{"id":800,"date":"2017-03-02T04:59:39","date_gmt":"2017-03-02T04:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/?p=800"},"modified":"2017-03-02T05:10:28","modified_gmt":"2017-03-02T05:10:28","slug":"first-person-verite-horror-the-blair-witch-project-1999-and-outlast-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/dig215\/2017\/03\/02\/first-person-verite-horror-the-blair-witch-project-1999-and-outlast-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"First-Person V\u00e9rit\u00e9 Horror: The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Outlast (2013)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"File:Blair
The Blair Witch Project (1999) Box Office Artwork via Wikipedia<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Outlast (2013) Promotional Art via Wikipedia<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A forest, an asylum. A film crew, a reporter. A witch (maybe), mental patients (and worse).<\/span><\/p>\n

On the surface, <\/span>The Blair Witch Project<\/span><\/i> (1999 horror film) and <\/span>Outlast<\/span><\/i> (2013 horror game) seem to share little more than the same overarching genre. Looking at simply a narrative level, the common ground does not improve greatly. <\/span>The Blair Witch Project<\/span><\/i> comes from independent directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo <\/span>S\u00e1nchez<\/span>, presented as found-footage shot by film student Heather and her crew members (Joshua and Mike) for a documentary about the titular Blair Witch. Meanwhile, <\/span>Outlast<\/span><\/i>, by independent studio Red Barrel Inc., follows investigative reporter Miles Upshur as he documents his attempts to verify a tip about inhumane practices at the private Mount Massive Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Perhaps one of the few aspects they do share is a certain critical subgenre fatigue that clashes with their mostly positive reviews. Found-footage seems to be collapsing under collective weight of all the <\/span>Paranormal Activity<\/span><\/i> movies and <\/span>Blair Witch<\/span><\/i> remakes, while first-person games have to suffer the baggage of every iterative first-person action-shooter.<\/span><\/p>\n

Paranormal Activity 4 (2012) Box Office Art via Rotten Tomatoes<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Where these two works explicitly do intersect is in their similar use of technology, specifically that of the camera. <\/span>The Blair Witch Project <\/i>and <\/span>Outlast <\/i>both rely on footage from diegetic cameras operated by the main character(s) and shot mostly in real-time, making both of them works of first-person \u201c<\/span>v\u00e9rit\u00e9 horror\u201d as coined Barry Keith Grant in his essay<\/span>\u201cDigital Anxiety and the New <\/span>V\u00e9rit\u00e9 Horror and SF Film<\/span>\u201d (Grant 153). This common visual and narrative framing found its popular start with <\/span>The Blair Witch Project<\/i> in 1999 and has since then been adapted and tweaked by interactive media to a crystallized form represented by <\/span>Outlast<\/i> in 2013. Together these two works form a dialogue that offers a chronological record of its evolution and informs the <\/span>v\u00e9rit\u00e9 horror mode<\/span> as a whole.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though it certainly was not the first instance of v\u00e9rit\u00e9 horror in film (many would argue that the title goes to Ruggero Deodato\u2019s <\/span>Cannibal Holocaust<\/span><\/i> in 1980), <\/span>The Blair Witch Project<\/span><\/i> was certainly the film that popularized both the subgenre and its subcategory, found-footage. As such, <\/span>The Blair Witch Project<\/span><\/i> exemplifies much of the characteristics identified by Grant as v\u00e9rit\u00e9 horror. The entirety of the film is shot on the two diegetic cameras that the documentary film crew carries with them into the woods in Burkittsville, Maryland. Additionally, whether conscious or not, the actors channeled cinema v\u00e9rit\u00e9\u2019s respect for \u201creal-time\u201d in their depiction of real-life duration of events. And, even more effectively, these amateur filmmakers (both the directors and the actors) convincingly represented \u201creal-space,\u201d prompting viewers to \u201canxiously search the periphery of the screen for…something that simply [was] not there\u201d in the words of Scott Dixon McDowell (qtd. in Grant, 165). In keeping with its style of shooting that would come to be known as \u201cshaky cam,\u201d <\/span>The Blair Witch Project<\/span><\/i> presents flawed, impartial, or even obscured glimpses of the film\u2019s horrors purposefully in a skillful ploy to up the suspense of the film as audiences wait for a big reveal that never comes. Instead, audiences find themselves stuck, eating up the amateur aesthetic of \u201creal\u201d fear while simultaneously wishing it would break its own rules.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shaky Cam via Giphy<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The real-life directors of the film took v\u00e9rit\u00e9 horror a step further, having their actors film their trip, improvise their lines, and actually camp alone in the woods for long stretches of time–\u201cmethod filmmaking\u201d in the words of Myrick (<\/span>qtd. in Heller-Nicholas<\/span>, <\/span><\/i>97<\/span>). This \u201cmethod filmmaking\u201d functions much like cinema v\u00e9rit\u00e9, dissolving the boundaries between \u201cthe artificial\u201d and \u201cthe real\u201d so that the audience has trouble telling the two apart. <\/span>The Blair Witch Project<\/span><\/i> certainly succeeded in walking that line, as a large part of its popularity surrounded whether or not it was \u201creal.\u201d Accompanied by a strong (mostly Internet) marketing campaign, seemingly encouraged the controversy of its veracity. No matter the audience opinion, these calculated advertising pushes kept the film at the forefront of conversation for a sizable amount of time. <\/span><\/p>\n