The Blair Witch Project was a low-budget horror film that achieved great success through a viral marketing campaign. It used realistic marketing tactics, like missing person posters, to generate buzz that the story was actually real. When viewers discovered it was a film, their interest grew even more to see what all the attention was about. The film's realistic setting of bland woods that could be anywhere also helped audiences relate to the film and find it more creepy. Symbols from the film, like the cross-shaped wood design, took on additional ominous meanings that further intrigued viewers.

1. Advertising Campaign:
An advertising campaign is a series of themed
advertisements that are produced over a similar
period of time to generate a lot more attention
than one advert at a time, etc.
The Blairwitch project:
Blairwitch project has created a lot of success for
itself via viral marketing/advertising campaigns
even with their low budget it has become the
most successful film of its type when it was made
in 1999. The film was shown and presented for
the first time at the “Sundance Festival” in
January 2000 in which the rights for the film were
bought for $1 million from Artisian Entertainmen.
The film generated a lot more money than it cost
to make and with cheap and smart advertising
campaigns that made a lot of attention by using
realism to reach a wide audience. For example,
they made it seem as if the case was real and
people were actually missing which gained a lot
of peoples attention and especially when they
found out it was a film they wanted to see it even
more. An example of this is shown on the poster
to the left where it says this was their footage
found to make it seem very realistic and
immersive to the viewer.

2. To the left shows an advertisement that
the Blairwitch project used with it being
made to seem like a real missing poster to
generate lots of attention which it did.
This realism meant that when the case
was bigger and people found out about it
when it was announced as a film it would
spark even more attention and attract so
many more viewers to see the film.
Another example of this realism is the
woods in the film are very bland and
average that anyone can relate to it and
feel like their woods are similar which
made it a lot more creepy and eerie for
the viewer. This symbol became a trend in
the film and was a symbol for it in the
poster, etc. and it looks similar to and
almost connotes a crucifix in which people
can find strange and scary as religion has
some spiritual power and evil spirits that
people could believe the plot is about, or,
a sacrifice where someone could be put
on the cross which is a scary subject and
attention generating symbol.