Very much an experimental film by nature, TBWP had no script dialogue, and the film crew consisted mostly of the actors on screen as They shot the vision and recorded the audio using only 2 cameras. One a Hi-8 Consumer based cam-corder and a professional 16mm camera. Designed to be very much a documentary, TBWP actors were taught by the writers/directors Dan Myrick and Edwardo Sanchez , the basics in operating the equipment. These 3 actors, Heather, Mike and Josh, were then sent out into the woods for a week were the directors left them very basic instructions as to what they would do, leaving them the task of improvising on screen how they react to one another, and to what is out in the woods.

In what would have to be the most successful marketing campaign for ANY film ever made the Blair Witch Project website was created and from there, the legend of the Blair Witch came about. So successful was this campaign that many people actually believed the myth AND The story of the 3 film students disappearing in the woods while looking for the Blair Witch was actually true!!!

This was quickly followed by a TV based documentary "Legend of the Blair Witch" where "Actual" testimonies were given by the town's local police, University Professors, and even family members. Of course this too was faked in case you were wondering.

All in all the Whole Blair Witch Phenomenon was so well conceived that the film really had no choice but to become a box-office smash hit, and taking the honorary title of the highest grossing independent film of all time, and unlike Halloween, there;s not much chance that It’ll be beaten any time soon

VIDEO
Okay, now this is kinda tricky to assess. On one hand you have a transfer that has been put thru the telecine quite well (sans some wobbling during te opening credits:-), and then encoded for DVD very well. Given the nature of the source material (being hi-8 and 16mm) there are very few problems that aren’t a result of the actual filming. And in that respect this has received fabulous treatment for this DVD release.

On the other hand as a film, and compared to films of today, it looks like a backyard job in terms of the filmic quality, BUT that is kind of the point. In shooting TBWP on both hi-8 and 16mm, the superior technical quality of today’s films is missing, as these lower grade formats result in a look that is grainy, low in detail and lacking in colour saturation with a constant loose of focus due to the nature of shooting on Hi-8 (especially if one uses auto-focus!!!).

Personally I love the look of Blair as it suits the style of the film perfectly, giving it that edgy guerilla film makers look that really only helps this film seem far more realistic than what you’d get shooting the exact same thing on 35mm.

As these 2 formats are 1.33:1 framed, this DVD is presented in it’s original aspect ratio for the DVD release. Interestingly, for the USA release, it was presented at 1.85:1 letterboxed, BUT to maintain the 1.33:1 aspect ratio the sides were blacked out so essentially what you got was a smaller 1:33:1 picture inside another 1:33:1 picture…Why it wasn’t released in the USA as full screen is beyond me, but I’m thrilled to see that our PAL version is released without any black bars resulting in a full screen picture to show much more detail.

Even though TBPW runs a scant 77 minutes, it’s actually been spread over 2 layers of an RSDL DVD (the average bit rate overall is about 7mbps). The layer change doesn’t actually kick in until Chapter 18 which is DURING the Closing credits!!!!. Why this is so is beyond me as the credits themselves only run 3 minutes. Rather odd I’d have to say

AUDIO
Considering the Budget and the video formats used for shooting TBWP one can’t expect too much in the audio department either. Claimed as being a Dolby Surround mix (encoded as Dolby Digital 2.0), it kind of is, but is nothing to write home about. Until the end credits, there is no music score as such, and relies solely on the natural surrounding and live recorded dialogue to get it by. Technically it’s about as good as you’re going to get with using the microphone of a cam-corder and the hand held mic they also used. Interestingly, the audio had been slightly tweaked to put the dialogue in all 5 channels of the surround mix, Though quite faint in the surrounds, you can clearly tell that the same audio is coming out of the front 3 channels. It certainly doesn’t sound bad, but as a result looses an localisation. Nothing to get too worked up about over with this audio mix though.

EXTRAS
Without a doubt the extras on this DVD would have cost more than the film to shoot.

An obligatory running commentary has been supplied by the Directors’ , and producer and as one would expect with a film of this nature offers great insight into the making of Blair. The scary thing is with this film as there is quite a lot of talk about scenes that were cut from the film, and if reinstated would be one hell of a long film. (I’ve heard talk of some Experimental cut coming at some point)

The above mentioned Legend of Blair Witch Documentary is also on this DVD (with 11 chapters of it’s own!!!), running a nice 43 minutes, and is as entertaining, if not more so than the film itself.
There is also some "newly discovered footage" running about 5 minutes, along with Cast and Crew Bios, Film Notes, The Blair Witch Legacy (the entire text based back story), and a few theatrical trailers.
The menus for this DVD are also first rate. These fully animated menus are all indeed very cool with very creepy surround sound, (especially on the backs story pages, that are so subtle you really will think you’re hearing noises!!).

The only thing our region 4 version has missing is the DVDROM stuff found on the USA DVD…no big deal really.