Movie trailers have now become very popular on the Internet. The way films are advertised shows a well thought out way of distribution and marketing and involves their target audience. For instance a distribution strategy would be to advertise your product on the front of magazines, posters and even bill boards.
For my research of the history of film and film trailers I have chosen to use the ‘Blair Witch Project’ as an example of how they market, distribute and basically make their chosen audience so keen to watch and purchase this film.
Basically the film is about three student film makers who plan a trip to find a local person known as the ‘Blair witch’. Ironically they disappear. The police and others try and find them and discover footage and items belonging to the students one year later.
Or do they?
By watching the ‘Blair witch project’ film trailer I immediately discovered that the film uses amateur footage allegedly from the students, the audience can also see that the film is mainly set in the woods; We hear screaming over the film trailer which is iconographic of a horror film, we know that it is a horror film because of the conventions that are used such as the camera angles.
After watching the film trailer I decided to study the ‘Blair witch project’s’ website. When you enter the website you see a badly filmed medium shot of a female student. (Possibly one of the three students that went missing.)
Producer -
Lions gate entertainment and Haxan films celebrate the tenth anniversary
1999- 2009
When entering the website we are approached by Ghostly writing which says ‘ The Blair witch project’ with four options-
- Mythology
- The film makers
- The aftermath
- The Legacy
Mythology
When I entered the mythology section of the website a time line of events appeared which were –
February , 1785 - Several children accuse kedward of luring them into her home to draw blood from them. Kedward is found guilty of witchcraft, banished from the village during a particularly harsh winter and presumed dead.
November, 1786 - By midwinter all of Kedward's accusers along with half of the town's children vanish. Fearing a curse, the townspeople flee Blair and vow never to utter Elly Kedward's name again.
November, 1809 – The Blair witch cult is published. This rare book, commonly considered fiction, tells of an entire town cursed by an outcast witch.
1824- Burkittsville is founded on the Blair site.
August, 1825 - Eleven witnesses testify to seeing a pale woman's hand reach up and pull ten-year-old Eileen Treacle into Tappy east creek . Her body is never recovered, and for thirteen days after the drowning the creek is clogged with oily bundles of sticks.
March, 1886 - Eight-year-old Robin Weaver is reported missing and search parties are dispatched. Although Weaver returns, one of the search parties does not. Their bodies are found weeks later at coffin rock tied together at the arms and legs and completely disembowelled.
November, 1940- May, 1941 - Starting with Emily Hollands, a total of seven children are abducted from the area surrounding Burkittsville, Maryland.
May 25th, 1941- An old hermit named Rustin Parr walks into a local market and tells the people there that he is "finally finished." After Police hike for four hours to his secluded house in the woods, they find the bodies of seven missing children in the cellar. Each child has been ritualistically murdered and disembowelled. Parr admits to everything in detail, telling authorities that he did it for "an old woman ghost" who occupied the woods near his house. He is quickly convicted and hanged.
October 20. 1994 - Montgomery College students Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams arrive in Burkittsville to interview locals about the legend of the Blair Witch for a class project. Heather interviews Mary Brown an old and quite insane woman who has lived in the area all her life. Mary claims to have seen the Blair Witch one day near Tappy Creek in the form of a hairy, half-human, half-animal beast.
October 21. 1994 - In the early morning Heather interviews Two fishermen who tell the filmmakers that Coffin Rock is less than twenty minutes from town and easily accessible by an old logging trail. The filmmakers hike into Black Hills Forest shortly thereafter and are never seen again.
October 25. 1994 - The first APB is issued. Josh's car is found later in the day parked on Black Rock Road
October 26. 1994 - The Maryland State Police launch their search of the Black Hills area, an operation that lasts ten days and includes up to one hundred men aided by dogs, helicopters, and even a fly over by a Department of Defense Satellite
November 5. 1994 - The search is called off after 33,000 man hours fail to find a trace of the filmmakers or any of their gear. Heather's mother, Angie Donahue, begins an exhaustive personal search for her daughter and her two companions.
June 19. 1995 - The case is declared inactive and unsolved.
October 16. 1995 - Students from the University of Maryland's Anthropology Department discover a duffel bag containing Film cans, DA tapes, video – cassette, a HI-8 video camera, Heather’s journal and a CP – 16 film camera. under the foundation of a 100 year-old cabin. When the evidence is examined, Burkittsville Sheriff Ron Cravens announced that the 11 rolls of black and white film and 10 HI8 video tapes are indeed the property of Heather Donahue and her crew.
December 15. 1995 - After an initial study of the bag's contents, select pieces of film footage are shown to the families. According to Angie Donahue, there are several unusual events but nothing conclusive. The families question the thoroughness of the analysis and demanded another look.
February 19. 1996 - The families are shown a second group of clips that local law enforcement officials consider to be faked. Outraged, Mrs. Donahue goes public with her criticism and Sheriff Cravens restricts all access to the evidence; a restriction that two lawsuits fail to lift.
March 1. 1996 - The Sheriff's department announces that the evidence is inconclusive and the case is once again declared inactive and unsolved. The footage is to be released to the families when the legal limit of its classification runs out, on October 16, 1997
October 16. 1997 - The found footage of their children's last days is turned over to the families of Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams. Angie Donahue contracts Haxan films to examine the footage and piece together the events of October 20 - 28, 1994.
Basically the idea of the mythology is to make the audience believe in the actual film. This is a clever idea as it leaves people with a feeling of curiosity, making people read into the film and of course buy it.
The film makers
In the film makers section of the website there are lots of pictures showing the people who were involved in the incident of the myth the ‘Blair witch’. This is an example of one of the pictures used -
Montgomery College film students Michael Williams, Joshua Leonard, and Heather Donahue less than a week before their disappearance.
The aftermath and legacy are about how they planned the 'Blair Witch Project'
- the setting
- the students
- props that are found by the police.
This is interesting because people who have watched the 'Blair Witch' are often convinced that is is based upon a true story.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZu1cTg-xUM - Blair witch project trailer.
No comments:
Post a Comment