Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Internet
DVD release of The Matrix (1999), Warner Bros. scheduled
a synchronized screening and Internet chat session
with the film’s directors. In 1999 Apple Computer
launched its very popular movie trailer Web page to
promote its QuickTime video software, receiving over
30 million downloads for the Web-based trailers for
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999) alone.
Throughout 1999, the major studios also established
online retail stores in partnership with their studios’ other
Web operations. Increasingly since the 1980s, the film
studios have become part of larger transnational media
conglomerates that often have holdings in other industry
sectors. The Web is thus inordinately well suited to this
structure of convergence and integration, providing a
retail and cross-promotional portal to sister and parent
company products, services, and subsidiary media outlets.
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT PARADIGM AND
ONLINE FAN DISCOURSE
The Blair Witch Project (1999) was one of the most
profitable films in history when measured by its return
on the initial investment. Made for approximately
$50,000 and grossing over $100 million in US theatrical
box-office alone, this financial victory of a low-budget
independent film over the major studio blockbusters
instigated a paradigm panic among Hollywood executives
due in large part to the important role of the Internet in
the film’s commercial success. When the mainstream film
industry had already begun to create content specific to
the Web, Internet promotion was still considered to be
supplementary to established media outlets, and the theatrical
film was still the main component of the brand or
franchise. For The Blair Witch Project, however, the Web
became the central medium or the primary text for the
film’s narrative and its reception, as well as its marketing
or ‘‘franchising’’ beginning more than a year before the
film’s major theatrical distribution. In this sense, the
Web functioned in the 1990s for The Blair Witch
Project in the same way that newspapers and magazines
did in relation to the earliest commercial cinema in the
1890s by playing a primary role in the film’s narrative
and its meaning for the audience.
Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez
originally launched The Blair Witch Project Website in
June 1998 on their production company’s Website,
Haxan.com. When the independent distributor, Artisan
Entertainment, bought The Blair Witch Project for $1.1
million from directors Myrick and Sánchez at the
Sundance Film Festival in January 1999, the company
envisioned exploiting the medium of the Web to compensate
for its relative lack of funds for promotion. On
April Fool’s Day, Artisan relaunched The Blair Witch
Project Website with additional material, including foot-
age presented as outtakes from ‘‘discovered’’ film reels,
police reports, the ‘‘back story’’ on missing film students,
and a history or mythology of the Blair Witch legend.
The next day Artisan sent 2,000 The Blair Witch Project
screensavers to journalists and premiered its trailers on
the ‘‘Ain’t It Cool News’’ Website instead of on television
or in theaters.
Although the low-budget or ‘‘no budget’’ quality of
The Blair Witch Project became an integral part of the
film’s marketing strategy, shortly after acquiring the distribution
rights to The Blair Witch Project Artisan spent
$1.5 million on Web promotion as part of its $20
million campaign (a significantly greater percentage of
the promotional budget than mainstream studio films).
Resonating with the film’s ‘‘mockumentary’’ style, at the
heart of the Web campaign was the blurring of the
boundaries between actual and fictional documents
through additional ‘‘evidence’’ on the Web and the
omission of any explicit admission or demarcation of
the promotional material as fiction or as promotional
advertising. In addition to the official Blair Witch
Project Website, unofficial Websites and fan pages elaborated
the film’s mythology and offered original narratives.
Hundreds of Blair Witch Project video parodies
were distributed through the Web, and several of the
film’s detractors launched an anti–Blair Witch Project
Web ring that included a Web page created by a group
of citizens from Burkittsville, Maryland, ‘‘to explain to
the world that Burkittsville was being harmed by a fictional
movie set in [their] town.’’ Debates about the
film’s authenticity filled Web boards, Usenet newsgroups,
and online chat rooms.
In an attempt to differentiate its promotion, the
May 2001 Internet campaign for the film Artificial
Intelligence: A.I. adopted The Blair Witch Project’s strategy
of passing off fictional Web material as the real thing,
when the marketers integrated several Websites with
hundreds of pages and days’ worth of material that
mimicked the aesthetic of real sites, such as the Website
for the fictional Bangalore World University. These
Websites contributed to a larger pretend Evan Chan
murder mystery that complemented the film and took
place in the future after the film’s narrative. These fictional
Websites were updated daily and, like the Web
campaign for The Blair Witch Project, none revealed that
they were part of a marketing campaign for A.I.
Similarly, in August 2001 director Kevin Smith constructed
a fake Website bashing his own film Jay and
Silent Bob Strike Back, replete with fictional testimonials
and video from crew members. Many fans mistook it for
the real thing and posted emails to the site’s creator. For
the most part, these attempts to recreate the same kind of
marketing success and financial return of The Blair Witch
Project have been unsuccessful, and it remains an
24 SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM