The Blair Witch Project History

Beginning in the late 1950s, early 1960s, Cinema Verité was a French film movement that began with the interest in making it easier to film documentaries by using smaller cameras ("Movie Movements That Defined Cinema: Direct Cinema"). This revolutionary technique is still being used today, as it was in the films analyzed in this essay. This paper will compare Cropsey, a Cinema Verité film, to The Blair Witch Project, a Found-Footage film. Viewing the similarities in camera work, scripts (or rather, lack thereof), and in the subject matter. Beginning with an example of where it all began - Cinema Verité.

Cropsey is a Cinema Verité film about the serial killer, Andre Rand. The film begins by telling the story of Cropsey, a boogie-man style

The alleged Blair Witch had been banished in 1785 “for luring children into her home to draw their blood” (Travers). The three undergrads camp in the forest to gather evidence of the witch’s existence, but bizarre things keep happened, getting more horrific over time. The film is presented to the audience as a documentary, and that the footage shown was found in the woods a year after the students from the film had been declared missing (Ebert). Due to the fact that the film is Found-Footage style, many shots are crooked and shaky, as Heather documents their entire trip on a “High 8 colour video camcorder” (Travers). When the frame is level and the shot is steady, the image is usually in black and white, as this is the footage for their actual Blair Witch documentary, being filmed by Josh. The Blair Witch Project takes a similar approach as Cropsey, in that both films, at least seemingly in Blair Witch’s case, start off with no expectations as to where their documentaries will end-up. These three students know the premise of their film, but they do not know what they will discover along the