put together to show the realness of the story. The movie label that bought the film continued the campaign theme and refused to advertise the film conventionally. The footage was instead shown in colleges, as it is their target audience. Magazine Ad: The marketing team managed to get a page in a magazine but was much different to the usual magazine articles. The copy read “blairwitch.com: 21,222,589 hits to date.” The ad began to explain and focus on the websites success as in 1999 only 190 million people were using the internet. This meant that a whole 11% of the population were visiting this website, which is big considering it is a low budget film. Product Tie-ins:
In 2015, a documentary called The Woods Movie explored the production of The Blair Witch Project. In the documentary, the director interviewed the film’s producer and directors, Gregg Hale, Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick. A series of young adult booked were released called ‘The Blair Witch Files’, the books were released by Random Subsidiary Bantam from 2000 to 2001. The eight books are about the cousin of Heather Donahue investigating the phenomena related to The Blair Witch and attempts to discover what actually happened to Heather and her friends. A comic book was also released by Oni Press in 1999 to promote the film. Another comic book was released in 2000 coinciding with the release of ‘Book of Shadows - Blair Witch 2 and Image comics released a comic called ‘Blair Witch: Dark Testaments’. In 2000 game developers came together and released a trilogy of computer games based on the film which also helped promote the film. |
Click the button below for the Blair Witch Website. |