Thursday 3 October 2013

Idents And Titles EG1: The Blair Witch Project


Haxan Films (prod.)

Budget: $60K; US box office: $140M

Opening duration:
Rottentomatoes.com 87%; IMDB 6.3.

Summary/Ideas I Might Use
Simple idents/titles so you can submerse the audience straight into the film/make the film feel more real.
Synopsis

The Blair Witch Project (Sanchez, Myrick, 1999) is an American horror 'found-footage' film about three student film makers who disappear whilst making a documentary about a local legend, The Blair Witch.

Idents/Titles
The film starts off with two idents, Artisan Entertainment and Haxan Films. There is audio over the top, the sound of background noise that you would hear whilst running old blank film through.



The title comes next, stating 'The Blair Witch Project' slightly to the left centre of the screen. The actors names are not presented, neither is the director, producer etc. The title text is easy to read and simple, with one screen of the back story behind the 'found' footage and nothing else until the end of the movie. This is all to add to the sense that the video is an actual documentary and that the actors aren't acting but are in fact real people.

The black background also forebodes the movie and sets the dark feel to the film.

This movie was really the beginning of a popular trend of found footage movies, although the found footage style was first seen in the film Cannibal Holocaust (Deodato, 1980). I think these types of horror movies are very good at scaring because they seem real and that makes it all the more scary that it could actually happen.



The Blair Witch Project trailer:

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