Let’s talk about the website of the film. It’s an interesting idea to have put online day after day the evolution of the project …
David Myrick: The idea was to establish a relationship with the viewer before the film, and to set up a total collaboration with the audience.
Eduardo Sanchez: We started developing the site in June 1998. At the beginning, we only had 40 people on our mailing list and now we have more than 3,000. We receive a lot of emails. The website is a way for us to develop the story around the film. People have loved the concept. Having made this website has given us a big boost, especially to go to Sundance. One of our fans took us to a very important radio show in Los Angeles where we talked a lot about the site, which brought a lot of visitors. It was at the end of October just before Sundance.
Did you feed on horror movies before developing your project? What are your influences?
Eduardo Sanchez : We are obviously influenced by horror films but also by Spielberg, Scorcese, Kubrick, Spike Lee, Woody Allen, Oliver Stone, Jim Jarmusch, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, … In Blair Witch the spirit is a bit the same as in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with a very raw way of filming. In this kind of horror film, it’s as if the director managed to capture something. The other day I was watching The Exorcist and I thought that there was really something more as if something had happened on the set, as if something was there and had been printed on the screen.
Did the same thing happen with The Blair Witch Project?
David Myrick : We don’t know for sure but there was something inexplicable. There was nothing spectacular or supernatural, but something was there? When you think of all the things that could have gone wrong, with the actors shooting for you: they could have broken the equipment, dropped the cameras in the water, … But so far with this film everything has happened at the right time in the right place. As if a supernatural power was guiding the events.
As if this power was the opposite of the one that acts in the film?
David Myrick : We hope so. At least we don’t find voodoo signs all around us when we wake up.
What is your best memory of the shoot?
David Myrick: Just being in the forest and doing something that I’ll never get a chance to do again, and probably never been done before. We shot it like a military operation and that’s what I’ll remember for the rest of my life: it was really fun.
Eduardo Sanchez: I remember one moment, we had just run around the tent because we were the ones playing the witch. I sat on the ground in this huge field and lay in the grass, waiting for 2:00 a.m. to be able to continue running around the tent, and I thought “but we’re making a movie.” We were looking at the stars and sleeping in the forest and just thinking “we’re making a movie”. It was a great experience.
What are your plans now?
David Myrick: We have a comedy in the works called Heart of Love. Like Blair Witch, we’ll let it happen. The film will use multiple media and the budget will be about half the price of a good car. But we also have another project called Salvage.
