For this Persuasive Media Analysis assignment, I would like to take a shot at the Blair witch project. The overall goal of the film, other than the ultimate death of all those filming it, is to make the audience think that the Blair Witch is an actual thing. This Movie tries to blend fiction in with reality, making the movie into more of a documentary gone wrong rather than what is it, an act of fiction. Most shots are framed in the first person and have a shaky feel to the camera to support this.
I would like to study this film in more depth to better understand the sensation around it when it came out, as it did trick a large amount of its viewers into thinking that the cast died and that the Witch is real. Hence why there are several websites explaining now that the characters are in fact, alive and were not killed by the witch
https://www.gq.com/story/the-blair-witch-projects-heather-donahue-is-alive-and-well
I think this film will be a perfect way of blending in what we have learned in class with a media, as it uses tools such as sound design and ‘Mise en Scene’ that we have been learning about to create a persuasive and true feeling horror.
This is an intriguing text to study, since, as you point out, there was a concerted effort in its marketing to convince the public that the footage in the film was real.
That said, I have some concerns, the most significant of which is that the structure of the film is only tangentially related to the narrative of the film, i.e., the fact that it’s framed as found footage is not the *subject* of the film, but rather an effective way to frame that subject (what happened when these students wandered into a witch’s lair).
So if you decide to keep this film as your subject, be *sure* you are focused in your analysis on the ways the film’s structure as found footage supports an *argument* for something. That is the frame for this assignment, so it has to be the core of your analysis.