Ways To Ruin Your Film: Blair Witch Syndrome

OK, you've got a bare-bones script, a small crew ready to work, and some talent on set. To be honest, your script isn't that good so you've given your actors permission and even encouragement to improvise based on the scenario of the scene. I mean, they're actors and they know the characters, right? Why even bother writing a full script anyway?

So you spend your shoot day going all Dogme 95 with it and you're swept by the powerful emotions coming from your talent. You're so excited that you're having a hard time containing your bowels. You thump yourself on the chest, proclaim yourself the next John Cassavetes, and call it a wrap.

Your movie comes out and all anyone sees of your genius is 90 minutes of people yelling at each other. 90 solid fucking minutes of circular argumentative yelling. Shit, if that's what people wanted to see, they could wait until Thanksgiving and announce to the family that they're getting a sex-change and joining the Moonies.

This was how I felt while and after seeing that god-awful, overrated piece of crap known as The Blair Witch Project. If you remember, three annoying film students go into the woods looking for a ghost, yell at each other for 90 minutes, and then finally die in a totally anti-climactic way. Here's a sample part of the film:

Annoying Film Student: Where's the fucking map?

Another Annoying Film Student: I don't have the fucking map!

Third Annoying Film Student: (with beard) I threw the fucking map away!

Annoying Film Student: WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT FOR?

Another Annoying Film Student: SEE!? I DIDN'T HAVE THE GODDAMNED MAP!

Annoying Film Student: FUCK YOU!

Another Annoying Film Student: WHAT? NO, FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING MAP!

Third Annoying Film Student: (with beard) FUCK THE BOTH OF YOU IN THE FUCKING NECK!

Lather, rinse, and repeat for 85 more minutes.

It was with The Blair Witch Project that I first discovered Blair Witch Syndrome. I remember watching an interview on Good Morning America where the two "filmmakers" were talking about their film and priding themselves on how great they were for setting up situations in the woods for their cast to come across and improvise about. Hence, the pointless yelling about a small, inconsequential pile of rocks outside of their tent in one scene.

The problem of Blair Witch is that of actors who have no ability to improvise. Unfortunately, not every actor can improvise worth a damn. Usually, with bad improv actors, scenes become quite circular as the point of the scene gets lost and the audience gets bored. Blair Witch could've done much, much better had the filmmakers casted actors who could actually improvise worth a damn. Maybe then the film would've really been spooky and I wouldn't have been dreaming about throwing those rocks at the cast and directors. (Yep, Blair Witch Project had two assholes directing it.)

There are plenty of wonderful, improvised films out there. The movies of John Cassavetes, Mike Leigh, and the Dogme work of Lars Von Trier serving as wonderful examples. Of course, these films had top notch talent and lots of rehearsals before the shoot so everything was worked out.

Thankfully, Blair Witch Syndrome is a rare condition that not many films suffer. The reasons for this are that the majority of sufferers are first-time filmmakers and those filmmakers are usually really wedded to their scripts to even entertain the notion of letting the actors improvise the whole flick.