The document discusses the marketing techniques used for the movie The Blair Witch Project in 1999. Both the trailer and movie poster featured an image of a crying girl to indicate frightening scenes and used the found footage genre to make the film seem realistic. The unique selling point was that little detail was given about the film, creating ambiguity about whether it was real or fictional that effectively scared audiences and promoted the horror genre. Dark colors and lighting were used in the posters to imply fear and confusion.

1. Trailer and Poster
Both text in trailer and movie poster use the same
sentences of three missing students and that the
film is comprised of found footage. This is used to
attempt to scare the audience by making it as
realistic as possible. The more realistic the film
seems the higher chance the audience we be more
affected by the horror genre.

2. The same close-up image of the the girl with tears in
her eyes in used in both the trailer and poster mainly to
identify that this film will contain potentially frightening
scenes and her expression shows her fear. It also gives a
small insight into the video quality and the home-made
documentary style of the film.
Trailer and Poster

3. USP: The unique selling point of this film is
that in 1999 during it’s released the
minimal detail of the movie created a
sense that the film may actually be real,
however there was no indication of
whether it wasn’t. This was effective by
scaring the audience and really promoting
the idea of a horror.
Main Poster
Very dark colours are used for the
poster to reflect the dark theme of the
film. Similarly the light shining on her
face also suggests that she is in the
dark which is used to frighten the
audience as implies that she could
potentially be lost or hiding from
someone.

4. Extra large poster
This is an effective way of producing an
ambiguous meaning to the poster
which can confuse the audience into
thinking it’s real. The language used in
the poster also can suggest that it is a
real documentary.
We can identify in this poster that is it a
horror film due to the quote “capturing
the terrifying events that led up to their
disappearance” This alerts the
audience that this movie is distressing
and mentioning their disappearance
could be disturbing for some.