Viral Ad Campaigns - The Blair Witch Project

The Blair Witch Project used very cheap and easy techniques to advertise it to others, using the internet they helped to further the belief that this was actual found footage and these people where real. This rumour had no way of being verified as actors did not get named and neither did directors. Up until the film was actually released everyone was under the impression that this actually happened.



In the film, the Blair Witch is, according to legend, the ghost of Elly Kedward, a woman banished from the Blair Township (latter-day Burkittsville) for witchcraft in 1785. The directors incorporated that part of the legend, along with allusions to the Salem Witch Trials and The Crucible, to play on the themes of injustice done on those who were called witches. They were influenced by The Shining, Alien and The Omen. Jaws was an influence as well, presumably because the witch was hidden from the viewer for the entirety of the film, forcing suspense from the unknown. Jim Knipfel of the New York Press has noted the similarities between Blair Witch and the widely-banned 1980 Italian cannibal film Cannibal Holocaust. In the first part of this film, a rescue team ventures into the jungles of South America to search for a missing group of filmmakers who previously traveled there to film a documentary about cannibalistic tribes. Their footage is eventually found and viewed, which makes up the second half of the film.

The company even made extra posters such as this one that tie in with the true story route that the film was going with. These where the actors in the film and it all added to the hype as people where more afraid of the film if they thought it was all real, which would be more likely to make them want to watch it. It appeals to peoples curiosity and fear, it is more scary to think a film actually happened because it then provides the possibility that it could happen to you too.