JUNKFILM

Say what you will about the movie, #19 of the 31 films had some of the best advertising of any films ever.

Blair Witch Project - 1999

People are fucking gullible by and large. Why not play up to that fact? This is why Paranormal Activity is doing so well right now. People think it’s real. When Blair Witch was released the hand held footage and shaky cam made the film that much more beleivable, and not to mention that the actors were all new faces and all of them hid out from the media coverage for a month or two after the release.

But let’s be honest, if you thought that this movie was real footage and they released it into the theater, you are dumb as a brick in a fan, right? Perhaps not.

While there are a lot of different kinds of advertising or films or whatever, none can even come close to the advertising that was made for Blair Witch. And I do not mean the trailers or TV commercials. 6 months to a year before the film was released the film crew made a fake documentary and released it on Discovery Channel declaring that there was a movement to search out the Blair Witch and find her. By the time the movie started rolling around, people left and right were all like, “Shit, I heard about that!”

Also, and this is probably one of the smartest things they did. They put the movie on VHS tapes and distributed them around so people would see the movie a month or so before it went into theaters and people were scared out of their minds thinking they got real police confiscated footage of three kids in the forest getting themselves offed in a house before the camera falls. Don’t worry, I really didn’t ruin anything for you.

But this fear and word of mouth spreads faster than any commercial can. People talk and people listen. “I saw this movie on tape, it’s real.” People will go see it.

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