My main inspiration for Ghosted was the 1999 film called the Blair Witch Project. I liked the handheld camera style of filming as it was unique and was a good way of avoiding actually showing the threat. The way they advertised this film was very unique as they made it look like real found footage.
"More than a year before “The Blair Witch Project” hit theaters and became a cultural phenomenon, its central mystery had already gone viral.
According to the movie’s fledgling promotional website, which presented itself as a real investigative project, three film students — Heather, Mike and Josh — had ventured into the Maryland woods in 1994 to shoot a documentary and then disappeared. Their footage was recovered a year later, providing evidence to support a disturbing legend. The online message boards began to buzz, with questions about the story’s veracity.
The hype, intrigue and skepticism surrounding the account, fueled by the internet’s advent, grew through the movie’s premiere, in July 1999. What eventually emerged — a feature-length film made of spliced together scenes of shaky home video footage — made the demise of its three characters seem all the more authentic and terrifying.
Of course, the whole thing was fiction. But a lot of viewers didn’t know that going in.
“The prime directive we had was that the film had to look completely real,” said Eduardo Sánchez, who conceived and directed the entire thing with Daniel Myrick, from the manufactured legend to the film itself." Information from: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/movies/blair-witch-project-1999.html
Promotional material from 1999 for the Blair Witch Project.
The missing poster of the three main characters from the Blair Witch is what inspired our own missing poster to use while promoting the film. I did this to make it feel real, this would make it more believable that its based on a true story.
The reason why they successfully managed to promote the movie like this is because the internet was a new thing around this time. People were not as attuned to fake news on the internet. There wasn't much on the internet back then so when they saw something like this and it had a whole backstory, it seemed realistic. But nowadays, almost everyone has access to the internet and social media and we see fake horror stories claiming to be true every other day.
Screenshot and information from: https://web.archive.org/web/20210402102230/https://www.blairwitch.com/project/mythology.html
The trailer and the movie did a good job of not showing the actual threat but making it clear that its there. They did this successfully by the acting, it was very convincing and they did a good job of making it seem real like they are actually scared. The rest of it is left up to the viewers imagination. The use of handheld camera and certain camera angles helped avoid showing the monster.
The lead role in the Blaire Witch was Heather Donahue. The actress was casted due to her ability to improvise, which she was very good at as she was the founding member of Red Shag, an improv company. The directors of the film called her into the auditions and gave her potential scenarios to test how she'd react.
"You have served half of your sentence for killing your baby. Why should we let you out?" this was a scenario they gave her
“I don’t think you should,” Heather replied and she got the job.
For Joshua Leonard, he was casted due to his ability to operate a camera. Donahue, Leonard and Michael C.Williams were all casted as the lead roles and used their real names for the film meaning many people actually thought they were the characters.
Information from: https://www.mirror.co.uk/film/blair-witch-real-truth-behind-8844017
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