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Beware The Hype, Not the Witch
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.
You've just been watching (beleiving) too much TV. I've found many ADULTS to be this way. Witness how my boss (about 45) explains to me (under 21) how bad I was raised by my parents because I was 20 minutes late for work. If you ask me, that's beeing both boorish, arrogant, and plain old being an As*h*le. Even if I never showed up for work, there's just not an excuse for that.
Note, if you feel this way, that today's kids will run the world one day... Whether you like it or not.
(Personally, I'd rather not have today's adults running the world. Look at the US and their government's reaction to anything computer related. And don't forget, the internet was invented by an adult, Al Gore!).
And don't even THINK of telling me you never had a bit of booze behind mom and dad's back... That would make you a very small minority, even in the days when parents were allowed to whip their kids into shape (literally).
And, as far as getting lost, have you never done this yourself? This is normal, especially since kids don't have a long-standing, firm footing, in the city they're in (Likely, they've only paid attention as to where to go since they got their license. This is to be expected because why do you care how to get somewhere if you don't even have the means to make it there anyways.).
My experiences with adults has taught me that ALL types of people can be nasty, stupid, annoying, etc... Just that some types of people are easier to classify (unfortunately).
When I saw it (much to my eternal regret, I did actually see it), I heard many kids leaving the theater saying, "That sucked." or "Is that the end?"
Then there was the adult stating very loudly that he wanted his money back...
Probably that "Curse of the Blair Witch" show they had on the Sci Fi channel. If it weren't for the nutty theories they kept talking about in that, I might have considered beleiving it (I mean, why the hell you need to lie to make people see a movie. Hype sucks, and so did this movie (for that reason alone)!).
So you think that if a movie ends with 90% of it in loose ends it is good? Would any of the Rocky movies be the best since 2001 if they just cut the movie in the middle of the most important boxing match?
Man, the things people think up these days...
But how much would troma team be able to make that movie for? Heh. Speaking of which, check out troma.com...all their cheesy horror movies on DVD for a quarter each.
Why did an _obvious_ flame get scored _up_ by one?
looooSAH. There. Now I want 1 as well.
I think they had an internet movie once
I got a headache after watching the movie for 15-20 minutes. My take is it's overrated.
1. I saw blair witch project without any prior knowledge of it from the net. A friend just said it was good, so I went. I didn't even know they had a web site until just last week (didn't care enough to find it).
2. How could there be a sequel? Unless they're all alive at the end, and what we saw wasn't Heather's demise but just her dropping the camera with relief, it seems all too obvious that they're dead, it's over, and let's all go see sixth sense instead.
Bah, can't understand why people believe it's true... My friend, who is 18 and a pretty intelligent person, kept insisting that it was real... I quickly told him it wasnt and he asked how I knew... Um, well, the actors have been on like EVERY TV SHOW KNOWN TO MAN... Get a grip people...
Or at least that's what the woman behind the counter in the book store told me. Jesus save us, for we are very, very stupid.
An average theater having about 100 (or more) seats, this suggests:
at least 2% of all people watching the film enjoyed it
at least 2% (the original poster and myself) found the movie sucked
the other 96% we aren't sure about.
Although I hope they all thought it sucked too.
"and then he woke up."
Having an all powerful, antagonistic entity kill off three kids isn't much of a story.
That is the problem I have this picture.
Either the kids are so stupid that they don't even realize the river CHANGED DIRECTIONS and they're now walking UPSTREAM.
-or-
The is an incredibly powerful, evil entity with very poor craft skills (twigs and vines, heh) that wants to kill the kids and they are powerless to stop the inevitable.
Great. Which one do you choose? Neither require any great level of intellect to construct. Neither are particularly insightful or intriguing.
There just isn't any STORY here.
Let me try another aspect of the second theory. Three kids get into a car and go to town where a black cats crosses their path (spookey) and an old gypsy woman calls them by name and tells them they will be dead today (scary) and then they go to the bank to get some money and a bank robber busts in and shoots everyone. The end.
See? There's no STORY. WHY did any of those events happen? What was the purpose? What was the witches motivation?
The film sucked because the story sucked. The story sucked because there WASN'T a story. There were a few events strung together because they happened to the same people. There was no progression. There were no options. There were no choices. The kids were dead when they entered the woods. They trespassed on witch territory.
Whatever.
Anyone with epilepsy dont go see this movie, all the camera shaking triggers attacks in some people, you have been warned.
Jar Jar's unpopularity was a result of him sucking ass... The net simply provided a place for everyone to agree... I liked TPM, but I thought that all the cheesy comic relief crap they threw in was pointless and brought the movie down...
Wow, I didn't even know this story was here until I logged back in as an Anonymous Cow-herd. That Katz filter really works! Thanks, Rob.
on www.blairwitch.com...
The Curse of the Blair witch had terrible production values and almost convinced me to NOT see the film. The only reason I saw it was because a friend of mine insisted. The Sci-Fi production was WAY below their usual substandard production. The serial killer scenes from the 40s looked completely unrealistic. They were too clear. The audio was too clear as well. Even the 70s satanist guy looked like some 90210 actor in a ridiculous get up. Of course ALL of the acting was poor. No one got their timing or delivery right. Most of them sounded like they were reading ingredients off the back of a cereal box. Finally, those supposedly "authentic" historical documents looked like they were done with Adobe products and a laser printer. Sorry, but that was the most embarassing thing Sci-Fi has aired to date. They should get on the ball and bring back MST3K. (MST3K should do their work on BWP, it MIGHT be more entertaining then) Oh, and another thing... this was definitely NOT a real independent production. While I stated that the production values were low, BWP still had the same boring feeling that a lot of pretentious tripe that passes for big budget art films has. I'll bet someone on the BWP production crew has a relative in Hollywood that gave them a break. If you want to see a great movie about some people disappearing in the wilds, go see Picnic at Hanging Rock. Now there is a movie with style, originality and intelligence. They even suckered people into believing it was real. But they did a better job. Beavis!
Actually, while I do much prefer Alien to BWP, I was not expecting a regular Hollywood movie at all. BWP lacked substance, and was somewhat annoying with it's "no movie shit" attititude, as it simply was not good enough to cope such an attitude. There are other films out there similiar enough to BWP (Man Bites Dog comes to mind) that were much better, because they were executed with at least a little more care. And it sure as hell was not the "scariest movie of the decade," or even one of the most interesting. The problem with BWP is that it could only be scary if you really believed it was true. (and hence the need to present it as such on the web site)Otherwise, it seems like a bad campfire ghost story, which never scared me as a kid. Jaws on the other hand gave me nightmares for years. It was much easier to believe. Without the hype, the possibly astra-turf hype I might add, this movie would have been a footnote in a film studies class with a small following. And for the record, sixth sense, Deep Blue Sea, and the Haunting are very much not on my list of movies to see.
The Last Broadcast will be re-airing on the Independent Film Channel (IFC) sometime later this year.
Golly, I love that channel! They have Fishing with John. =)
Why do you expect an audience to have a suspension of disbelief for a movie that is "supposed" to be a DOCUMENTARY?
Perhaps someone who already believes in witches that can cloud people's minds would go along with the premise. The rest of us just watched some losers in the woods.
... is not a generational gap at all. It's a gap that separates creative people from non-creative people.
Without failure, the group of friends and aquaintances that I have that liked the movie tend to be more eclectic and artistic; people who use their minds and LIKE it. The group that did not like the movie (again, without failure) panned it because (a) there's no violence, (b) due to lack o' violence, there's no blood, and (c) you never see what is really terrorizing the students in the woods. In other words, the latter group was NOT creative, NOT artistic, NOT capable of forming their own images and thoughts; they wanted to be fed images, monsters, spleens and gall bladders, etc., and they got none of the above from the Blair Witch movie.
These groups range in age from teens to full blown adults (40+ in age). So, no generational ANYTHING can be attributed to at least my groups of friends. It's a difference between people who use their imaginations and people who simply can not. If you can not, you'll hate the movie. If you can, you'll be freaked out like you've never been freaked out by a movie before.
Simply put, Katz seems to be suffering from the latter predicament of not being able to imagine as well as others. This is not a serious flaw -- some imaginitive people can't summon up mental images in three dimensions, yet they're still creative people -- but it's a trait that Katz seemed to ignore in his dissertation. The movie relies on you -- not special effects -- to make the monsters real. If you can't do it, don't see this movie. Do us all a favor, cuz all you'll end up doing is turning off people who really would enjoy it.
(For what it's worth, I saw this movie during it's third screening at the Sundance Film Festival in January. I saw the majority of the people in the crowd, as the Tower Theater in Salt Lake City isn't all that big. I would guess that 10% of the people in the theater were under 30. Everyone in the theater was freaked out by the film, though. So much for generational gaps.)
I don't see how these relate to the movie either :)
Doesn't it just sound a little redundant to say use both: . . . and the communicative nature of the Net and the Web . . . Katz has proven his ignorance once again!
Why no common denominator? Lets just call it 500/25000 * $1.00 or better yet, lets use game machine scoring and call it 5000000/250000000. But God forbid we ever say 1/20.
I have little or no respect for the so-called 'filmmakers'. You are talking about a group of ppl that put together a half-assed movie that was pretty boring, got a website up that (I admit) is a pretty good example of pristine marketing, and ended up raking in $140 million. Anyone that claims this movie is 'scary', 'extremely good', 'well done' or anything similar you can think of, needs their head examined. Now, I am planning on getting a couple of friends and head to the woods to shoot "Son of the Blair Witch", "The Blair Witch Gets Her Ass Kicked", "3 Million Ways To Skin A Witch", and "How To Get Yourself Lost In The Woods, Running Around In The Middle Of The Night With A Camera, Trying To Figure Out Where Those Blood-Curdling Screams Are Coming, And Attempting To Come Up With Reasons Why I Didn't Get Busy With The Girl That Was In My Tent". Any takers?
The ultimate Man Against Nature movie. Nature KICKS MANS ASS. You are NOT ready.
You went to see it a second time? Geez man... if you didn't think it sucked the first time around, you should have been in the theatres where I went. The common comments were "What the F***K, man... that's it?" and "What kinda bull$H!T is this? Where's the search?", etc... Oh well... no wonder they made crazy money off this thing.
Am I missing something, or is Mr. 1st Amendment, freedom of the press, Jon Katz telling Time and Newsweek what they shouldn't put on their cover?
You suck. Go away.
Most of the time. BWP was nothing more than a series of events linked by the kids happening upon them. There was no story. They have admitted this. The entire thing was supposed to be improvisational. They go to a site, they react to what they find. They camp, they react to what happens. They go to the next site. Repeat. The movie is as scary as you want it to be. But you have to supply your own story and background and motivation for the protagonists/antagonists and interpret the scenes yourself (in accordance with the previous requirements). Hell, if I'm going to do all that, why should I pay for the luxury of sitting in uncomfortable seats and eating overpriced popcorn?
Folks, I'm truly confused. I *honestly* don't understand why everyone is saying the Blair Witch project is so good. I thought it was boring, hard-to-watch (because of the poor camera work, and don't give me any artsy crap about authenticism or realism - I do better with my HandyCam), and completely lacking in plot or character development. Is it because I'm *not* a city boy? I found it *ludicrous* that someone could get lost in *Maryland*, and not have the simple sense to follow a creek to ensure against backtracking. Now, I know the response will be that they were being manipulated by the witch, and maybe it wouldn't have worked for that reason - but they didn't even TRY it. Or maybe it's because I'm afaraid neither of the dark nor of the woods - as a matter of fact, I *enjoy* the woods at night. So I found it very difficult to identify with the characters, and developed NO suspense whatsoever. Any thoughts?
Did anyone else think that was a boring movie that was a complete waste of time and money? It wasn't scary at all, the actors were not believeable, most of the movie was pitch black with them yelling and the rest was just the characters arguing with each other. Was anyone else hoping for a witch or anyone else for that matter, to put them out of their misery after the first 45 minutes? Can you say scam? I knew you could...
I haven't seen it and don't want to - I hate scary movies. Give me a funny one any day of the week.
:-)
Then by all means DO go see BWP. It wasn't scary at all, and only South Park made me laugh more than BWP.
You don't understand it. The witch was making them walk in circles (and cross the stream and start walking upstream when they started going south downstream). All of their survival skills were meaningless in the presence (never seen) of the the witch. She messed with their heads and the compasses and their maps. Oooooh, that's scary.
You need a certain level of maturity to appreciate this film. I thought it was a really great and chilling film. Part of its greatness was in its innovativeness, part was in its format, part was in its simplicity. Most of the rest was in its ending, the best since 2001.
Yeah, right. Look, perhaps you went into the movie to be moved by the innovativeness, format, etc. Most of the audience does not care about that stuff -- they want to be entertained. The movie did not entertain them.
It's not a lack of maturity. It's wanting different things out of viewing a movie than, apparently, you want.
The thing is that during one part of the movie, Heather says to Josh "Mike seems to be happy with following the stream, so lets do that" or something very similar, and then in a later scene it's changed to going south. Also, the second time I went, about an hour ago, I tried to pay closer attention to certain things, the tree they crossed, and the first one had may horizontal mushrooms growing on it, and the second one appeared to be completely lacking in mushrooms.
Of course, the audience has the benefit of instant replay, where the character does not. Don't forget that supposedly these kids have been out in the woods for days and were expecting to be in there for 2 or 3 at the most. Forget the "clouding" of minds bit and just go with the freaked out, hungry cigarette-less people who have been deprived of sleep for at least 4 nights at that point. Works for me without the witch at that point.
Redman, who has forgotted his password.
I guess I am one of those idiots out there, because I totally hated the movie. I went in with only one expectation: to be scared. Instead, I was bored out of my mind and ended up with a mild headache for my $7 bucks. I think that the only people who can appreciate this movie is people who think that three teenagers yelling at each others for 90 minutes is considered great acting. I've seen great movies made on a small budget before. For example, "The Usual Suspects" was a GREAT movie made on a small buget. This however was pure crap. Its only claim to fame should be that it was the first of its kind, and I am sincerly hoping it is the last as well. I agree that this is the first "Internet" movie. I, like probably milions of other unsuspecting poor souls, went to see it because of the hype on the internet. And I believe that everyone who posts that they liked the movie, are either people without taste, or people who are afraid to be thought uncool if they say they didn't like it. You know.. I was thinking one thing though.. This movie may look better on TV, as it is supposed to be an amateur video by a group of teenagers. But HELL NO, I AM NOT SEEING IT AGAIN! I will watch Gore's speeches before I ever set my eyes on it again!
The hermit was the one who killed the kids by twos. The witch was never explained. Although the hermit was identified as male and the witch as female. The hermit was dead. The witch might have still been "alive".
The original creators of the movie spent about 30 grand. More money was spent when it was sold to Artisan (for 1 million, reportedly) more money was spent at this point to market and promote. By now, several millions have been spent "making" the BWP. But it was filmed and finished for 30 grand. Clear it up for you? -The Reverend (I'm at work, can't remember my password)
Well, for that... If the person with the compass had a fairly large amount of iron in her pack, then that could create a false north for the compass that always pointed the way they were coming from, so that they would always be headed south according to their compass. There's a logical way for it all to happen.
Hmm, you are either a fucking retard or a person who doesnt watch many movies. I hope the latter. I could tolerate someone saying that BWP wasnt any good, but to say that the Haunting was better is just asinine. The Haunting wasn't even good enough to laugh at. It was even worse than the shark movie (deep blue sea i guess it's called). At least with the shark movie you could laugh at the corny dialogue and the fancy, needless explosions. The Haunting was one of the worst movies of the year. Only by the end did get to the point where one could look at it with tongue in cheek and laugh as that big nosed woman preached to the cgi ghost about 'family'. Its fine if you didn't like BWP, but saying you liked the Haunting more removes any right to credibility you may once have posessed. Sorry, but the Haunting was garbage. One of the worst this year; even worse than the 13th Floor or that Will Smith movie with the giant mechanical spider.
I just love reading what the 'kids' are thinking. Come on Katz... Give it a rest dude. In a weak attempt at trying to be controversial and anti-hip you really give a weak case.
brilliant!
I have first hand seen what a bunch of blow-hard elitist crap ass attitudes that exist out there. You think techies, lawyers, stockbrokers, etc... have huge egos? Most of the movies out today are total *crap* remakes or juvenile comedies. Hopefully BWP will ressurect the idea of quality filmmaking getting screens at movie theaters.
Don't forget about NetBWP, which is argued as the original BWP...
Quoth the Raven: "So you think that if a movie ends with 90% of it in loose ends it is good? Would any of the Rocky movies be the best since 2001 if they just cut the movie in the middle of the most important boxing match?" The only way you could save the Rocky movies (with the possible exception of the first one) would be to run the credits, show Stallone standing there in his trunks with one glove in the air, and roll the end credits. On the other hand, BWP builds up an affinity for the characters and leaves you to draw your own conclusions (just as many great literary writers have done in their books) as to the outcome. I bet you're a big fan of the Backstreet Boys, too. -The Reverend
Um... wow... you seem to know a lot about fishing... So I take it you didn't get 'A River Run's Through It' either because the actors couldn't possibly know how to fly fish. Dude... you totally missed the point of the movie, and the fact that you criticize it on such a ridiculous point proves just how little you really know about people or movies. Let's face it, the world is full of stupid people so when you watch a movie like this, you can't expect everyone to think like you do or act like you do. The fact that the guys and the girls make mistakes and say stupid things only makes it more real. Tell you what... Grow up another 5 years and we'll talk about whether this movie has any value or not, and if you want to try and keep from being nauseous try not sitting in the front row.
I could relate to the Blair Witch Project because lately whenever I read slashdot and see a Jon Katz article an overwhelming sense of terror traipses through my body and OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT
Added to which, Katz appears to be a primary creator and purveyor of hype given the tenor of his previous articles in Slashdot.
And of course anyone with two brain cells to rub together figured out years ago that that the flavor-of-the-nanosecond is simply a marketing mechanism for promoting products.
Come on Katz, I hope you don't really mean to tell us that you've discovered and unmasked hype, do you?
Now taking nominations.
Successful candidates will understand the difference between opinions and facts, and will support any supposed facts with sources. Successful candidates will avoid sweeping generalizations which cannot be verified.
I too was taken (for most of) the SciFi channel "documentary". I thought that was the coolest spin put on the movie in all this hype. Truth be told I haven't seen the movie, but I might based soley on the the SciFi mockumentary. ;-)
...the whole point of the movie was being stalked by the witch.
Wow that would show how original they are. Big Hollywood would never think to make a prequil.
An important thing to remember is that most of the shots in the movie are done using a handheld camcorder which the woman (I can't remember her name right now... :) was using to record the *making* of the documentary, NOT the documentary itself. The film used for the actual documentary was done with that black and white camera which was MUCH more steady, and was used in various places (such as Coffin Rock).
And crap, I just posted to the wrong thread... doh! Okay, copy 'n paste time...
I saw this comment coming from a mile away. Am I the only one who's read the Thoughts from the furnace? I don't really like Katz's articles either but I hate reading posts from people crying.
An important thing to remember is that most of the shots we see in the movie are done using a handheld camcorder which the woman (I can't remember her name right now... :) was using to record the *making* of the documentary, NOT the documentary itself. The camera used for the actual documentary that black and white camera which was much more steady, and was used in various places (such as Coffin Rock).
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). That's exactly what I'm thinking! It's so STUPID. There's a difference between something that's somewhat believable, and something that's totally stupid like witches and haunted woods.
> True, but this is like calling someone "a better > jazz musician than anyone in Iowa." Hey! I'm a jazz musician from Ohio, and I resent that! (I won't mention that I actually do suck....)
"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?"
:)
:)
Wow. I've always felt the fifth element should have been longer. ppl would ask how it was, and I'd say, "Good, but it should have been longer." Now I know why.
Some movies simply deserve an extra hour or so.
- I am ODiV, hear me type.
- I am ODiV, watch me depend on my machine remembering my password for me.
Why are you so nasty to Mr Katz? He is my GODZ. I am 21 yearz old, live at home and never spend a dime on anything but cigs, beer and movies that Katz says I should see.
He is the Doood of doooz. I hope someday to find him and be his best bud because he has like helped me see myself for like who I am, like a KID OF POWER is what he says. He says I am the future and he is right. I RULEZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
Can we order Katz tshirts on slashdot?????? Taht would be roxoring c00lz.
Lay off him. Without him how can I be me.
Katz only writes about what already is a buzz in the air. Of course he cant say anything about things that are truly new or original.
He is the kid who was so out of tune with things he was playing D&D when everyone else was on to Gurps or Paranoia. He is the guy who "discovers" Too Much Joy 8 years after thier first album.
He is the same level of lame thinking follower i was hoping the net would shake down. Instead it seems to be elevating them to status of Pundint much the same as the non net world does.
Been there, done that, is it too late to get Fido nodes back in vogue again?
yeah... He should go hang out around the school and see if he can take some kids to see South Park or something...
Beware of the opportunist.
I have taken a camera and made my own movies. I have been a film maker for almost 10 years. Blair Witch Project is by far one of the most poorly executed films i have ever seen. The concept was brilliant but the finished product lacked any element that would cause the viewer to care about what was happening on the screen.
There is nothing wrong with trying to breakdown the Hollywood film machine and do it your way. In fact some of my favorite films are made in countries whose methods bear very little resemblance to the Hollywood method. Just because a film maker breaks out of the mold does not mean that the film is great by virtue of its method. If the film doesnt work it doesnt work. Ultimatly the job of the film maker is to engage his/her audience.
By the end of this film i was glad to see that all three were killed. The characterizations were so anoying because they were too "real". There was a T.V. series back in the early '70's that followed the life of a family in the Bay Area around for a year. In the end the series was a bomb and Hollywood learned that real life is not interesting. A film maker needs to create a reality that is both believable and interseting. This film was niether.
The truth is all that was frightening about this movie was the acting (and its profit).
thingfish (forgot my passwd)
That movie sucked. It was boring, stupid, and not even remotely scary. The only good part was the scene about kicking the map into the stream.
I did overhear teenagers and younger kids saying "Is that it?" and "That wasn't scary." These kids today with their MTV and their diet sodas just don't understand what's good anymore.
Get real. If the evening news shows are faking what they're reporting, they're doing a MUCH better job of it than BWP did.
At least I can't spot obvious errors in their reporting.
As to suspension of disbelief. I can do that. I watch a lot of movies. BWP just sucked. I couldn't even believe it was a botched documentary attempt by some dead kids.
I didn't care about the kids.
I didn't care about the witch.
I didn't care about the hermit.
I know that if I were hungry and tired and lost I wouldn't be travelling SOUTH. I'd be following that damn stream down to town.
No, the kids in that movie were too stupid to be let out without their mommies. I'm surprised they didn't get run over on their way to the store.
Then we get into the "artifacts" left by the "witch". Nothing remotely evillish or ghoulish or grisly or threatening. Just piles of rocks and sticks tied together.
What is this? Some earth crafting "witch"? I'm really scared of your evil MACRAME. Please don't hurt me with your Japanese ROCK gardens. "What the fuck is that, man? What the fuck." "It looks like a WOOD SCULPTURE! A fucking ORGANIC WOOD SCULPTURE in the PRIMATIVE fashion." "Fuck man, what is that?"
The "witch" sounds more like some tie-dyed hippy chick too blasted on 'shrooms and weed introduce herself.
Sorry, I know too many people like that. I don't see the threats inherent in rock piles or stick work wind chimes.
This movie hyped after its out. and viewd by million of peoples. I think is OK to hype because the audiance like it. Before that movie display on box office they didn't even have good advertisement on TV. It was all over the Net, newsgroups and Pirate movie websites.
Do you remember the days when alternative music was actually alternative? When did you first hear about the Sundance film festival? The popularity of Blair Witch certainly stems from it's counter culture roots. Everyone has some desire to be a part of something that is apart from the standard commercial mainstream world. Unfortunately, counter culture is now mainstream. I heard on public radio that the new internet savvy generation (I guess they couldn't say geeks) were going to become the new social elite. God help us - we tried to be different and everyone followed.
That's good! hehe.
Ok, Katz is a stinkin' commie that rides the bandwagon on anything that'll let him, most of us know this. =) All I'd like to say, is that the concept for a low budget movie like BWP is nothing new. What set this movie apart is the marketing. While I have no clue what they spent marketing it, I can tell you that it cost a hell of alot more than 30k dollars.
hey look it i'm going to go make my own blair witch film so far the script goes as follows: what's that?, look what's that, something moved, is their something over their? scream scream. then i will shake the camera alot and give the audience motion sickness
I think the first time I heard about the Blair Witch Project website was after it had been out for at least a week or two. I went nad saw it last weekend and thought it was OK, but I still haven't visited the website. On the other hand I must have visited the Matrix website about 50 times, all of them after I saw the movie though. Not sure what any of this means. -chris
BWP may be a bold, original idea and brazen slap in the face of conventinal Hollywood film-making. But, put aside the hoopla, and you'll realize that it was a really poor, poor film. 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. There were numerous other flaws, but I won't get into them. If you want an intelligent, though-provoking and slightly scary film go see "The Sixth Sense". It is mainstream Hollywood movie-making at its best. If you want hype, hoopla coupled with no scares and awful technique, go watch the BWP.
I saw the BWP. It was an hour and 15 minutes too long. The only thing remotely engaging was the last 5 minutes. I like independent films, and I go out of my way to see *good* movies that *deserve* some hype (like Run Lola Run). BWP wasn't good and didn't deserve the hype it recieved. It looks like this low-budget, zero-plot, headache-inducing piece of shit got caught up in a real storm of hype. Wow, 140 Mil, I guess these guys pretty much won the lottery of public perception. Because it sure doesn't stand on its merits, despite what its proponents might advertise.
Reminds me of an old Australian flick of a movie, cost less than a couple of hundred thousand to make and grossed one hundred mill or some thing. Was called Madmax or some thing
I beg to differ. I felt nauseous because of all that camera jitter combined with too much pepsi and the fact that some chick in the audience was wearing a godawful sickening perfume... but that's beside the point that the movie simply wasn't believable. I'm willing to suspend my belief, and my pickiness about physics and science, to let a movie roam where it may and not give it a thought until after the movie ends. But BWP got stupid early on and lost my interest. How many times do I have to withstand poor movies because of the details that the producers of the movie miss. The big killer for me was the two guys that were fishing that they talked to on the way out of town. What the hell are these guys doing? They certainly aren't fishermen. You have a small, fast-moving stream and these bozos are using bobbers? And the short guy looked like he was doing his best not to touch the lure because he was afraid he'd hurt himself on those hooks or something... My bubble of suspended disbelief popped and didn't return for the rest of the film. Sure, the film was clever at times, the characters seemed halfway real (although tremendously dumb most of the time), and the overall idea of the movie was good compared to what typically rates as "horror" these days. At least the movie won't say "this movie has be formatted to fit your screen" when it comes out on video. Of course, it's still going to have that innate lameness of being lame. -syn
...which pretty much proves my point. The movie SUCKED HARD. If you like watching idiots protrayed by really bad actors, with a silly plot, then this movie is for you. The only thing it doesn't have is a laugh track.
Movie is supposed to enjoyable, but I was sick after watching it. I admit that it is original because no one in this world would believe craps like BWP can sell like this. The plot sucks, can describe in a few sentences: 1. Students went to forest to seek witches. 2. Got lost and were fear 3. Found a house, went in and get kill by Someone(might not be a witch, can be a robber) Also, I have a camcorder myself, and I have never shoot a film this bad. I think they purposely shake the camera at some point to make things look real, and I just can't stand it. IT'S A TORTURE TO WATCH BWP
The movie was made for around $350,000 (still quite impressive), not 30k as claimed here. Katz should check his facts, this is reminiscent of how it was rumoured that el Mariachi was made for 3k. Its cooler if its lower. I'll make a movie for $1 and make millions. Personally, I like the Sixth Sense. A much more satisfying movie. Quote from Robin Cowie Q: How much was the budget for this film? A: Well, somehow the statement was made that it was done for the price of a really expensive car. Somehow that got filtered down through the media until it became "the price of a really cheap bucket of chicken." You know how these things go. Anyway, the latest we've heard is $350,000 and that's from Artisan. http://www.corona.bc.ca/films/WC/homepage.html
Pi is number 5 on my all time favorite movies list. I go to OSU, and it played on our closed circuit movie channel for a month. A few people on my floor hated, a few more didn't understand it, and the rest watched it 3 or 4 times. Blair witch is nothing compared to pi. Pi is probably the most original movie I have ever seen. I can' t say enough good things about it.
The article says the movies were developed independently of each other. Now as to The Last Broadcast, Orson Welles beat them to the idea a long time ago. See http://www.war-of-the-worlds.org/Radio/
I think you mean it's frightening to those with an OVERACTIVE imagination. You know, like the same people who were paranoid about the Cassini probe wiping out civilization. Or religious people. I thought the movie sucked. It's hard to build a good movie on a concept (the whole paranormal idea) that's patently absurd. There is no "unknown" to be afraid of here. I bet you think people who don't believe in Santa Claus have no imagination.
While I haven't seen the Blair Witch Project, I'd just like to comment on the chestbursting scene from Alien.
Here's a quote from imdb about it:
"The rumour that only John Hurt and the crew knew exactly what was going to happen during the stomach-bursting scene is false."
Just thought I'd let you know.
Suspension of disbelief doesn't work in the case of BWP, because the whole thing is just too stupid for any sane person to believe. I mean, the woods were HAUNTED??? Give me a break. My interpretation when watching the movie was that: the kids are REALLY stupid, and someone's playing a prank on them. Stupid. I don't see how people come up with crazy ideas like the woods being haunted. 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.
"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" wow. I thougt it was realistic for -just- this reason. Have you ever been n the woods w/out food for more than a day? have you ever lugged an 80lb rucksac on your back while your "leader" walked you in circles? People can get pretty irrational.And you said it yourself .."no survival skills" 'If you want an intelligent, though-provoking and slightly scary film go see "The Sixth Sense".' You know, by coincidence, I saw that the next weekend after I saw BWP,. And I have to say, it's only redeaming quality was it's plot twist at the end. Everything was spoon fed to the lowest common denominator in the audience, as is required in "hollywood movie-making". The trailers made this movie look scaary. It was a bore. Although the kid was fantastic, I must admit. '..Hollywood movie-making at its best. If you want hype, hoopla coupled with no scares and awful technique, go watch the BWP.' wow. again I am amazed. can there be anymore hoopla than paying 10 million for an actor's name in the credits? But you are right.. it -is- hollywood movie making at it's best..which is why it's only worth matinee prices. BWP was no masterpiece, and that girls screaming was annoying, but I didn't think any of them were going to make a pass at Cybil Sheppard (sp?) or jump off a building attached to a fire hose. : ) this is all my opinion, of course
Is the movie on www.nitpickers.com yet?
I was surfing the net one day when I came across this page: http//www.blairewitch.com the creators of this page used a blatant attempt to get visitors to their site by mooching off the ignorance of people who think that the "Blair witch" is spelt "Blaire" (notice the "e"). after attempting to get in contact with the creators of the page (for a survey I am conducting) I learned that their website traffic ranges from 3000 to 6000 unique visitors a day which and with the banner ads as you can imagine it brings in a reasonable amount of revenue.
Katz Kicks ass FAg
Except Mad Max was actually a half decent movie. Blair Witch sucked.
Well Mr. Katz, you talk like all the Hype is a bad thing. Lots of hype, and it turned out to be a good movie. So whats the big deal? People were expecting it to be good, and it kicked a lot of butt. I really haven't grasped why hype is bad yet(don't really know if I ever will), but why were the producers blaming things on people? Why would you blame anything when you make slightly less than $140?
Elijah Chancey www.elijahsadventure.com nomadic IT consultant, bicycling across america "all that you touch / and all
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.
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
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><
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
Mel Torme is dead?
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.
And as Episode I opens tomorrow in Germany, let me remind you not to forget to watch this entertaining bit too.
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.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
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.
Ken
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.
--- Phyre
>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."
... bar ... bar ...
Hey, it worked for the Zork series of games.
>get bar
bar
-- Rick
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.
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
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?
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
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.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
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.
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
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
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
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.
support gun control: take guns from cops
Boy, did those guys get screwed!
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
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).
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
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.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
So how long 'till we get to see BWP on MST3K?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Which causes greater motion sickness--hand-held cameras or Katz?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
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
the amazing bc
just another guy doing IT
webnaut, music junkie, holes-in-head
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...
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
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...
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
Word.
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. :-)
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
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
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
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.
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
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.
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
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.
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
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'
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
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.
Another damned comic
+++ NO CARRIER
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?
RateVegas.com - Vegas Reviews
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...
signal, noise, to me it's all the same.
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.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
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
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
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.
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.
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.
-matt
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"
-matt
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?
-matt
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...
-- 100% MS-Free as of 4-4-1999, 11:47:38 PST. "The lapdance is always better when the stripper is cryin'" Free Kevin,
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...
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
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 its all real then those people are dead right? Then how come all three were on Leno last night?
dumbass
You figure if they gave this opportunity to say 200 film students, they are bound to find at least one movie in the bunch that will return 100 million. So for a $31 million investment, by shear force of odds, they'll make a lot of money. And of those other movies, they will almost definitely find a few gems that will roll in more cash in smaller niche markets.
No longer could a director come up and say, "I've got a film with lots of explosions and Keanu Reeves, can you spot me $100 million?" They'd laugh in his face! They'd be out of their minds to take chances like that! (not that they aren't now). Basically this would encourage the hollywood studios to give anybody with an idea a chance, and make sure that they only release big budget movies that are actually going to be good.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
So, all these people like The Blair Witch Project because of the hype, eh?
I beg to differ. When I saw it, I had heard nothing about the movie. The only thing I knew about it was that it was a horror movie, and that it was not real. I had heard that some people thought it was real. That was the extent of my knowledge of the background story.
I had never been to the website
I had never read a review
Noone had told me anything about it.
I think it is the best "scary" movie made in decades. (I use scary because it isn't really horror, it isn't really thriller, it just scares the bejesus out of you.)
In summary, hype isn't responsible for everything.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
I also went to see BWP not knowing a *lot* about it, just that it was some students' fake documentary. :) didn't realise.
...and a side note to the idiots who think that those of us who didn't like BWP have "No Imagination" or whatever: everyone reacts differently.
So, going in I knew it was fiction, something a lot of people I've talked to recently (mostly over 30's types
Having little or no budget is no excuse for the crappy cinematography, if you want to call it that. My university friend Godfrey had a SteadiCam Jr, and the damn thing only cost about $500 to BUY, not rent.
> a must-see just once, but probably won't ever see it again.
This is how I view this movie, too.
Worth seeing once to see what the big deal is, but I'll watch Clerks a million more times before I ever see BWP again. There's not much point.
The best reaction I've seen so far was in the theatre I saw it, right when the end cuts to black.
Some guy 2 rows behind me says real loud "You gotta be kidding me??!!"
To which my friend Chris replied "Well, what do you expect from a student film?"
Look at how many people hate Jar Jar, and how many love him.
They're called "opinions" for a reason.
pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I'm glad someone mentioned this series.
Nothing like sitting in a darkened theatre for over 4 hours, plus intermission, and seeing a truly eerie movie.
It'll make you laugh, and then scare the beejezus outta you the next moment.Truly creepy
I loved "The Kingdom" and was saddened to see that the Swedish Doctor died a year ago.
Lars von Trier is going to produce another Kingdom mini series, bringing the total to 3.
Can't wait!!
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I've seen BWP 6 times and i have to say it was the most original movie that has come out in the past few years. I think the directors should do themselves a favor and NOT make a sequel (especally with some lame ass "more footage found" crap). Oh and for those in doubt it is all real, including the "myth".
However, you picked a bad example. There's a bit of delightful irony in that one, and I'm not so sure it was unintentional.
You quoted:
Well, guess what...? It did kill him!
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Absolutely none of the promotions and only a taste of the hype surrounding Blair Witch that I was exposed to came from the net. "First Internet Movie" my ass! What the hell does that mean anyway? The only sensible definition would be a movie RELEASED on the internet! That's still a ways off due to bandwidth wimpyness for even those of us with enviable connections.
License: By reading this you are agreeing that you agree with me.
The articles and the buzz outweigh the actual movie in appeal and interest! For instance, I found Katz's column far more interesting than Heather's whining. For my money, the low budget flick of last summer, PI, beat BWP hands down on every count! It had plot, atmosphere, momentum and power. BWP DRAGGED and rasped on my nerves.
In short, if this is the future of new movies, give me a Busby Berkely or CC DeMille production; I'd rather have the bombastic scale of the old Hollywood...it kept me entertained. BWP did not.
If virtue is its own reward, jsut imagine what vice offers!
Surely CT wouldn't put together an effective AI program and then mess up the quoting module.
Unless they were purposefully included to make the effect more believable...
Sorry about the spelling
see, your thinking of the movie from a critics standpoint.. not from someone with a simple script and no budget.. i'm not talking about film quality and expertise of actors.. thats what sets this film apart from others, and thats what i like.. the feeling that it was home made, the feeling that i've done stupid and cheasy films like it, but if you watch it, and enjoy it and listen and be there like you did it, the movie kicks ass no matter who or what anyone else says is bad or good.. just put yourself in it..
it sad most movies you sit back and watch the special effects and expect it. blair witch as cool beacuse it took you to a level at your own and made you a part of it..
don't expect a die hard or a beverly hills cop or anything fancy, expect what you would get out of your own cam corder and your own camping trip. and then you will enjoy it.
Try This, get a camera, make your own films, and watch them. You will laugh, you will cry, you will be embarrassed and you will think its stupid.
:)
then watch blair witch, and you can relate on the whole aspect on a newer level.
Blair witch kicks ass
I thought that the Blair Witch Project absolutely rocked. I didn't want to see it, because I enjoy camping every other weekend, hiking, outdoors and all that. I really didn't want to see a show that would take away from these experiences, but my friends made me watch it.
= ======
I thought it was terrifying. Two of the girls we went with didn't think it was scary at all. It all depends on your perception. I go camping a lot, the girls never go camping. They had nothing to relate to in the movie. While camping, we are always prepared. None of us have ever gotten lost, we never ended up panicing, and we always had enough food/clothes for the weather. I think the reason it was terrifying was the emotional content. Just the emotions that were flowing were amazing. Try to imagine what it would be like stuck in a forest you are unfamiliar with, then add in the fact that you are unprepared, don't know the people you are with, and are being hunted. I have no clue how somebody can not admit that that is terrifying.
We went camping a week before we saw the movie. I split up from the group and went my own way after a hike through a canyon (there was a way cool wall i wanted to climb). It took me an hour and a half (like 45 mins after the others got back) to get back to the camp site. Just a nice walk. After seeing BWP, I don't know if I'll ever be able to walk alone in the woods again.
Of course - I might just be a wimp.
===============================================
-- toolie
Taco is a genious. Except that jwz did this first with dadadodo.
http://www.jwz.org/dadadodo/
DadaDodo is a program that analyses texts for word probabilities, and then generates random sentences based on that. Sometimes these sentences are nonsense; but sometimes they cut right through to the heart of the matter, and reveal hidden meanings.
slashdot.com All the news that isn't.
diserve to die.
that way, you can die in a marsh, or a swamp. Rivers don't always lead to civilization.
Gee, is it just me, or wasn't Jon talking up how you should do everything within your power to get kids under 17 into R rated movies?
Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that Jon was touting Blair With Project as one of those movies you should take a kid to see? Wasn't he the one who wrote a two part story about how you should take your kids to see this movie? Was he not touting it as a new cinema phenomenon?
Would somebody please tell me when people learn to stop pulling this doublespeak bullshit?
-RISCy Business | Rabid System Administrator and BOFH
your company here.
shelby != ford
I quote: 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.
According to this article, my parents would HATE this film. In fact, they loved it, not because it's scary, but because so much of the horror that attracted them to the theatre (we saw this when it first opened) is "suggested" and never even seen.
I quote again: 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?
BWP works because our minds fill in the holes when an incomplete picture is viewed, and hence is perceived as real, even if our imagination kicks in.
Seems like the only hype is that only teens and internet users have an imagination. Had this been the case, those same teens wouldn't think it was funny that people gazed into the radio in the fifties and were scared witless (again, the power of suggestion).
"He who questions training trains himself at asking questions." - The Sphinx, Mystery Men (1999)
Now me, I loved BWP (finally a horror movie that actually tries to scare you for once! The audacity!) and hype is neither here nor there for me, but one thing I do wish is that all filmmakers would simply know when to stop.
Amen to that. If there is anything that can take the Blair Witch Project and turn it from the underground sleeper hit it was to a true cog in the stupid Hollywood Hit Machine, it's a goddamn sequel. (Second is superfluous merchandising, and the "Songs That Were Found On A Mix Tape In Josh's Car, No, Really" concept ably proves this point.)
Hollywood's bright lights in the producers' eyes must really be sparkling if they plan to ruin such a great concept of the Blair Witch Project with a sequel, especially if indeed the plan is to "show more lost footage" as Katz mentioned. This'll be awful to watch because, as I felt, while the scary bits of the movie were excellent, they were wrapped around large hard-to-swallow doses of The Real World: In The Woods.
Here's my one-line review of Blair Witch Project (may be more than one line in some states, your mileage may vary):
"Hi, we're lost! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP! Okay, now we're dead."
I daresay there's anything scary left from the footage to re-use. I also daresay there's anything truly interesting left from the footage to use -- Heather Donohue said at the San Diego Comic Con that the final cut had a toned-down and less bitchy (!!!) Heather than what was actually really filmed. Sure. I'll pay $8 to hear her screech more, and screech louder.
On the other hand, the producers might want to re-shoot and add new stuff. This, of course, completely ruins the improvised spontaneity of the first shoot (was that redundant? Oh well) and any feeling that what we are seeing is original, fresh, and unique anymore.
Then again, that's what Hollywood is good at. Sucking all the originality and uniqueness out of projects and spoon-feeding us the watered-down, easily-marketable tripe that's left over.
Thanks, guys. While I didn't think Blair Witch Project deserves 100% of the accolades it's getting, I definitely don't think it deserves such crummy sequel treatment.
If anybody wants me, I'll be in a tent over there.
No, just outside the US.
I`d never even heard of this Blair Witch Project thing before I read the article. So I went along to the webpage. There I was told that I needed to download a plugin before I could enter the site. Netscape kindly offered to find it for me, so I went to the Netscape plugin pages. Netscape told me it couldn`t find any plugins matching that mime-type. So I gave up. I`m still none the wiser as to what this thing is all about; as far as I can gather, it`s some kind of home-made movie that`s turned out to be quite popular. But if my experience is anything to go by, that popularity can`t have much to do with web tie-ins.
I am so sick of the bullshit movies hollywood is regurgitating. Their movies are a big money making steaming pile of bullshit. Big explosions, PG-13, love story, gimmicky load of crap. Because that's what keeps them rich. I rarely go to the movies because I find it hard to sit trough the 'previews.' When i'm sitting there watching a preview, the only thing I can see is a group of people trying to create a 3 minute clip that will sell their next movie in the summer time. I fine the whole hollywood movie scene completely insulting to my intelligence. So my girlfriend wanted me to see BlairWitch Project with her, so I did. I watched the damn previews which included the money making actors/actresses. Then, for the first time in a long time, I saw a very creative and original film. It even scared me. I wonder what kind of effects making millions will have on the sequel. That will be interesting to see. They wouldn't dare make another original film when they have a almost a sure shot of making millions off a sequel.
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.
I don't know about you, but when I went to see it, nobody could go five minutes without making a smart-ass crack about how horrible this movie was.
It was nowhere near being scary. It was the worst movie I have ever seen.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
Finally! Someone who actually "got" the movie!
um, script? I believe it was something along the lines of "your are in the forest, something is after you, it is scary. ACTION!"
+&x
Quoted from the horse's mouth
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.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
I bet the undead could reach an agreement with casino management to reposess the brains of people that can't cover their gambling debts.
What else are they going to do with those miles upon miles of reposessed brains?
"Uhm, I have no chips left. My brain on black . . . . . Damn!"
Never underestimate the undead's love for human brains!!!!
Sheesh. I don't know what's worse, that I actually thought this was funny, or that I felt compelled to post this incredibly witty and sarcastic addition to the thread... ;-P
PS: OpenBWP includes WPI (Witch passing interface) for easy setup of BWCs (BeoWitch Clusters)! =P
Okay, I go now.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
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
Paragraph One:
/.'s Officer of Comic Relief.
"Wait a minute... It's a great movie.."
Paragraph Four:
"But it's not a great movie..."
Another buzzword full, cliched, predictible stream of DRIVEL, from
Not only is BWP similiar to The Last Broadcast, the BWP people went to the same school as The Last Broadcast people and have admitted to having seen and been inspired by The Last Broadcast. The Last Broadcast people are reviewing their options with their laywers... How original indeed.
Yeah, it's not bad. I think it still needs some work though. It repeates words WAY too much, you can tell it's a robot. You know, the way it says "geek" over and over and ov... Anyway, with some more tweaking it might turn out alright.
The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient... - High Road to China
Sorry it had to be said. :P
cheese logs keep my wang warm at night.
Did anybody else have kids (and I mean 15-20 yrs)
calling out in the middle of the flic, "Why the
hell is it dark...I can't see ANYthing. This isn't scary!"
I was under the impression that a fast majority of kids did NOT like the movie, but the 20-35 yr crowd (for the most part) enjoyed and were scared
by it.
The original filming may have cost $30,000, or even $3,000 as I have read elsewhere. Word is however by the time the film was ready for copying and ditribution over a million dollars was spent. Apparently there was a lot of post production work that needed to be done to make it ready for 'prime time'.
Now even a 1-2 million total this is a cheap film, that made a ton of money for someone, and will launch the careers of some new young film makers.
Just like anything that really takes off in film, much of it's success is due to hype. Whether it be paid advertising, word of mouth, internet grapevine, TV appearances, etc.
Personally I thought is was one of the most boring movies I have ever seen. But then again I have never been scared by a movie and I am thus note particualry a horror fan. Except for the old stuff by Boris Karloff, Peter Lorrie, Vincent Price, etc. that make great roll your own MST3K.
John
If you want to see a good movie made inexpensively, rent El Mariachi. BWP just plain sucked.
I'm just getting tired of all these commercials for ABC programs where they take advantage of the Blair Witch Project hype, especially the one scene with the actor right in front of the camera breathing heavily. Not to mention other movie trailers now that do the exact same thing, then they end up posting the name of the movie/tv show, on a black background with one of the little stick figures changed slighty so they won't get sued. I mean come on, why do major entertainment companies, with millions to spend on advertising development, have to steal a few kids' ideas?
No, but rivers will *never* go in circles, and they will always lead to *something*, probably an ocean or larger river.
Oceans and large rivers tend to have citys a/or towns on their banks... especially in the USA.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
A good movie will convey the understanding of events that the director/composer intended the audience have to the audience. BWP did not do this.
BWP was supposedly trying to be scary, it didn't acomplish this goal at all. Piles of rocks? Bundles of sticks that might possibly resemble the basic shape of a human? (Stick Figures? ). These things don't arn't scary, they don't even suggest "Witch".
When I watched it, I was sitting there waiting for what was happening, when it was going to get scary, and the whole story about what was going on with the witch. None of this ever happened.
Unlike what they told you in 6th grade english, a story must have, above all, *content*. If it has this it can ignore all the other "rules", and if it doesn't have this it will suck, reguardless of what else it has. (The exception to this is pornos, but mabie that's just a strech of "Content")
BWP was a movie, without content. Major hollywood movies mostly don't have content eithor, but at least they have pretty CG effects to watch.
Oh well, South Park: BLU is still the best movie yet this decade, without a single challenger!
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I liked the way the movie was done, that was fine. What was bad was the *amazingly* *stupid* *charactors*... If you can't figure out to follow a river downstream when you're lost in the woods, you diserve to die.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
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.
George
Right, right, and NetBWP has been ported to more video standards than any other movie.
George
was that I couldn't get people to believe it wasn't real. I argued on the phone with a friend of mine for 20 minutes, and he still doesn't believe me. He says the towns depicted in the movie are denying the truth because they don't want a bad image.
If that's not good marketing, I don't know what is.
I thought Katz was talking about the Blair Witch Project, but then he kept mentioning something called "BWP". Any ideas?
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
*TINY SPOILERS FOLLOW*
I haven't seen BWP, but I have seen Pi, and have to say I was for the most part disappointed. The makers seemed to draw a lot of the "mood" from eraserhead, but the technical details were just crap, as was most of the plot - I mean come on, he gets a classifed super CPU, places it on a socket (doesn't even *plug* the damned thing in), and he's ready to rock? Jeez. It looked like a supercomputer made up of old XT boards. Even worse was the 64 (?) digit number that held the key to the universe - what the hell has that to do with Pi (the number)? IMNSHO, the number Pi is infinitely more interesting.
Oh well, it wasn't terrible, but not as good as over-eager arts/philosophy students would have you believe. Massive Attack shouldn't have lent Angel to the soundtrack (and where were the other artists' songs on the CD?)
Daniel.
Yeah, that was one of my biggest gripes about that film, other than the fact that it was boring, boring, boring, and you couldn't be bothered to care if this guy ever finds what he's looking for...
It's about time! I figured that anyone who said that 'it sucked, I didn't get to see anything!' or some such nonsense were just unimaginative boobs. Look, some of history's most frigtening film experiences have not been altogether explicit. A good example is Polanksi's "Repulsion". We never get to SEE much, but Catharine Deneuve's descent into madness during this film is freaky as hell.
It's a similar effect for the BWP. In BWP we get so see a band of college kids lose their marbles while being stalked by a malevolent supernatural being.
Those who criticize BWP for it's style just don't get it, that your mind can create fear and suspense without $30 million dollars worth of computerized animation, and do a better job of it, too.
BWP exploits some very strong themes: lost in the woods, cold, hungry, and hunted that you just won't see in movies. I haven't been as creeped out and just generally disturbed by a film since I saw 'The Exorcist' when I was younger.
Excellent point about suspension of disbelief. Funny how when you make a film using a pseudo-documentary style, that made it more real, made suspension of disbelief easier. Those who claimed it was boring are the product of the Hollywood/TV studio mentality. Your imagination has been destroyed!!!
I think this movie is a case of some very talented, very smart people pulling a fast one on everybody (I mean that as a compliment). Like many independent movie makers, they turned their lack of budget into a plus. And like any succesful film, word of mouth always wins over hollywood hype. It always has. Nothing really new here. Even the fake reality atmosphere used by the films producers is a time tested Artistic device that has been used for hundreds of years in Literature.
Another recent example of word of mouth based success is, 'The Full Monty', which initially did very poor in theatrical release. As more people saw it, they recomended it to their friends and it ended up doing very well.
or...
the recent bomb, Wild Wild West. That movie was hyped beyond all recognition. The stars are among the hottest on the market today (Will Smith, Selma Hayak), the special effects looked spectacular. But when I talked to a few friends who had the misfortune of spending their hard earned money to see it, they all said is was one of the worst movies they had seen in a long time(with one of them actually walking out before it ended). The result? I didn't go see it, I may rent it on video, maybe not. Word of mouth wins again.
Finally, in this case, I don't think Katz has the slightest idea what he is talking about. Studios are already using the net, with preview videos and interviews with stars. The producers of BWP simply used the net better.
The only place I've seen more people with "expert" opinions is at the local sports bar when it's 4th and inches. "Gotta punt," some say. "Gotta go for it," other's say.
Maybe Blair Witch was an Internet movie or maybe it wasn't. Maybe it's worth going to or maybe it's not. It depends on each person.
One thing Blair Witch definitely is though is "different." And for that we should all be thankfull. Hollywood has been in a rut, and will continue to be in one for some time.
Wether BWP sucked in your eyes or not, please support the indy films and foreign films. There are enough out there such that there's something new and exciting for everyone.
-AutumnLeaf
Am I the ONLY person on earth who saw the Sci-Fi channel hype back in July? There were ads for the Blair Witch Project every ten minutes. Then they had their pseudo-documentary, which I watched although I NEW I SHOULDN'T. It sucked. I new from the minute that I saw the first ad, that they were going to hype this thing way out of proportion. To be completely honest, I doubt the validity of it being a sincerely "independent film". My suspicion is that they had some really big industry people in on this from the beginning... It was a gamble on their part; "Let's put $30,000 into this project and see if we can get America to buy into it. If they do, we'll be rich!" There is nothing remarkable about this film. If you want to see a good "chill-flick" go see The Sixth Sense. That was well done.
I need TP for my bunghole!
I try to be fu
Personally I think this is why a lot of people didn't find the movie frightening. If you've never wandered around alone in the woods, or gotten lost in them, you really have nothing to relate to (unless you're just an empathic person). I, having grown up playing in New England woods, instantly identified with their plight.
I think at least half of the people who saw this movie went in expecting to be dazzled... Well, that's not what this movie's about. It's about minimalistic expression and improv acting. Of course, i can't get enough of those things either, so it's obvious that i loved the movie... but if you're not into that stuff, you've got to at least respect the filmmakers for their *honest* attempt. They just did their own thing, and i have no idea how any of you freaks can lack respect for that...
There is a stream nearby.
There are ominous stick bundles on the ground.
]north
You don't know where north is, as you've lost the map. You wander around for a while anyway.
You are in a forest. It is scary. There is something after you. You are running out of food.
There is a stream nearby.
There are ominous stick bundles on the ground.
A movie director appears and bitches about "getting it all on film." Her cameraman bitches about running out of cigarettes. They bolt away as an odd pelting noise begins to come from somewhere.
]cross stream
The log is scary, and you are only a quarter of the way across before a horde of baying movie producers appears. They are frantically looking for the Next Big Thing, and the clamor of their passage knocks you off the log. You fall into the stream, where you hit your head on a rock.
You awaken in a dim place. /.ers are here.
Jon Katz is here.
Hordes of angry, chanting
]post comment
Your comment is flamed into oblivion. The backwash causes your ADSL connection to turn into a 14.4 modem. Then you hear the dreaded words, "NO CARRIER."
***You have died***
(sorry, I couldn't resist...)
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
...even on /.
Every time I read a story on this movie that I once had a desire to see, it was produced at a lower and lower cost. First it was produced for around $100,000, then $60,000, now it all got done for $30,000.
Frankly, that kind of inconsistency makes me stop reading. Which is it? What's the real story? That's the problem with the "information age." It's too difficult to sort through the hype to get to the real stuff. So people just tune it out.
Consigned to flames of woe.
And when it does, I can't help but giggle with anticipation over how stupid Katz (among others, esp. Roger Ebert) is going to feel when Avalos and Weiler(sp?) sue the living $#!+ out of Artisan and BWP for infringement of copyright and intellectual property theft.
These guys made the The Last Broadcast, an independent movie from last year upon which BWP is obviously prototyped. It is my hope that Artisan and the other copycats won't have enough left over to fund a Taurus with all the options, much less another "project" such as Blair Witch.
I also can't wait to read the article we all know Katz is going to post, shortly after the above comes to pass, on how America is doomed because so many people fell for the hype. Katz can turn on a dime when the prevailing wind of popular opinion shifts against him, and in this case, I'm looking forward to it.
_____
The antidote to bad speech is not censorship, but more speech.
Yes, yes, I know this goes against all /. rules and regulations. And yes, I am not forced to read Mr. Kats comments. But man, for crying out loud.
Your "articles" are complete drivel.
You dance around subjects like a rabbit with its fur set ablaze and the mere fact that you have written an article about "media hype" is totally against what your weak article is attempting to get at. I'm sure you could have gotten to the point a lot sooner in your article without writting a bloody essay. (G).
Quite honestly, I believe your article adds no intellegent information to the situation other than what ever you spewed up last week on the "same subject". Do me a favour and tell me something a little less trivial about the movie and your silly socio-internet-movie points of view.
Write something more cohesive and try to get to the point early.
-From the flaming pit of a volano,
Blackfire
P.s. Thank you for putting up with this crap.
Katz got close, but still missed what really caused BWP to take off. It's not the internet that did it, nor the word-of-mouth, or youth culture, it's that the movie was captivating because it was completly different from any other movie. The Internet and BWP both owe their poularity to a common concept. They are more real. Our culture has become saturated with this glossed over, polished, stories of life. Take almost any show on TV today, and see how many people connect with it. Nobody has a life like that of "Friends" or "ER". The Internet changed that because it was created by real people, like 10,000 channels all broadcast from their respective basements. The worst part is that all these media companies, Yahoo!, msnbc, cnn, real networks, are jumping on the internet and creating content just like TV, just with more interaction and in digital form. The original grassroots are still there, but are oversahdowed, or clinging to places like geocities, where everytime you load a page, ad banners are shoved down your throght.
Anyway, moving on to my original point, BWP was succefull because of the same reasons. It wasn't polished over with special effects, slick cineamatography, or celebrity actors. It was just some people with a camecorder trying to make a scary movie. It became a breath of fresh air in a movie industry that was sufficating it's audiences. It made the terror seem real because it felt real.
Sadly, Katz falls into the same trap he criticizes film makers of. Just as new movies will have astro-turf ad campaigns on-line and try to imitate BWP, Katz has found that saying "kids and/or geeks are the future rulers of the world" has got him a good respone one or two times. Reminds me of the scene in Julis Ceasar when the peasant folk agreed with whoever had spoken last.
The Hellmouth series was good, the movie essays had a good point, amongts the periods of rants about sneaking kids into theatres en mass (What the hell was that, btw??). This, I can't even seem to find what his point was.
Vote Technocratic! Government by killer robots!
What makes one thing popular and another thing less so is very difficult to figure. In any medium sized town you can hear half a dozen or more bands that are as good as or better than what you hear on the radio. In a big city, you'll find over a hundred. But you'll frequently find them playing in front of half-empty bookstore cafes and in dumpy bars where they're used as background noise. If one of these bands suddenly became blessed as cool and marketed in a certain way, they'd be all over the airwaves and MTV.
Once something reaches that point, you can't discuss it as if it were "underground" or some sort of special secret that only you and your friends know about. Your opinions are tainted by being a member of the group that's being marketed to, though you don't want to admit it. Yet all the time you see people latching on to music and movies that are "hip" and anti-establishment as a way of thumbing their noses at the preceding generation and society in general. High school students buy Marilyn Manson because their parents hate it. Teenagers want to see the South Park move because it's offensive. College students like to think they have cutting edge taste by listening to not-for-parents music like Chemical Brothers, Cake, and Fatboy Slim. In none of these cases is anything even remotely alternative or rebellious. They're all just buying the products that profit-aware companies were hoping they would.
BWP has crossed over the line of discussing it rationally. It's not an indie movie any more. It's not underground. It's not something only for trendy net users or under-30 radicals. It's a pop movie that's on the cover of Time and Newsweek. You can't read any more into it than that.
Go Michelle Akers
Go Dante Culpepper
Go BWP
Go UCF
The web is a part of the net. The net also has other aspects like usenet, email, irc, etc.
Hey, have a nice one, guy.
Why do half of his articles seem like they are against movie hype? What is so evil about a bunch of magazines saying a movie is good? It's certainly not enough that it requires this kind of attention. He sounds like some wiener that likes to go around and say things like "I saw that movie before it was popular so I'm cool." or some such nonsence. This is the most inane thing I've read since, well, probably since Katz's last article.
Hey, have a nice one, guy.
First, I'd like to get something off my chest. The BWP is not a "teen" movie. It bothered me a little to hear Mr. Katz call it "teen" this and "teen" that. Scream, I know what you did last summer, and Urban Legend, are "teen" movies. They feature well known actors amongst the teen crowd. That is their driving point. The actors. BWP does not fit into this category.
Second, although I loved the BWP, it is my no means an original idea. Some of you may have heard of an offbeat Italian film called Cannibal Holocaust made in the 70s. If you havn't just go check it out... it has the exact same premise. A group of people go into the jungle to document some natives... they are never found... but their film is recovered and reveils the horror that they were subjected to. Granted, if you have seen this flick, you know that it is over the top gore. And I mean over the top. But it shows that the premise for the BWP is very similar.
I'm not trying to be nit-picky, but to call BWP completely original is not quite true. I am sure that BWPs filmmakers had seen Cannibal Holocaust - it seems like the type of flick that is right up their alley. BWP just made it acceptable for the big screen where movies like Cannibal Holocaust are never seen (not in the states at least).
Thanks,
Mark
When I first came to slashdot 3 and a half months ago, I read the Hellmouth series eagerly. I thought it was the best stuff written in the whole country on Littleton. Then he wrote that piece about South Park and taking kids to see it, and I thought that was both brilliant and hilarious. Since then, it seems like he's just coming up dry for things to write about, so he writes that thing saying BWP is a REVOLUTION, and then he tries to rehash the originality of his Hellmouth series by tying it in with some innocent medical advice about TV for little kids. Now he's reversing his original position on BWP, and thinking we won't remember it. He's a good writer, but he's quickly running out of things to write about.
grep -ri 'should work'
Hehehe, that reminds me of what I put in my high school yearbook quote: "I wonder how many people will use the Robert Frost quote about nonconformity this year."
grep -ri 'should work'
Have to go now, the agents are closing in.
Carefree highway, let me slip away on you.
I've heard a lot of people say they were bored. Strange. I was riveted. But then again, I've heard a lot of people say Eyes Wide Shut was boring, and again, I could not move if I wanted to when I was watching it.
I guess I'm just messed in the head.
Dude... did Katz just fail the turing test?
The problem with the Blair Witch Project is that it was ALL hype. I am someone who is easily scared and yet I found the BWP to be a bore. Yes, I have camped as a child and have continued to do so. Yes, I have heard those noises in the middle of the woods. But this film was a snooze-fest.
People were far too quick to identify it as a hit, seemingly enchanted with the movie's making rather than its content or storyline. It had neither a great plot nor great acting and it ended just when it was starting to get interesting. IMHO, they should've just cut half of the walking-through-the-woods scenes, it would have been much more interesting.
www.niceFire.com
Funnier than a speeding bullet
Hey Jon;
if you can't be first, you might as well try to look hip.
maybe you should look up "hoisted by your own petard" sometime?
Anybody who really believes in BWP is either insane or lives in a cave (possibly a cave with Net access, but a cave). Heather, Josh, and Michael have been doing interviews, for pete's sake.
Jonathan Pearce jonathan@pearce.name
3EAAFB2A http://www.jonathan.pearce.name/
A total waste of my time and money. Don't bother if you haven't seen it, you're not missing anything. I agree with others...all hype no substance. All I copuld think was:"Why didn't they take their GPS unit into the woods with them?";...Oh and lets all thank them for cleaning all the nose hairs from inside the female leads nose. Truly a gross way to end a movie.
I agree fully - this just seems to be a rant about bad uber-commercial movies.
It's interesting to notice that the number of valid posts being marked as Off-topic or even Troll have been increasing as of late... something one disagrees with isn't 'off-topic' or 'troll', people...
-- Scream, Dracula, Scream!
"anti-hype"? "non commercial?" "beating out wannabe blockbusters?"
As I was walking out the door this morning there was about the billionth blaring commercial for the Blair Witch Project showing one of about two good scenes. There was so much hype around the movie it made me sick.
I heard no mention at all in the entire essay of "The Sixth Sense" an excellent, intelligent movie that had little or no hype that has been beating out the Blair Witch Project for weeks now. Media analysts are now saying it may beat out records set by Star Wars: TPM.
Katz says to grasp the success of the movie is to go see it in a theater with 200 teens glued to their chair. I saw it a crowded afternoon at the Fremont, one of the artsiest and teenager-ists movie theaters in the area, and I don't think anyone was glued to their chair, nobody looked scared at all, and rather than screams, there was laughter and dissapointment as we walked out of the movie.
As for the internet fueling the hype, in some areas, yes. But also on the internet are some of the biggest critics of the Blair Witch Project. I didn't see a single criticsm of the movie on the airwaves, but nearly a dozen in popular places on the Internet.
This still doesn't explain why they didn't consult the book at all. It's like it disappears from existance once they get into trouble. If they look for it and they can't find it, I'm willing to accept that as the witch screwing with them. However, we didn't see that.
This goes into the same category as the map - I was willing to accept that the map was disappeared by the witch, but not willing to accept that Mike would throw it away because he was frustrated. If you say that the witch made him confused enough to throw it away, that doesn't make sense either - because they still had the compass and would have gone around and around in circles anyway with or without the map (as per your supposition).
Throwing away the map is one of the many things that just wouldn't happen, haunted woods or not. It makes no sense. I'm sorry, but all of this supernatural stuff seems to me to be a convenient coverup for a film that has plot holes everywhere. You can explain anything you want through "supernatural" means - it's a cop out.
(shrug) It's just a movie, one way or the other, and even though I hated it I've gotten my money's worth talking about it with folks afterward. I just wish people wouldn't insult people who liked/disliked the movie, which is the main reason why I've posted stuff today.
Hey, you amuse ME. It's just a movie, relax.
There are plenty of people who hated BWP and don't fit into one of your neat categories.
I don't care if you're a mental defective, if you are lost in the woods and you have a book on survival with you, you look at the book. They had several days to remember that they had a book with them. Using the "woods were haunted and they were confused" excuse seems really cheesy to me. Maybe in the future every screenwriter will make their settings haunted to cover up the huge holes in the plot. And then we could all use our imaginations to fill in the blanks! Oh, what fun.
If you are cold, hungry, and scared shitless, you don't carry around cameras constantly. Even the stupidest filmmaker would figure this out after a couple of days.
I agree that scary movies don't need blood, gore, or CGI monsters. But BWP was supposed to be realistic, shot in the trenches by people who were there, and was presented as a documentary of sorts. It shouldn't have been so implausible. I usually don't have a problem with "suspension of disbelief", but this movie was simply asking too much. You shouldn't have to use your head to fill in the blanks because the filmmakers were sloppy.
I will refrain from taking cheap shots at BWP lovers.
Good day.
Perhaps I'm wierd, but I just can't agree with this article at all. I'm 21, a college student, constantly on the internet... but I hated this movie.
It's bad when you get into a movie with a free pass and still feel gypped.
I mean, I *loved* The Haunting. That movie sent more chills down my spine than any horror movie I've seen before. Blair Witch, in contrast, almost put me to sleep. The only reason I felt suspense at all was because of the hype - if so many people were saying it was scary and good, things HAD to get better, right?
Perhaps I would have enjoyed the movie more if I'd looked on their web site beforehand. A lot of the storyline wasn't in the movie... heck, the whole "Blair Witch" legend was only sketchily described. But I'd rather get the story all at one time, not in bits and pieces. And, after seeing the movie, no amount of extra information would have helped it. In my mind, the entire story was boring... there's no interest to find out more.
Humph.
A few years back, another excellent low-budget flick was being hailed all over the place for it's success despite the lack of traditional Hollywood mega-hype--anyone remember "El Meriachi?" Which was made with how low a budget? Bitchin' movie, that, btw. Anyway, the point is that had the net been as widespread and adored/demonized then as it is now, "Meriachi" would have been considered some kind of Net Revolution irregardless of the actual merits of the film itself.
Now me, I loved BWP (finally a horror movie that actually tries to scare you for once! The audacity!) and hype is neither here nor there for me, but one thing I do wish is that all filmmakers would simply know when to stop. BWP was a great flick, and now they should just move on to somthing else. Making sequel after grade-Z sequel is what often ruins these things! The first "Rocky" flick--fantastic. . .but then they made all those crappy sequels. The first "Jaws"--manifique! But then came "Jaws II," "Jaws 3-D," "Return Of The Son Of Night Of The Living Jaws," etc ad nauseum. "Planet Of The Apes," "Superman," "Batman"--all of these could only have benifitted IMOHO from filmmakers just stopping after the first one, or at most the second. I realize that there are exceptions to the rule, and that studios big and small have to make money and yadda yadda yadda but still. . .
People forget word of mouth, and how important the sentences "Man, that looks like its going to be cool" and "Man, that's going to suck" are. One of the main reasons behind a car's commercial success is how many of your friends buy it or how many of them you see on the road. BWP got its name out, granted, but from then on, it's all word of mouth.
Since more and more people are starting to take an affinity towards 'underground' culture - that is, culture that doesn't come from the production house of a multibillion-dollar corperation - BWP was the perfect movie to tell your friends about. It showed that you were underground saavy. It showed you didn't buy into the 'mainstream' advertising channel.
As for Katz, he's sounding more and more incoherant every day. For all the points he raises, he sure has a hard time organizing them into any sensible flow of thought.
"Old man yells at systemd"
No decimals inside of fractions, you mean 5/250 of $1.00.
Albert
Blair Witch Project II
The Mel Torme Project
Heather, Josh, and Mike are now the undead servants of the Blair Witch, who sends them out into the world (with their camcorders) to recruit more. They hop a flight to Vegas and arouse suspicion when they are able to eat the airline burrito. Once in Vegas, they begin gambling for the souls of casino patrons, but run out of money. Mike bets and loses their map of Vegas. They wander the streets, stalked by the ghost of Mel Torme, finding stacks of poker chips waiting for them when they wake up at night. (They sleep through the day because they are undead, right?) Unable to see through the Velvet Fog, they wander into an abandoned casino where the movie ends in a terrifying, mysterious final scene.
To seek, to strive, to find, and not to yield.
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. Simply getting lost is one thing, but they tried (with a compass) to go in a single direction and ended up going in a circle. Part of the spookiness of ending up at the same log was that it, too, could be attributed to the witch. Readers of fantasy may remember a similar situation in C.S. Friedman's _Black_Sun_Rising_, in the Hunter's forest.
To seek, to strive, to find, and not to yield.
anyone else seeing a trend? george lucas said jar jar's unpopularity was a result of the net, now the Blair Witch Project is successful because of the net. when people don't understand why something is popular or unpopular, hell, it's the net's fault.
Somebody out there mentioned "Songs That Were Found On A Mix Tape In Josh's Car, No, Really". wtf is this spoo?....
:)
I read about movie theaters having trouble with moviegoers losing their lunch during the movie. Are there any particular high-hurl scenes? I have not seen this movie yet. I will, though, and will keep the scenes in mind, so I can make sure I'm not in front of someone....
BWP vs. The Shining. Can this comparison be made?....
I've blatantly ignored the hype. Has anyone been talking Oscar, or is Private Ryan going to get an honorary second year of eligibility?....
El Mariachi absolutely kicked ass. Pick it up on DVD if you haven't already....
Hype, Hype, Hype, the studios thought they were free and clear after Phantom Menace got jar-jar'ed and Hasbro'ed, and then they _all_ got their asses kicked by an Original Idea and improv....
You don't make money if you don't have a large audience. I do recall that BWP was second to Pretty Woman Regurgitated, er, Runaway Bride, mainly because RB ran on 3 times the screens. Which may mean this movie will probably make some big $$$ on video. Maybe they'll spend another $5k and shoot a body-discovery scene?
I guess the real shocker here (for the studios, anyway) is that the net can be used by indie producers to establish a customer base, which can then be used to help sell the movie to distributors/studios, in order to get more screentime. I guess this is similar to comic, book, and screenplay adaptations, except that the original product is the movie (and story) itself....WHAT A CONCEPT! Use the net to market a "hard good", rather than generate ad revenue.
Am I out to lunch? why, yes, I am, as of now.
Specifically, Media One's Atlanta customers that don't have the "new" broadband service. Keep that in mind if you're planning to move here.
No, Pi was NOT hyped as much NATIONALLY as BWP...but...in NYC, it got a LOT of coverage and also had a great website...very informative...
Sheesh, am I the only person here who saw it?
Anyway, I think that if you're gonna start calling movies "a success 'cause of the Net" then you have to include movies like Pi in the discussion.
BTW if you haven't seen it yet, rent it...now....
Katz knows nothing about the number of independant films that are constantly being made. Every so often this happens and critics sing its praises and warn hollywood about new up and comers. Remember Bottlerocket?
BWP will probably do absolutly nothing to the industry except give new filmmakers a little false hope.
"hundreds of mailing lists on ICQ and Hotline" Excuse me? ICQ and Hotline don't have mailing lists. And I've never seen one HL server pertaining to Blair Witch. Why is it that Katz feels he has to mention ICQ and Hotline in every aricle?
I have less and less patience for people who just banter on saying the exact opposite of the hype regardless of what the truth actually is.
truth? The home video camera, story, and plot of this movie combine to make it scary. Many people I know where VERY scared by this movie. So no matter how much mr pretentious goateed dork boy wants to say its not a good movie and its not scary, hes still wrong. I have scars from my GF fingernails to prove it.
-I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
Not to mention, a boring movie badly filmed. My Film Class made better movies in University for a lot less money! I do however think that the Net got the ball started on this unstopable hype machine, overhyped news of the movie was online months before the movie ever came out and the worst part of it is you don't have a clue whats truth or fiction. Visit there Web Site and the many fan sites and hey all portray it as a factual documentary. Definetly National News magazines doing cover stories is pathetic. Just my two cents I guess, but I hated the movie! If you want the real truth from the Frederick County Sheriff's Department go here: http://www.burkittsville.org/faq.html
...why is it the most expensive DVD in the bins? They're asking 34.99US$ when the avg is 24. But, I'll agree, it's definately worth the brainwaves as opposed to the Blair Hype Project.
I, for one, can't stand Jon Katz. I don't read his stuff anymore, though I do skim through it for laughs.
Writers/reporters that don't actually report news, but instead talk about the 'effect' of the news reports/the media on our culture need to get a real job.
I went and saw Blair Witch project without knowing much about it except the basic plot. I did know it wasn't real though :)
At the beginning they tell you that you're viewing the footage found a year after the kids disappeared, so you KNOW that they died right from the beginning. I was wanting to find out WHAT killed them, and you never really do... it's still kind of a mystery at the end, and I was disappointed about that. It's kind of like Titanic, you know the ship is going to go down, but you're interested in finding out what happens to the people on it. BWP was kind of like Schindler's List to me... innovative, a must-see just once, but probably won't ever see it again.
Besides, I had a major headache and a sickness to my stomach by the time that it was over, I was ready to hurl.
But what is cool about the movie is that you know that no movie producer could do something similar again, because otherwise they will be just copying off of BWP. Reading the web page is also pretty interesting. At least you can keep the movie experience long after the movie is over, if you want to.
And, I have to admit, there was a really funny part - when we were discussing the movie after it was over, as we were walking out, I said I was kind of disappointed in it. My friend said "Well there was only so much they could do to the film, you know, once they found it in the woods. They got off real cheap making it too, since all they really had to do was edit it and pay off the families of the deceased."
*laugh*
Jon Katz at his best:
"Wait a minute... It's a great movie, but is it worth the cover of both 'Time' and 'Newsweek?'"
"And it's truly original. But it's not a great movie, nor even a particularly frightening one."
What if I gave you three dollars? How much? Thr-- four dollars? Keep talking, I'm listening.
The bottom line for the viewer, is that the amount of money that way spent on the movie does not vault it into lists of greatness. I still have to pay $7.75 to watch The Blair Witch Project, or Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
I understand everything you say about the movie and even agree with you on most of it. The problem I had with it was the fact that I was so annoyed with the lead actress screaming into the camera every 30 seconds or using fuck for every other word. Don't get me wrong the idea of the movie was great, but it is a movie where mood needed to be set for you to actually feel paranoid with the cast. Unfortunately that was pretty hard with Heather Donahue being as annoying as Jar Jar. This movie itself was decent but far from entertaining. I don't know but I definately prefer the old Hitchcock films. I believe this movie was made for the paranoid.
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What were you saying here? I lost you when you decided to repeat yourself again and again. Maybe you should try to make a complete thought before you write there articles, that's what a paragraph is for. A series of sentences that follow each other in thought, which when put together make an idea. Some writers even put these paragraphs together and make essays.
On a completely different note, The Blair Witch Project (BWP) is a movie that only kids can relate to because (surprise, surprise) it's about kids. The generation gap that exists doesn't allow for people older then say 40 to enjoy this movies as much because they had their own movies of this type that can not be replaced by this stilly excuse for originality. Those people haven't had access to the video camcorder all their lives like many 15-25 year olds have (well, for the part of their life that would matter). This age group has used this style of filming to make everything from home videos to films for class to private porns.
Hehehe, that reminds me of what I put in my high school yearbook quote: "I wonder how many people will use the Robert Frost quote about nonconformity this year."
Heh, for the last two years of high school I was the yearbook editor. Even though my high school was somewhat small, with a senior class of ~200, there was one thing that could be guaranteed: Someone would put Yoda's "Do. Or do not. There is no try." quote under their picture.
One scary phenomenon I have noticed is that many kids have quoted rappers. The problem with this is that most of rap is a rip-off of works that have been popular in the past (uh, hi puff daddy). Which gives rise to GROSSLY mis-attributed quotes.
Check this out, from my yearbook:
"That which does not kill us only makes us stronger" --Tupac
Sigh. Yeah, Tupac really came up with that one on his own. That is just an example. There are many more examples of rappers who shaped our world with their wisdom. I just hope when these people begin running the world... they realize how stupid they sounded.
Even if you don't agree with it (I strongly disliked his kids-and-tv comment yesterday) it makes you think about it.
Overall I think it's a worthy contribution.
Although it seems not many people have seen it, the "special" that the SciFi Channel had on BWP - called The Curse Of The Blair Witch - was one of the best "mockumentaries" I have EVER seen!
I didn't know anything about BWP when I saw it - and yes, until the end credits rolled, I was CONVINCED that it was all real. The level of detail in this one hour "after the fact" documentary-style show features interviews with the Sheriff that investigated the disappearances, "noted" historical authorities and university professors. It also includes "authentic" news clips regarding the search for the missing teenagers, as well as "footage of a serial killer from the 40s" who claimed that the Blair Witch told him to kill. The level of detail is so high, they actually have authentic-looking manuscripts and diaries from the 17 & 1800s recording some of the local accounts. They even go so far as to give the Blair Witch a name - Ellie Kantner, and trace her passage from Ireland to the States via a ship's log.
If you aren't convinced that this >could be real after watching CURSE OF THE BLAIR WITCH, then there's something seriously wrong with you - it is THAT good.
I wasn't that impressed with the film itself - I think that it would have been even more successful if it was done the way the special was. I didn't find it particularly frightening, but I did marvel at the "realistic" style of the actors and the "revolutionary" style of directing and scripting.
And for what it's worth, I happen to be a screenwriter myself.
JMHO.
--- Dragon77
I wish some small software company somewere could do a origial game. Quake, played it; StarCraft, played it. I wish someone would please be original in the gamming world.
... and while we're on Katzmemes, let's not forget his obsession with under-30 as a placeholder for cool. Mr. Katz implies that "getting" The Blair Witch Project comes from fine sensibilities found in "anybody under 30," but not, it seems, thereafter.
I made it into my forties by hacking, living the non-corporate life, and having tastes that embrace new things. To be sure, that's not true of most boomers, but it won't be true of most of Generations X and Y, either.
Some tastes are identifiable to the 18-to-30 demographic. It's interesting to discuss why that's so. Katz, it seems, likes to explain it by appealing to the adolescent plaint that the Grownups Will Never Understand Me. I think that's as cynical an appeal to a target market as any you'll find in Corporate America.
So hordes of 18 - 30 year olds are seeing this movie...am I to understand that this age group is now referred to as 'kids'?
I think one thing we're all ignoring with this movie is not the $cost$, not the lack of a script, and not the !hype!...what ever happened to the very simple ability to tell a good story. Every movie these days has to have something flashy or fancy to draw audiences. For some it's the special effects, others it's the name, and others still it's the writer ("This is a WONDERFUL play adapted from Oscar Wilde" or William Shakespeare or some other dead bloke). BWP is a simple, honest, and realistic (as far as the characters and their reactions and interactions go) movie that simply tells a story like you might tell one at the campfire, and does it well.
I'd also like to add my $0.02 that this isn't an original occurance...some small time movie makers making a low budget film that makes it big (though the hype and the mainstream support is more than before). Remember "Clerks"? It was a good, hilarious, and raunchy movie...not one for everyone's tastes...that really reemphasized the importance of dialogue. Hell, the whole movie WAS dialogue. Anyway...that's all I've got to say.
ok, so there is finally a nice and successful independend movie coming from the USA. at least by the hype created here and elsewhere, it appears to be the first one ( just jocking ). well, i guess i'm looking forward to see it, being interested in movies of that kind. and we get a fair number of them to see here in europe. just to point some out, in case you haven't heard of them: Lars von Trier did a great series of 4 (!!) movies called 'Kingdom' and they are as scary and hillariously funny as can be. Then there is a group of young directors who came up with a set of rules called Dogma 95 for their movies. Anything coming out of this group would meet the description of BWP easily ( besides scaryness, but that also depends on the plot ). check out 'Festen' and 'Idiotern' (also by von Trier ). and many French movies ( 'Western', ... ). i think that the idea that BWP is revolutionary and brings something totally new to this world, can only result from an myoptic view of the world from a north-american point of view. i guess katz should check out the 'old world' for once to see some new movies. bye, mercutio
... and I thought it was definately over-hyped. It was not scary, it was not spooky. I was not excited during any part of the movie. My wife had to keep me awake after an hour into the movie. People were leaving the theater after an hour of watching this movie!
I'm not going to say it sucked, because it definately was a different kind of movie than most out there. It could have been a GREAT movie, but it wasn't. Yes, it's making money, but that doesn't mean it's a good movie. It was good marketing that got the interest of people like me, who didn't like the movie after paying for it.
I haven't seen the website, and after watching the movie, I could care less.
Now, a good movie (in MY opinion) is "The Sixth Sense"... I loved it!
I sometimes wonder if critics give damaging reviews of good movies and vice versa just to see how much they can affect the public's reception of a film and its success at the box office. However, I don't think that was the situation with TBWP. The critic's intention in the case of TBWP was purely spiteful; they had to suffer through it, and after reading their misleading reviews, you will also.
Even though I didn't enjoy TBWP, I have to admire the filmmakers. The actors headed out into the woods with nothing [not even a script] but a few camcorders and created a sleeper hit/cult classic. The filmmaker's wise use of an extensive website to create tremendous internet hype turned the under 50,000 film into a multimillion dollar success. The estimated earnings of $100 million in the US alone is enough to inspire any aspiring filmmaker with a low budget.
-sYme
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).
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Open mind, insert foot.
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.
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Open mind, insert foot.
BWP stands for Bristol Workshops in Photography. I guess Katz is afraid of wedding photos. I never realized the profit margins of photo studios could be that high. :-)
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Open mind, insert foot.
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.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
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
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
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, 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.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
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?
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
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. :-)
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
%s/30,000/1.5 million including marketing/g
How come there's an "open source" entry in the
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
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
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You're way overstating the case here.
... and some effective grassroots marketing.
Mr. Showbiz interviewed the Last Broadcast team 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
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
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.
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
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.
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
There's no other explanation. Katz is a robot. /. hold dear.
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
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 ...
Juiced? Or Not?
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.
rooooar
Here's an article from The Philadelphia Daily News comparing BWP to something that screened a year earlier at Sundance called The Last Broadcast.
f eatures/FCOV16.htm
Both are very similar movies. BWP got popular.
http://www.phillynews.com/daily_news/99/Jul/16/
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.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
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.
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
I haven't seen it and don't want to - I hate scary movies. Give me a funny one any day of the week.
... volenteers should be easy to find ... only problem is the cost of film. And the script.
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
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.
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All in all, a pretty week showing by Mr. Katz. Nothing even close to his masterpiece of:
pooptruck