Media creators have discovered that expanding the universe their story takes place within helps to feed loyal fans’ thirst for an even deeper involvement with their work. Fans who actively engage with a narrative text want to see more of it and to be part of it, and content creators can achieve this by including extra components in their storytelling: for example, characters’ Twitter accounts, fictional business websites, email addresses that fans can write to and even sometimes receive a reply from etc. (Philips 2012). Transmedia is the technique of telling a story through various platforms simultaneously, and the way that media creators have approached this idea has expanded and evolved, due in part to the ever-expanding platform of the internet. The Blair Witch Project (1999) is often associated with the beginning of transmedia as a concept, as the film’s viral marketing campaign teasingly played on the ambiguity surrounding whether the story was real or fake through devices such as The Blair Witch website. This essay will analyse how The Blair Witch Project told its story successfully through the use of transmedia, and how these various transmedia aspects had an impact on the way in which the narrative was presented and engaged with.
McKee (1998) states that investing time and energy into developing backstories for narratives is a waste of time. He argues that if the backstory is as good and as well developed, why not just tell that story instead? But looking at how contemporary storytellers, such as J. J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, have approached the way they present a narrative, they appear to have taken McKee’s argument and gone in the opposite direction. With the use of parallel and non-linear timelines, ‘multi-verse’, and grand narratives with expansive characters arcs, the age of the backstory and the complex storyworld is in full swing (Pont 2013). The idea here is to create a world in which fans of a piece of media text can become fully immersed, and creators can achieve this through transmedia.
Jenkins (2006) explains how the concept of transmedia first made its way into the mainstream dialogue in 1999, following the huge success of the small-budget, independent film The Blair Witch Project. Jenkins (2006) states that to consider The Blair Witch Project as “only” a film is to miss out on the bigger picture. The Blair Witch Project cultivated a huge fan following a year before the film even made it to release. It did so by utilising the internet as a platform to create the universe in which The Blair Witch Project would take place. Through the website fans learned more about the Burkittsville witch and the disappearance of the film crew (Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard and Michael Williams), which would then go on to act as the basis for the plot of the actual The Blair Witch Project film. The website contained valuable information from the documentation of various witch sightings over the past few centuries - most of which were not even directly referenced within the film, but instead simply formed the foundation that would act as the backdrop for the film’s action.
In terms of transmedia assessment, it is important to analyse the audience that content creators are trying to engage with. Audience plays a key role in transmedia storytelling - if the audience does not engage, then the fundamental success of the text is in jeopardy. Fiorelli (2015) identifies three core types of audience: the “passive” audience, who are merely spectators; the “shares”, who aid the spreadability of a transmedia narrative; and the “prosumers”, who go beyond simple engagement and actively contribute to the narrative, thus expanding and developing it. The Blair Witch Project nurtured the fan culture through the use of the website, which also helped to spark a debate on the authenticity of the events depicted within the film. Curious fans were encouraged to investigate beyond the website and engage in discussions on forums, therefore fulfilling the definition of “avid spectators” (Turner 2015).
The success of The Blair Witch Project can be attributed in part to the audience’s uncertainty over whether or not the story was fact or fiction; this was encouraged by the filmmakers, who put their efforts into constructing a universe that was as real as possible. The Blair Witch Project was hardly the first film to use a website as a tie-in, but the difference this time around was that there was nothing on the website to indicate that The Blair Witch Project was even a movie; instead, the subject was treated as if it were based on actual events. The website, far from being a simple promotional vehicle - something which audiences had seen before and were accustomed to - had effectively become a continuation of the film’s narrative universe.
Through the innovative use of the website, what The Blair Witch Project achieved was to make the marketing aspect so integrated within the core narrative that the marketing itself became just as compelling and interesting for fans to engage with as the actual film itself (Wilson and Unruh 2008). The website continues the narrative of the main text, and picks up where the film left off with the police searching for the missing students. The website also offered key character development themes which were absent from the film and included, for example, aspects such as excerpts from Heather Donahue’s journal. The diary entries covered topics such as her obsession with The Blair Witch, her insecurities about being a female director with a male crew, and her ever growing fear and paranoia (blairwitch.com 2016) - both of which are present in the film.
Prior to its cinematic release, The Blair Witch Project relied heavily on the use of transmedia storytelling through its marketing campaign. A series of advertisements in college newspaper and in magazines with younger readers (such as Rolling Stone), television advertising on channels like MTV, and “missing” posters depicting the unknown cast of the film: all came together to perpetuate the movie’s seemingly ‘true’ aspect. Cairn (cited in Higley and Weinstock 2004) explains that, although the offline campaign executed by The Blair Witch Project is often overlooked in favour of analysis of the online campaign, the offline campaign was in fact a huge player in the success of the film’s transmedia marketing. The posters, the television spots and the magazine adverts tied together to perpetuate the story of the disappearance of the three students, and encouraged audiences to visit the website to find out more. And although the website was the main destination, the offline campaign was also highly integrated with the main narrative. It was at this point that word-of-mouth marketing took hold, thanks to the buzz that was generated through the various multi-platform marketing efforts.
After the release of The Blair Witch Project, efforts continued to be invested in the narrative universe that they had created, which was developed through the use of other narrative texts and which therefore added to the, already, layers of believability. In August 1999, Oni Press released a one-shot comic - which was simply titled ‘The Blair Witch Project’ - which tied into the main narrative of the film. The publication featured three short stories which elaborated on the mythology of The Blair Witch. In September 1999 a book was then also to follow, The Blair Witch Project: A Dossier. This especially continued to build on the film’s “true story” angle: the book contained more information about the three missing students, interviews with people, photographs, fake police reports and even newspaper articles which treated all of the events related in the film as true to life fact. From 2000 to 2001 eight young adult novels were released, which featured the fictional cousin of Heather Donahue, who investigates the mysterious circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the students. These novels all go on to explore and elaborate upon the expansive mythology that has been so skilfully constructed. Many other platforms saw the narrative continue to be explored, from comic books to novels, video games to soundtracks, as well as film sequels. All of these platforms gave audiences a chance to delve a far as they wanted to into the universe of The Blair Witch Project.
The Blair Witch Project has continually been cited as a significant transmedia phenomenon (Mathijs and Sexton 2012). From before its release to after the film hit the big screen, The Blair Witch Project wholeheartedly embraced the notion of transmedia storytelling, and committed fully to the creation of a narrative universe in which audiences could become completely immersed. Thanks to its proponents’ devotion to generating a storyworld which could be considered as “real” by many audiences, The Blair Witch Project as a film emerges as only one small aspect of the story as a whole, from its marketing campaign to the multi-media platforms that the narrative continued to be explored upon.
References.
BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, 2016., The Blair Witch Project. [online]. [viewed 22 April 2016]. Available from: http://www.blairwitch.com/
FIORELLI, G., 2015. Transmedia Storytelling: The Complete Guide. [online]. [viewed 22 April 2016]. Available from: http://www.stateofdigital.com/complete-guide-transmedia-storytelling/
HIGLEY, S., WEINSTOCK, J., 2004. Nothing that is: Millennial Cinema and the Blair Witch Controversies. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
JENKINS, H., 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.
MATHJIS, E., SEXTON, J., 2012. Cult Cinema. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.
MCKEE, R., 1998. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. United States: ReganBooks.
PHILIPS, A., 2012. A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences across Multiple Platforms. United States: McGraw Hill Professional.
PONT, S., 2013. Digital State: How the Internet is Changing Everything. London: Kogan Page Limited.
TURNER, P., 2015. The Blair Witch Project. Columbia: Columbia University Press.
WILSON, E., UNRUH, W., 2008. The Art of Memetics. [online]. [viewed 22 April 2016]. Available from: https://archive.org/stream/TheArtOfMemetics/TheArtOfMemetics_PirateEdition#page/n5/mode/2up
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