# A Life In Movies: Daniel Myrick

An episode of [All The Right Movies](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1471502633), 3 May 2025, 58 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO6144173432.mp3

We’re talking to writer and director Daniel Myrick. Daniel started his career in the industry in the mid 90s, before being thrust into the limelight when he and his colledge buddy, Eduardo Sanchez, wrote, directed and edited the gamechanging horror movie classic, The Blair Witch Project. Talking to us live from Seattle, Daniel takes us behind the scenes on The Blair Witch Project with some incredible stories from the set. We also talk about the 25th anniversary of the film, and Dan's new project Triple 7. Connect with ATRM: To support what we do, access our archive and listen to exclusive episodes, become an ATRM patron: Listen on Patreon Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Listen on YouTube Twitter/X: @ATRightMovies YouTube: Subscribe to our channel Instagram: @allthe_rightmovies Threads: @allthe_rightmovies Facebook: Join our movie group Bluesky: @alltherightmovies.com TikTok: @alltherightmovies Website: alltherightmovies.com

## Transcript

[0:04] All the rent movies. Hi everyone, welcome to a Life
[0:37] and Movies, the interview show from all the right movies.
[0:39] My name is Luke. On the show we talk to people in
[0:42] the industry about their career in movies.
[0:44] Today we're talking to Co writer, Co editor and Co
[0:47] director of Seminole horror movie classic The Blair Witch
[0:50] Project. It's Daniel Myrick.
[0:52] Thanks for coming to talk to me, Dan.
[0:53] It's an absolute pleasure. How are you doing?
[0:56] I'm doing good, thanks. Good, good.
[0:58] Where in the world are you right now?
[1:00] I live in Seattle, basically a little island called Bainbridge
[1:04] right off the coast of the downtown Seattle.
[1:06] Brilliance. Has that always been your base
[1:08] or have you moved around in your time?
[1:10] I've moved around. I grew up in Florida and went to
[1:13] film school there at UCF and moved out to LA around 2001 and
[1:18] spent a good portion of my time out there up till about 5 or 6
[1:23] years ago and then I I moved to to Seattle with my wife and two
[1:27] kids. I've made the move north.
[1:29] Yeah, yeah. So you said you, you grew up in
[1:33] Florida. Is that where you started in the
[1:35] industry? Yeah, back in the early 90s, it
[1:38] was sort of being touted as Hollywood East and we were
[1:43] pretty excited and just can't kind of a bunch of us like local
[1:46] indigenous film people and artists and whatnot.
[1:49] What kind of formed a group in Orlando and we went to film
[1:51] school and did a bunch of, you know, student films and short
[1:54] projects and stuff like that. And then when we graduated, I
[1:57] was involved with a couple of small feature films.
[2:00] I was ADP on a couple of them. And I also did some editing.
[2:03] So sort of got my feet wet in the industry in Florida in those
[2:07] days. And then eventually, like right
[2:09] after Blair Witch sort of hit, I just felt the sort of the
[2:12] gravity of LA pulling me out there, spending so much time in
[2:16] LA doing projects and pitching projects that just made sense
[2:18] for me to move out there for a while and kind of see how the
[2:21] sausage is made, if you will. Yeah.
[2:25] So how did you get your big break in the industry?
[2:28] Was it right out of out of school?
[2:30] Depends on how you define big break.
[2:32] I mean, I had been working in commercials and wedding videos
[2:37] and all that for almost 10 years.
[2:39] Right, you served your time. Yeah, prior to to Blair Witch
[2:42] and I mean, everything from car commercials to, you know, real
[2:47] estate ads, I did a lot of those.
[2:50] And that's how I sort of kind of got into like telling the story
[2:53] visually. And and then when I got into
[2:56] film school, it sort of really opened my eyes like, oh, here's
[2:59] how movies are made. And this is this is what I've
[3:01] always wanted to do and tell stories visually.
[3:04] And so there's a process, script writing and three act structure
[3:08] and how you shoot coverage of a scene and all that stuff I
[3:11] learned in film school. So after that I got a few gigs,
[3:16] you know, on small productions and, you know, local productions
[3:19] in Florida. And, and actually, you know, I
[3:23] was sort of doing a day job as an editor at a, at a local
[3:26] production facility. And it was two or three years
[3:29] after we graduated, Ed and I reconnected and said, you know,
[3:32] let's do that Woods movie. We were kind of dreaming up in
[3:36] film school. And one thing led to another and
[3:39] we got that going. And that's really where
[3:41] everything changed. Obviously when Blair Witch hit,
[3:43] that sort of was was like the huge break for us.
[3:46] Right. So you you said, hey, I imagine
[3:49] you you're referring to Eduardo Sanchez.
[3:51] Yeah. Your Co writer, director, editor
[3:54] on the Blair Witch. How did you and he meet?
[3:57] We met in film school, you know, we were both, you know, pretty
[4:00] ambitious and had a lot of big ideas that can film school.
[4:03] And I liked his work and he liked my work and we just got
[4:07] along, had a kind of a creative spark with each other.
[4:10] And after a couple of years we were collaborating on projects,
[4:13] film projects in film school. And and as you do with with kind
[4:17] of collaborators, you sit around and brainstorm ideas and you
[4:20] kind of bounce off each other. And we had several different
[4:22] ideas in this kind of woods movie was one of them.
[4:25] We wanted to do a sort of a horror film that at the risk of
[4:29] sounding really pretentious, but we wanted a horror movie that
[4:32] actually scared you. We were, we were sort of like in
[4:36] this place back in those days where horror films sort of have
[4:40] the pretext of being scary, but they were big productions like
[4:43] Ghost Ship and stuff like that. And they weren't actually scary.
[4:46] They were almost self referential in their sort of
[4:48] tongue in cheek approach to horror.
[4:50] And like, I miss being really scared, you know, like the
[4:54] Exorcist had an effect on me as a kid and Shining and films like
[4:58] that. So so yeah, we started
[5:00] brainstorming about what what really scares you, you know, in
[5:04] a primal level. And, and that's kind of where
[5:06] the Blair Witch idea took root. And and and then we didn't
[5:09] revisit it until a couple of years later.
[5:12] Right. OK, I've been trying to think
[5:14] about this because I mean it was kind of a one off.
[5:17] I mean this Woods film that you're talking about here as
[5:19] well as very quit, but we're talking about the Blair Witch
[5:22] Project to the a seismic shift in movie making.
[5:26] What were your influences considering, you know, found
[5:28] footage films? Were a handful of them in movie
[5:32] history up until this point? Well, I think the biggest, some
[5:35] of the biggest influences for Ed and I were documentaries
[5:40] actually, or pseudo documentaries.
[5:41] Like we, we were big fans of the show in search of with Leonard
[5:45] Nimoy. Yeah.
[5:47] And explored all these issues like Ancient Aliens and the
[5:51] NASCAR lines and Peru and all really fascinating stuff that in
[5:56] that age at that time was very popular.
[5:58] You know, UFO's and, you know, the late 70s, early 80s, it was,
[6:02] you know, Bigfoot, all that stuff.
[6:04] There was all these pseudo documentaries surrounding these
[6:06] subjects and they were scary. They were really chilling.
[6:10] You'd open up an old book. I had a subscription to UFO
[6:12] magazine and I'd open up and there's these blurry photos of
[6:15] hubcaps, basically. But you know, they were, they
[6:18] creeped you out. So we sort of just started to
[6:21] drill down the theory of why is it that a blurry image of a dude
[6:26] in an ape suit, you know, in the woods, has such an effect on the
[6:31] brain versus the Hollywood version of that?
[6:35] What is it about that realism, that sense of unpredictability
[6:40] that works on that kind of primal fear button in everybody.
[6:43] So we took a page from those, that inspiration from those old
[6:48] documentaries and said, can we create a narrative film that
[6:51] sort of plays on those triggers? So then it was about, OK, let's
[6:55] create a fake documentary that we have control over the
[6:58] narrative. And basically just
[7:01] coincidentally, at the same time, MTV was coming out with
[7:04] Real World, which was, you know, one of the first reality shows.
[7:10] They were also famous for a lot of their shakey Cam coverage of
[7:14] interviews and stuff like that. I remember that being a big
[7:16] thing. They were the first ones to
[7:17] really do that. So at the same time, audiences
[7:20] were sort of becoming sensitized to that style of storytelling,
[7:24] you know, through news, 24/7 news and MTV and whatnot.
[7:28] So we were kind of hitting it right at the right time with
[7:30] this idea that coincided with the audience's sort of ability
[7:34] to accept that kind of style more so than I think in in days
[7:39] prior to that. Right.
[7:41] I think in in movies, I think the film that gets touted around
[7:45] quite a bit is kind of a Holocaust from 1980.
[7:49] Is the is the kind of the found the start of found footage film?
[7:53] Was that on your radar at all? No, not when we were shooting.
[7:56] We didn't even know about the film until after we had done
[7:59] screened the film and someone came up to us and said, have you
[8:01] seen Campbell Holocaust? I go, hell, never heard of it.
[8:04] So and I went back and watched and go, Oh yeah, the premise is
[8:07] very similar, you know, like people lost and you find their
[8:11] footage and whatnot. And it was really a disturbing
[8:14] movie. You'd be forgiven, yeah, if you
[8:16] haven't seen that film. Yeah, it's not.
[8:18] A great it's not a nice watch. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a tough
[8:21] film to watch, but, but we didn't know about it until
[8:24] afterwards. And, and frankly, we were kind
[8:27] of surprised that there weren't more films like that because it
[8:32] is a it's a pretty cool premise, but it's also almost as
[8:36] importantly, very cheap to shoot that way.
[8:38] You know, you don't need all the big production trappings of a of
[8:41] a Hollywood film, which are very costly.
[8:44] But that was a kind of an interesting coincidence that
[8:47] that we discovered that film actor we did Blair.
[8:51] Can you, if you don't mind, taught me through the the
[8:52] writing process for something like the Blair Witch Project?
[8:55] I I believe you set out a 35 page treatment.
[8:59] Is that right? Yeah, it was basically Ed and I
[9:02] spent a lot of time outlining the structure of what the film
[9:06] was going to be and maintaining kind of a narrative control,
[9:10] kind of a three act structure, you know, laying the groundwork
[9:14] that, you know, the pipe, as we say early on about the Blair
[9:17] Witch mythology. So the audience had that in
[9:20] their head as their actors were going into the woods.
[9:22] So all that had to be premeditated as well as all the
[9:24] gags. What what were the, you know, we
[9:26] wanted sort of a build for each night's interference from the
[9:30] from the witch, right. So that had to have a build to
[9:33] it. So it was pretty methodically
[9:36] thought out that the outline in the shooting was basically a
[9:40] full on script, just without the dialogue because we knew the
[9:44] dialogue had to be improvised for it to come off genuine and,
[9:49] and, and real. So it was, it was about not
[9:53] necessarily what the actors were saying, but how they were saying
[9:56] it. We had, it had to come from a
[9:58] real emotional place. So, so, yeah, so we sort of
[10:01] created the stage with the script as being sort of our
[10:06] framework for the actors to, to be able to have free movement
[10:09] and, and work within. And then that took, I don't
[10:12] know, several months, you know, for, for at a night to outline
[10:15] it. And then I went off and wrote
[10:17] the actual script and kind of filled in the gaps of, you know,
[10:21] things like when Mary Brown talks about the horse lady
[10:23] story. So I had to write that out and
[10:26] the scene at the, you know, at the graveyard.
[10:29] And there were more scripted areas, you know, of course, the
[10:32] back story and all the kind of world betting we had to kind of
[10:35] do together and all that. So.
[10:37] So yeah, it was almost an hour by hour structure, you know,
[10:42] telling the actors what they needed to be doing any
[10:44] particular time. But again, let them kind of have
[10:47] free reign of the dialogue. And and we knew later on we were
[10:50] going to control their performance both by observing
[10:53] them in the field and also giving them directing notes on
[10:56] what to say and how to say it in various situations.
[10:59] So we could hit those beats that we needed to hit.
[11:01] So we didn't know if it was going to work at the time we
[11:04] were doing it. It could very easily have gone
[11:07] off the rails. But it was one of those
[11:10] experiments that at the time, we were trying to capture that
[11:14] documentary improvisational unpredictability that kind of
[11:19] inspired us for Blair in the first place.
[11:21] And and you mentioned there about field notes, so did the
[11:24] actors go to a certain location and were given kind of
[11:28] instructions and then cleared out the scenes?
[11:31] Yeah, we took sort of this method approach to directing and
[11:35] shooting the movie where like, for example, Heather was given
[11:38] more of the back story of Blair Witch in the mythology because
[11:41] her character would have known more about it.
[11:43] That was her project and her story to be telling.
[11:46] And we left both Josh and Michael a little bit in the dark
[11:49] about what Heather was up to because we wanted them to ask
[11:52] questions on camera about what it was all about.
[11:54] So we come up a little more natural.
[11:57] So that's an example. And then once we got into the
[11:59] woods, we with the help of our producer Greg Hale, we used AGPS
[12:04] system to allow the ACT to sort of navigate to our waypoints
[12:07] that we set up in advance without the help of a crew
[12:12] guiding them through the woods. So we, because we knew we were
[12:14] going to get a lot of good meat as they were walking, just
[12:17] talking. And you know, again, the
[12:21] methodology being we're probably going to get 1000 hours of
[12:24] useless stuff. But if we get this a couple of
[12:26] minutes of a really great moment, it'll be worth it.
[12:28] So that was our, our thought process.
[12:30] So we marked waypoints in the GPS handheld set that they had
[12:35] me had a copy of it. So when they got to a waypoint,
[12:38] there would be a, a milk crate basket there and within it would
[12:42] be new tapes, fresh tapes for them to use, fresh batteries for
[12:45] their cameras, as well as some food stuffs that they could they
[12:48] could munch on. More importantly, they knew that
[12:50] was our spot that they made it and that's where they're going
[12:52] to set up their tent. And then within that crate we
[12:56] had three film canisters, those old 35mm film canisters that we
[13:01] used to have back in the day. And we're had directing notes
[13:04] stuffed within them. And they were instructed to read
[13:06] their own note, but not anyone else's and not share the note.
[13:11] So an example would be like we told Heather in one instance
[13:15] that, you know, you're really tired and this is going to be
[13:18] the day you're going to get out. Just go South all day.
[13:21] Don't listen to anybody else. Just continue going South.
[13:25] And she was smart enough to know, OK, that was my cue.
[13:28] That was my instructions for the day.
[13:29] And I just got to maintain my heading going South.
[13:31] And then at the same time we gave like Josh a note like
[13:34] you're going, you've been going South all day.
[13:36] This is bullshit. So you got to intervene sometime
[13:39] in this afternoon. So that was his cue sometime
[13:41] whenever he felt the mood was right to go.
[13:43] This is bullshit, right? So that that would introduce a
[13:47] conflict somewhere and but we allow them to kind of decide how
[13:51] they wanted to play it out. But we so it was a blend of us
[13:54] directing those beats in those in those moments, but allowing
[13:58] the actors to kind of do it when they felt it was right.
[14:01] And it worked out pretty well in most cases.
[14:04] You know, they improvised brilliantly.
[14:05] I was one of the big prerequisites during the casting
[14:08] processes, having those improv chops.
[14:11] And yeah, we got a lot of great footage.
[14:12] It was, you know, obviously it ended up working out for us.
[14:16] Incredible footage. Go back to the the custom
[14:18] process. How many people auditioned for
[14:21] it? How did you whittle it down?
[14:22] What was your kind of criteria? Well, we knew going in that we
[14:27] wanted people with really good improv skills.
[14:31] And you know, that's a different kind of actor.
[14:34] There's there are those actors that are really great character
[14:37] actors and will memorize an entire script and give you 5
[14:43] different ways of a performance of a certain line.
[14:45] But if you don't give them a line, they get really
[14:47] uncomfortable. They feel like they're unguided
[14:49] and that that makes them very uncomfortable.
[14:51] And then there's the kind of actor that loves that freedom,
[14:55] loves that sort of free association and they can kind of
[14:57] just ramble and do whatever. And it comes very kind of like,
[15:01] you know, from a primal place, very honest place.
[15:04] And that sort of method approach is embrace.
[15:08] I think for a lot of young actors, they really, they really
[15:10] like that kind of approach. So we needed to set up sort of a
[15:13] quick way of screening out the those two different kinds of
[15:17] actors. So what we did prior to coming
[15:20] into the audition, we had a paragraph that all the would be
[15:23] auditioners would would come in and read and it basically said,
[15:27] you're coming to a parole board hearing and you were convicted
[15:30] of murder 12 years ago and now your parole board meeting is
[15:34] coming up and state your case. We didn't tell them what to say
[15:37] or how to say it or whether they were guilty or not guilty or,
[15:40] you know, just this is a situation.
[15:42] And we picked that scenario because it more more closely
[15:45] resembled what a casting setup would be with a bunch of people
[15:48] behind a desk, camera on them, one chair, they're on the hot
[15:52] seat. So right.
[15:53] Kind of feels like a parole board hearing.
[15:55] So that's what we did. So the actors would come in that
[15:57] got it in character. They were already ready to kind
[16:00] of plead their case. And we occasionally have an
[16:02] actor come in and said, what does this mean?
[16:03] What are you talking about on this paper?
[16:05] Then we knew you're you're gone, you know, thanks, but no thanks.
[16:08] So that was our first level sort of screening.
[16:10] And then it was just a matter of them giving us a good story.
[16:14] What, you know, they would be in character and they have to make
[16:17] it up on the spot. It's nothing they could pre
[16:18] rehearse. We weren't interested in their
[16:19] monologues or anything. They've already pre rehearsed.
[16:22] We just go into your, your story as being a prisoner for 12 years
[16:26] and you know, and convince us. And then if I saw someone I
[16:30] liked like halfway through their spiel, I would stand up from
[16:34] behind the desk and point to the corner of the room and say my
[16:37] plumbing's been leaking for the last two weeks.
[16:38] I don't know what to do about it.
[16:40] It's kind of ruined the carpet downstairs now.
[16:43] They had to be a plumber, instantly become a plumber and
[16:45] tell me what was wrong with my plumbing.
[16:47] And if again, if they were smart and they got it, they would just
[16:50] go right into that character and be convincing.
[16:52] So we wanted to kind of stress test them to this workshop, this
[16:56] quick workshop on who had the chops and who are convincing.
[17:01] And that took like over the course of a year, we probably
[17:05] saw 2-3 hundred people, I would say, you know, through various
[17:09] auditions, you know, they were just open calls.
[17:11] So as you imagine, you know, we had tons of people.
[17:13] Like in New York, we had a whole hallway full of people just
[17:16] showing up. So there was a lot of chaff we
[17:18] had to go through. But once you sort of narrowed it
[17:19] down to about 15 people that all had the skill, then it was just
[17:24] a matter of like pairing people up to see how the chemistry was
[17:27] between the groups 'cause we knew we needed three.
[17:30] We originally was 3/3 guys, so we kind of paired them all up.
[17:34] And it wasn't till later in the process where Heather came into
[17:37] my room, 'cause Ed and I were kind of dividing and conquering.
[17:39] He was taking a group of people, I was taking a group.
[17:42] So Heather came into my room and she was the only only person who
[17:45] auditioned who sat down in the chair and said she actually
[17:50] didn't deserve to be released. He said, I don't advise you to
[17:55] release me. And I laughed.
[17:57] I said, that's good. It was because you know, when
[17:58] you're auditioning all day and you hear the same spiel over and
[18:00] over and over because everyone just kind of defaults to the
[18:03] same thing or they get real angry, like here we go.
[18:06] It was refreshing. It was just a refreshing change.
[18:08] And and that says, OK, you're smart.
[18:10] You probably knew that. I've been listening to the same
[18:13] I'm innocent story by 1000 dudes coming in here.
[18:16] Now you're giving me one that's I'm not innocent.
[18:18] So that was a good beat for her. And also she changed it up
[18:22] really good. And so I had her come in for a
[18:25] call back with Ed and I in the room this time and she really
[18:28] kind of knocked that out of the park in the call bag.
[18:30] So that's when he and I said, hey, why don't we have a girl be
[18:34] the lead of this? And that's where everything
[18:36] changed. So then we paired her up with
[18:39] Mike and Josh eventually and and narrowed it down to the three of
[18:42] them. And yeah, and then we are off,
[18:44] off to the races. Yeah, wow.
[18:47] Incredible. It's amazing that that her
[18:49] audition had the power to change your mind and perception of what
[18:52] these characters were going to be.
[18:54] And also a ballsy move to do something go against the direct
[18:58] instructions of what she's been given coming in for that
[19:00] audition. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
[19:02] You have to be open to those audibles, those those changes.
[19:07] I mean, I tell like young directors, like, you know, they
[19:10] ask what advice do you give is it's kind of knowing when not to
[19:13] direct. That's really the key is you get
[19:16] it more and more experience. You realize that you have a
[19:19] vision of your movie and it's never going to come out that
[19:22] way. But what you need to understand
[19:24] is that sometimes it'll be better.
[19:26] You just haven't thought. You don't know what questions to
[19:28] ask yet. And sometimes the film tells you
[19:31] what it wants. So you have to be receptive to
[19:33] those moments. And it's a tough balance to
[19:36] strike. You're trying to maintain your
[19:37] vision, but at the same time be open enough to to better input
[19:41] along the way. And that was one of those
[19:42] instances like this might work even better than what we had in
[19:45] mind. And great to have a partner, you
[19:47] know, in crime with, with, with me on that because it's like, am
[19:50] I crazy? But would she be great for this?
[19:51] And I said, no, I think she'd be good too.
[19:53] So, so it worked out And and now you know, obviously in
[19:57] retrospect, I can't imagine anyone else haven't played that
[19:59] role. Not at all.
[20:00] Yeah, not at all. So just to go back to what you
[20:02] were saying about the directions that you give for example,
[20:05] Heather go South all day SSS and then somebody like I think he
[20:10] said, Mike said started to then challenge that and there was
[20:13] friction immediately and. I don't know how long they were
[20:16] isolated in the woods by themselves, but did that start
[20:19] to have like a negative impact on on any of the cast of crew?
[20:22] Like was it easy to lose perspective of what you were
[20:25] doing? Well, it's, I mean, production
[20:28] in general is always difficult, you know, because you, there's a
[20:31] lot of things pulling in 100 different directions and you're
[20:33] trying to like one of the toughest jobs, I think as a
[20:36] director is like maintaining the vision of the movie and kind of
[20:40] state holding on to that rope is all this chaos is going on
[20:43] around you. And it was no different with
[20:45] Blair. And, and in some senses even
[20:48] more so because it was sort of a 24/7 shoot.
[20:51] There was no stop and start and was like, you know, action cut,
[20:54] action cut, take 4, take 5. It didn't have any of that.
[20:56] It was just kind of an open method, 24/7, free for all.
[21:02] So it was a challenge for both Ed and I to kind of maintain
[21:08] that structure and that outline and and also adjust.
[21:12] I mean, people laugh at this, but I, I saw no other way of
[21:16] being able to have control over the process than to be shadowing
[21:21] the actors. Ed and I would kind of hide
[21:23] behind the bushes and watch them and their performances around
[21:26] the tent, in the tent, all that. And we had to wear full camo,
[21:30] You know, we had to be camouflaged.
[21:32] They knew we were out there, but what we didn't want is them
[21:35] moving that camera around and there's two guys standing in the
[21:38] background watching, right? That would have blown the shot.
[21:41] So we needed to be hidden still be able to view and and guide
[21:44] the guys whenever we needed to step in and intervene.
[21:47] But but we had to be camouflaged so the the camera wouldn't
[21:51] wouldn't catch us. So that was an example of how we
[21:55] were directing kind of by remote control, if you will.
[21:59] That seemed to work. It struck a balance between
[22:01] allowing them the freedom to explore and improvise and
[22:06] maintain that spontaneity, but keep them on a path of their
[22:11] character arcs that were important for the story.
[22:13] Obviously, you know, like the first night when they camped
[22:16] out, Heather started screaming like crazy at Mike because they
[22:20] heard some rumbling in the bushes or whatever.
[22:22] So she just went to 11 right, right away.
[22:25] So Mike and her were screaming at each other.
[22:27] And then we then we had to kind of say cut, cut.
[22:29] We stepped in because there was no place for Heather to build
[22:32] to. Like you've got five nights out
[22:35] here, 6 nights out here, and we need a gradual progression to
[22:39] where you get to this place. So you can be mad and like
[22:42] frustrated, but just tone it down a few notches so we have
[22:45] something to build to. So that's an example of where we
[22:48] had to intervene because they didn't know.
[22:49] They had no idea where this was building up to or what the end
[22:53] scene or the finale is going to be like.
[22:55] So they had no like a script. At least you have some of that
[22:58] chronology in your head of where those beats are and where what
[23:01] you're building up to. Or in this case, they didn't.
[23:03] They were just like in the woods, had the back story, but
[23:06] we weren't sure. They weren't sure what the next
[23:08] night was going to hold. So that was that was our way of
[23:12] of being able to guide that process.
[23:14] Yeah, I think John Carpenter on Halloween had a like a a meter
[23:18] for Jamie Lee Curtis. So reaction was give me a 7 on
[23:22] this one, give me a nine here. So it sounds like a similar
[23:25] kind. Of thing, yeah, yeah, I mean,
[23:27] you want because the actors, you know, they're just, they're just
[23:29] in the moment and they're being as honest as they can.
[23:33] And they're not the editors, right?
[23:34] They're not, they're not, they're not the ones saying, oh,
[23:36] I'm, you know, on minute 75 you should be at an 11, where at
[23:40] minute 18 you should be at A2. You know, and a lot of times in
[23:45] traditional movies, you're shooting out a sequence anyway,
[23:47] so that you need to know where, where, what emotional level you
[23:51] need to be at. But we did have the luxury of
[23:53] being able to shoot chronologically in sequence.
[23:55] But. But still, they didn't know
[23:57] where they were going to end up. They had no idea.
[23:59] Something that I read that the actors were under the impression
[24:02] that the legend of the Blair Witch was was real and and the
[24:06] Vt kind of like the talking heads at the start when they're
[24:09] in the town were real people telling a real story.
[24:12] Is that true? I don't.
[24:13] I think the actors knew it was all a movie, but it gets a
[24:18] little conflated because what we did in the towns is that we had
[24:23] a plant. Like, for example, in a
[24:25] restaurant, there would be maybe 3 or 4 people in there having
[24:28] breakfast. And one of those people was our
[24:30] plant was our person that's going to talk about Blair Witch.
[24:33] The actors didn't know which person it was going to be.
[24:35] So they were encouraged just to interview and ask people
[24:38] throughout because we've got all these great reactions to people
[24:40] that know who, when you're talking about, I don't know, you
[24:42] know, but you get these great little moments, right?
[24:44] And then they hit our, then they hit our, our informant, our, our
[24:48] plant. And then we get this a little
[24:50] bit of tidbit of, Oh yeah, I've heard of that story, blah, blah,
[24:52] blah. So, yeah.
[24:54] So that was a combination where they didn't know who was who in
[24:58] any given situation. And it was made to look like
[25:02] that they they happened upon a person that that did know a
[25:05] little bit about that back story.
[25:06] And and so from there I could see that how much of this is
[25:11] true, how much is not true? And at the end of the day, none
[25:13] of it's true, but I'm pretty sure that they were aware of it.
[25:18] Heather, Mike and Josh didn't you the player, which wasn't a
[25:21] real thing. Yeah, yeah, it was all, it was
[25:23] all, it was all made-up. And I mean, there was a Blair
[25:26] High School, which just coincidentally there was a Blair
[25:29] High School in in the area. But other than Burkettsville,
[25:32] which is a real town, it was completely, there are no Black
[25:36] Hills. There's no, none of that is part
[25:38] of any like legacy folklore of the area.
[25:41] We we kind of created that from whole cloth.
[25:44] And like from a location point of view, did you scout those out
[25:48] beforehand or did you just kind of stumble upon these places?
[25:50] No. We had about a month's worth of
[25:53] preparation prior, but we were at right next door to Seneca
[25:57] Creek State Park, which is where Ed lives.
[26:00] So we kind of used Ed's apartment as a sort of base of
[26:02] operations. And for several weeks, Ed and I
[26:04] went out in advance and just scouted the woods and said, OK,
[26:07] this would be a great camp spot for debt for night 1.
[26:11] So we'll mark that. And I remember running across
[26:15] Coffin Rock, you know, we were just about scouting and says,
[26:18] oh, this is a great rock. We're going to have something
[26:19] happen here. And I remember thinking, it
[26:22] looks like a big coffin going into the water.
[26:24] I mean, that's where Coffin Rock came from.
[26:26] So yeah. So that was where then we
[26:29] created this whole kind of what happened on Coffin Rock, you
[26:32] know? So yeah, we walked through the
[26:34] woods and found these great locations, both with the story
[26:36] in our mind, but also formulating from what we see and
[26:40] inspired by, by the locations we were at.
[26:42] And, and then the area of the woods where the stickman we're
[26:44] all going to be hanging. So we had to kind of map that
[26:46] all out. So every, every location, every
[26:49] night's camping was all kind of predetermined and, and mapped
[26:53] out because the logistics were pretty complicated.
[26:55] And also for safety's sake, we didn't want the actors of
[26:57] roaming wildly in the woods. If someone, you know, hurt their
[27:01] ankle or something. We needed an escape route for
[27:03] them to get out, that sort of thing.
[27:04] But and then ultimately the house at the end, which was at a
[27:07] different park because it was the, the, the House of all
[27:11] houses and spooky House of all houses.
[27:14] We had to do a kind of a company move to get everyone out to that
[27:17] house. And then we picked up from there
[27:19] and then we were there for a couple of nights.
[27:21] We're shooting that one scene over multiple takes.
[27:23] That was more like a traditional shoot where we had to kind of
[27:26] stop and start because it was so complicated to get them to that
[27:29] house and back down again. So but it needed to kind of
[27:32] match seamlessly with the other stuff.
[27:34] So that was our one company move for for the show.
[27:39] That had been a company move is is quite something what a piece
[27:43] of production design that house is.
[27:45] Is that something that you did, you know that was there?
[27:48] Yeah, well, it was Ben Rock, who is our production designer on,
[27:52] on, on. The film did a lot of work,
[27:56] believe it or not. Him and his team did a lot of
[27:59] work on that house to get it to where it wouldn't kill anybody
[28:03] by walking through it. It was a mess.
[28:06] So our instructions to Ben were like, OK, we want to try to do
[28:10] as much in one take as we can, like get them as far into the
[28:14] house as we can in one take, one uninterrupted take.
[28:18] So we sort of, so you have to sort of make a path for them to
[28:21] come around and guide them in as far as we can without them
[28:26] falling through a hole or going in the wrong doorway or
[28:28] whatever. So they got rid of all the
[28:31] graffiti that was on it. As you can imagine, it's been
[28:33] sitting out there since the 40s or whatever.
[28:35] So it's, it was a mess. And they moved a lot of the wood
[28:37] around and covered up the front door.
[28:39] So the actors couldn't go in the front door.
[28:41] So they were able to go around to an open door.
[28:44] So the 1st 20 seconds or so of that take, they were kind of
[28:48] seeing it for the first time. They were they, they, they had
[28:51] not seen the house. That was a a genuine reaction by
[28:54] Mike when he goes, you know, a year and take a breath then.
[28:57] So they go into the house and then they get up this about as
[28:59] far as they can and then things kind of went off the rails and
[29:01] we stay cut and then we then we stage the next portion where
[29:04] they go upstairs, react and then come downstairs.
[29:07] And that was all over the course of two nights.
[29:09] But but yeah, Ben and his team, they did a, they did a great job
[29:14] of prepping the house to look really good and safe for the
[29:19] actors. And we did all the handprints in
[29:21] the wall and all that kind of stuff.
[29:23] And of course, the basement was all, it was a mess.
[29:25] I had to get clear all that out. So it's a lot of work to get
[29:28] that house ready. But both Ed and I knew we needed
[29:32] a big kind of ending, like a finale ending in the trick.
[29:36] The tough part for us story wise, and we didn't have this
[29:39] ending worked out until the very end, like 3 days before we
[29:42] started shooting. We wanted to have this big
[29:45] payoff at the end, but not reveal anything, right?
[29:49] Not reveal a witch in a costume or a dude in the OR an alien or
[29:52] whatever. That would have blown it.
[29:54] There's nothing that we could have created on, I think any
[29:57] budget that would have been better than what the audience
[29:59] had in their head. Yeah, but but there needed to be
[30:03] some kind of big punch. There needed to be a finale at
[30:06] the end. So both visually and I think
[30:08] story wise, we went through all these different permutations
[30:11] about how, you know, maybe Mike is hanging or maybe he's
[30:14] levitating or we had all these different like, what could we
[30:16] do? That sort of ambiguous.
[30:18] But there's a payoff and a big, you know, like, what the hell at
[30:22] the end. So finally we just said what
[30:24] will happen standing in the corner, which would be really
[30:26] weird and creepy, and he's not reacting like a normal person
[30:29] would. And then something hits Heather
[30:32] at the end and just takes her out and that's it.
[30:34] We just got the black. Oh, that's that sounds creepy.
[30:37] So that's what we did. And again, that took some
[30:40] logistics. And then we had to kind of
[30:42] inform the actors ahead of time that this is what we're going to
[30:44] do. We don't want to just jump on
[30:46] Heather at the end and have her freak out.
[30:47] So, so yeah, that was more traditional shooting towards the
[30:51] end to make that make all that work.
[30:53] But it was fun. That was that was a cool, that
[30:54] was a cool part of the show. We were exhausted by that time,
[30:57] but it was it was a lot of fun. Because that ending is set up
[31:00] near the start with those talking heads interviews with
[31:02] the guy and it's only referenced Blink and you'll missus.
[31:06] The guy says he made them turn in the corner and he killed the
[31:08] other. One, yeah.
[31:09] And that interview we actually shot later when we went out and
[31:12] did some reshoots. It was we we were all so broke
[31:15] at the time. And Artisan did a test screening
[31:18] for the movie in New Jersey where a lot of the audience
[31:21] members were like, confused about what did the ending mean?
[31:24] They weren't sure. And but they were all scared.
[31:27] Everyone was scared. It was creepy as hell.
[31:29] They just, what did it all mean? And of course, studio executives
[31:32] like, oh, we have to explain everything, right?
[31:34] And so they said, well, I'll tell you what, you know, we
[31:37] think you should shoot 5 alternate endings that we'll
[31:40] test. And we're like, we don't really
[31:42] need to do that. So we'll pay you to do it.
[31:45] OK. So we're like, because a lot of
[31:48] people, film makers don't realize like when you sell your
[31:50] movie at Sundance, you don't see that money for like a year later
[31:52] because it comes out of box office revenue.
[31:54] You don't see it. So we were still dead broke.
[31:57] And so this is like a separate production.
[31:59] Oh yeah, we'll pay a production budget to go shoot in five new
[32:01] endings. All right.
[32:02] So we went out and shot 5 new stupid basically the endings
[32:06] that Ed and I flushed, we didn't, we didn't like.
[32:09] So we shot those endings and I think they ended up going on
[32:13] like the special edition or something, but but we shot those
[32:16] endings and brought him back. The test screenings went lousy.
[32:20] The audience hated the new endings and we weren't we were
[32:23] like, yes. So I got on the phone with Bill
[32:26] Block, who was Co president of Artisan at the time.
[32:29] I said Bill, look, the guys and I think we should stick with the
[32:31] original ending. And he famously said, well, I
[32:33] think it's going to cost us a lot of money at the box office,
[32:35] but we'll stick with your ending.
[32:39] All right. So and it ended up being one of
[32:42] the most talked about scenes of the film, right.
[32:44] So you just never know then ambiguity can work really in
[32:48] your favor. It's it's easy for it to not,
[32:50] you know, you got to be careful. But in that case, it really was
[32:54] the punch we needed at the end to sort of quote, UN quote, pay
[32:58] off without giving anything away and, and and left the audience
[33:02] sort of having a discussion post viewing of what actually
[33:07] happened. And that's what we wanted.
[33:08] That was a sort of, again, a whole back of legacy of of when
[33:12] I grew up. And I'm looking at that blurry
[33:14] UFO photos, like is it a hubcap or is it real?
[33:17] You know, and you can have once I could say it's a hubcap and
[33:19] otherwise I said, no, it's not, man.
[33:20] There's no way. Look at the shadow.
[33:21] You sit there and and that's half the fun is doing the
[33:24] analysis. And it'll bring people back.
[33:26] That's what that audiences have come back to say.
[33:29] What? What was that ended about?
[33:30] I must watch it again. Absolutely, yeah.
[33:32] And. Again and again.
[33:33] I think one of our biggest percentage of box office was
[33:36] just people coming back to the movie to rewatch it and also
[33:40] bring their friends in that hadn't seen it and like spring
[33:42] it on them as well. So it was definitely one of
[33:45] those films that that people like to come back and and see it
[33:48] two or three times. Well, yeah, I'm, I'm one of
[33:51] those for. Service, yeah.
[33:55] You mentioned about shooting 24/7 and thousands of hours on
[33:59] the cutting room floor. How painstaking was that editing
[34:02] job? It was, it was pretty brutal.
[34:07] I mean it took us like a 8-9 months to edit the film again.
[34:10] We were doing it between our kind of day job work and stuff
[34:12] like that. And ironically we were cutting
[34:15] videos for Planet Hollywood at the time, which were helping to
[34:18] fund the post production process.
[34:20] We were still at a stage of the movie that found footage portion
[34:24] was going to constitute only about, you know, 20-30 minutes
[34:28] of the final film. We, we had shot a phase two
[34:30] portion, which was talking heads and analysis of the footage and
[34:35] had all this kind of back story stuff that we were going to have
[34:37] in the, in the film. And as Ed and I started editing
[34:41] the found footage portion, we realized that I think we have a
[34:44] whole, a narrative and just the found footage stuff we can.
[34:48] And that's again, one of those moments where you have to kind
[34:50] of stand back and let the film tell you what it wants and you
[34:55] may have a hardened vision in your mind.
[34:58] Myself in particular, like this week, this was supposed to look
[35:00] like A and in search of episodes that will know.
[35:02] It doesn't have to. It can be found footage only,
[35:05] you know, so that took some convincing.
[35:07] But, you know, I'm glad we listened to our inner cells on
[35:10] that. And, you know, Ed and I kind of
[35:12] divvied up the duties. He edited some scenes.
[35:14] I edited other scenes just so we could get it done.
[35:17] But our initial mandate was let's just get rid of what
[35:22] doesn't convince us that's real, what feels contrived, what feels
[35:25] like a performance. You know, anything that if
[35:28] there's a little voice ticks in your head that feels like an
[35:31] actor moment, got to get rid of it.
[35:33] No matter how good the performance is, no matter how
[35:35] great the camera angle is, if it feels for just an instant that
[35:39] it feels like a performance, it's got to go.
[35:41] So that was the first methodology, first pass
[35:44] methodology like let's just get it down to the footage that
[35:46] feels convincing and then we'll decide what we want to do with
[35:49] it. Cause a lot of the directing
[35:50] came out of working with the footage and it was really kind
[35:54] of liberating because we had this so-called documentary, but
[35:57] we didn't have to follow any of the documentary rules.
[36:00] You know, there's, there's the ethical, you know, conundrum
[36:03] with a lot of documentarians like, well, you have to portray
[36:05] what's on screen. You can't, you can't add music
[36:08] or you can't really, you, you start getting in this realm of
[36:11] manipulation. If you start influencing too
[36:15] much what's on the screen, you can't tell the actor where to go
[36:17] or put in the sound effect or anything.
[36:19] Well, we could do all that, right?
[36:20] We, we were able to like put a sound bite off screen that
[36:24] Heather says something over here that we stole from another
[36:26] scene, you know, earlier on or what we could because it was a
[36:28] movie at the end of the day, we're making a movie.
[36:31] So that took a lot of time. You know, like, oh, what's going
[36:34] to enhance this moment or what's going to set up this moment a
[36:37] little bit better while Heather has this great line off camera
[36:40] like 2 days prior. So let's go ahead and stick that
[36:42] in the begin, you know, whatever.
[36:43] So we did a lot of that shucking and jiving with audio and adding
[36:48] effects and stuff like that to help enhance and build.
[36:50] We actually even later on in the during the sound mix, we we
[36:54] slowly took away the ambient sound like the birds and the
[36:57] crickets and all that beginning was very full.
[37:00] And then towards the end we just slowly dialed all that down to
[37:03] where it was very sparse at the end.
[37:05] It was almost like being, you know, in a, just a blank canvas
[37:08] towards the end. So to sort of enhance that
[37:11] isolation. So all that kind of trickery was
[37:14] done in post and that just takes a lot of time because it's, it's
[37:16] just trial and error. You know, you have to kind of
[37:18] try and experiment with it. But so, yeah, about 8 months in
[37:21] the post process for that first screening cut that went to
[37:24] Sundance and then we did some tweaking after that.
[37:27] So I mean, there's there's a lot of law and mythology.
[37:30] It runs very deep for the film. And there's that accompanying
[37:34] documentary, The Curse of the Blair Witch, which is it's like
[37:37] a companion piece to the the feature.
[37:39] Film. So did that come as a result of
[37:42] the choices that you started to make in the cutting room?
[37:44] Yeah, there was always sort of this kind of hole that was left
[37:49] by the non so-called devoted audience.
[37:52] Like the devoted audience, our core group that was following us
[37:55] online and was looking at our timeline and they knew all that
[37:58] back story. But if you just came into Blair
[38:01] and you're just the average Joe going to work every day and you
[38:03] hear about this Blair Witch movie, you have no clue what it
[38:06] is. There was there was no set up at
[38:07] all. There's no no back story.
[38:09] And it not that the film required it, but we felt that it
[38:13] would be cool if we had a kind of a companion piece in in
[38:17] sci-fi channel. So sort of commissioned us and
[38:20] Ben to put together all that other footage that we shot and
[38:24] make this sort of supporting companion piece that if people
[38:27] wanted to drill down into the back story in mythology, they
[38:30] could do that. So it kind of worked either way.
[38:33] If you wanted to just go in blind and see this snuff film
[38:38] and then decide what what you thought of it afterwards, you
[38:40] could do that. Or if you wanted to watch this
[38:43] sci-fi special like a couple weeks prior and get all this
[38:46] back story and then be intrigued, then you could go
[38:48] watch what the fountain footage was.
[38:49] So it worked both ways and it was sort of cathartic in a way
[38:54] because we were able to take all that footage that we shot and
[38:56] like, oh, here's the story, here's the world building that
[38:59] we all spent so much time on that most of our core fans
[39:01] already knew about. And that was that were falling
[39:04] on the website. But the average viewer can now
[39:06] easily digest it on Sci-fi Channel.
[39:08] Yeah, I think the curse of the Blair Witch is it's not as
[39:11] heavily publicized as the Blair Witch Project itself, which I
[39:14] think is a shame because it's a it's a damn good.
[39:17] We had so much fun doing it. I mean, it was like in some ways
[39:20] more fun than the film itself because it was like we got to
[39:23] really fake all these experts, so-called experts in the field.
[39:27] And we were almost tongue in cheek playing off those old
[39:30] Bigfoot documentaries and stuff. And, and you know, we had a
[39:34] so-called Wiccan that we had this guy kind of talking about,
[39:37] you know, the, the, the witchcraft and whatnot.
[39:39] And we just had so much fun shooting that stuff.
[39:42] And we feel like, oh man, so we're not going to use in the
[39:44] movie now. What?
[39:44] Well, we just put it on the shelf and then we got to kind of
[39:46] show it all off during the sci-fi specials.
[39:49] And then and then they ended up packaging it with the movie
[39:51] itself, the and the the twin pack, VHS twin pack when it
[39:55] first came out. So it was very satisfying.
[39:57] It was great to see it. Yeah.
[39:58] Oh, that's great. And you mentioned about people
[40:01] keeping up with you online and, you know, step by step, I mean,
[40:05] it's gone down in the annals of history, genius from a marketing
[40:08] point of view, using the Internet, which was in its
[40:11] infancy. Yeah.
[40:12] So how did how on earth did you come up with that idea?
[40:16] I mean, it was really, I don't think genius had anything to do
[40:20] with it. I think, you know, it was by
[40:23] necessity. We didn't have any money for
[40:25] traditional marketing campaign. I mean, you know, in those days
[40:28] you spent money on ads and newspapers, you spent money on
[40:32] billboards, you spent, you know, and the average indie film
[40:34] didn't have that kind of money and we certainly didn't.
[40:37] So we're like, well, how do we get the word out about our film?
[40:40] And early on, you know, the Internet was sort of just coming
[40:43] into its own. And Ed had worked at a web
[40:45] building company in Maryland for a little while.
[40:47] So we kind of know how to the basic structure of how to build
[40:50] a website. So we did that and I had
[40:52] produced this little 8 minute investor trailer that Greg and I
[40:56] did. I was still working at the web
[40:57] company, but Ed, Greg and I produced this 8 minute investor
[41:00] trailer, which was sort of a micro microcosm of the movie
[41:03] itself. And it was a fake documentary
[41:06] and it was to convince investors to put money in our movie
[41:10] because we hadn't shot it yet. So we did a little mini version
[41:12] of the film. So that was a way for us to
[41:15] convey back story and, and, and kind of get people convinced
[41:19] that the film was real and that our company had access to the
[41:23] footage. And then John Pearson, at the
[41:25] time, I worked for him as a camera operator on one of his
[41:28] shows and he was like the famed producer's Rep for Spike Lee and
[41:33] Kevin Smith. And, you know, so I showed him
[41:37] that little 8 minute investor reels.
[41:39] Hey, John, you know, I know you have a desk full of these
[41:42] things, pitches, but check this out.
[41:44] Tell me what you think. And he called me like a week
[41:46] later and go, Dan, is this real? I mean, is this, you know, and I
[41:50] fooled him and this is John Pearson.
[41:52] I fooled him. I said, no, John, this is all
[41:54] fake. Me and the boys have made this.
[41:56] Greg and I cut this little 8 minute reel together to try to
[41:58] raise money. He goes, I, I got to be able to
[42:00] put that. He said, tell you what, I'd love
[42:02] to air this on my last show, my split screen special on Bravo.
[42:07] He was, he was doing a series of independent film projects and
[42:10] stuff. So I want to show this on my my
[42:13] split screen show on Bravo and I'll pay you some money for the
[42:16] rights. I'm like, dude, yes.
[42:17] So that was a huge break for us. And then he re aired the same
[42:22] show at the start of the second season after we'd shot some
[42:26] footage and we're going to include some footage.
[42:28] So that was a big boost for us. And that got the ball rolling
[42:31] online because he had a forum on his website and it just blew up.
[42:36] Like what is this player witch thing and who are these guys?
[42:38] And when's this footage coming out?
[42:40] And everyone bought into it. And then John called us a dude.
[42:43] You guys got to start a website because it's just overtaking my
[42:47] forum. This your stupid movie.
[42:49] So that was the impetus for us to start our own page, to steer
[42:53] all that traffic and give them a place to land.
[42:56] And as people kept asking questions, where is this Blair
[42:59] Witch mythology from, we just kept giving them the answers,
[43:02] right? So, So yeah, that was the start
[43:06] of the web campaign by as much by necessity as it was by any
[43:11] premeditated plan. So when did you decide to start
[43:16] leaning in to this being a real documentary?
[43:20] Pretty early on, it was kind of an ongoing question slash
[43:26] concern for us because without getting too theoretical about
[43:31] the process, we wanted to capture that sense of realism
[43:35] that a documentary captures. And like I was mentioning
[43:38] earlier, it kind of works on a different part of the brain.
[43:41] We wanted to, we wanted to pull those strings and and hit those
[43:45] triggers in the brain, but have it not be marginalized as a
[43:48] hoax. We didn't want that either.
[43:50] So how do we get our cake and eat it too?
[43:53] How do we how do we portray this as real quote, UN quote and have
[43:57] people feel that it's real, but not be accused of trying to
[44:01] trick everybody? And that's that was a fine line
[44:03] to walk for us. So we sort of like we made a
[44:06] compromise. Like for example, on the
[44:08] website, if you went to the website and just did a cursory
[44:12] glance of it, this would look all real.
[44:15] But if you went down and scrolled to the bottom of the
[44:16] website, you there was like a making of link and you can click
[44:19] on it and you can see, oh, this is a movie and these guys are
[44:21] making this cool movie and all they're taking this approach to
[44:24] it. So we weren't hiding that we
[44:26] were making the movie. And the same early on with the
[44:29] press, when the press started getting wind of this movie,
[44:31] they're asking, did you, is this real?
[44:33] No, it's not real. We're out.
[44:34] And basically, like I'm discussing with you, we're
[44:37] telling how we shot this thing. And by doing so, we let them in
[44:42] on the gag early on and they embraced it.
[44:45] They thought, oh, this is so cool.
[44:47] So they were reluctant to let the cat out of the bag because
[44:50] they were in on the good joke, right?
[44:52] So it worked for a while because it was something different.
[44:55] And the press, they're human beings.
[44:57] They want to write something that's different, you know, and
[45:00] I wanted to write on a movie. It's something that different,
[45:02] little bit different. So they really embraced it early
[45:04] on. And we were, we were able to
[45:06] manage this kind of realism. Is it fake or is it not fake?
[45:10] Is it, you know, but a lot of people convinced that it was
[45:12] real and without falling into the trap of being accused that
[45:16] we're trying to pull one over on everybody.
[45:17] And that's, that's a was a fine line to walk.
[45:20] And we managed to do it pretty well even after the release of
[45:23] the film. The actors were kind of laid low
[45:25] for a little bit for about a week or so because Artisan
[45:28] didn't want people seeing them on talk shows and stuff like
[45:30] that until after the big rush at the opening box office, you
[45:33] know, But then after a while, the cat's out of the bag.
[45:35] You can't, you know, they're then they were doing like
[45:38] interviews and all kinds of stuff.
[45:39] So, but yeah, it worked to our, it worked to our advantages.
[45:44] Most people that I talked to that initially saw the film went
[45:47] in thinking it was real. Because, I mean, admittedly,
[45:51] most people don't, they don't really drill down into stuff.
[45:54] They hear about it. Even with the Internet at our
[45:56] disposal, we don't really dig too deeply into stuff.
[45:59] They see a byline, Oh, I'm going to go check this out.
[46:02] But we could, we always had that plausible deniability.
[46:04] Like, well, I'm, I mean, it says right on our website, like you
[46:07] could follow us while making the movie, blah, blah, blah.
[46:09] So we weren't trying to trick you.
[46:10] It's just you didn't want to drill down enough.
[46:12] And so it was sort of maintaining that balance between
[46:16] allowing people to feel that it was real without portraying it
[46:19] that it is actually was real. And that's and that worked out
[46:23] because I think that possibility, that notion that
[46:26] that this might be real or some aspects of this might be based
[46:30] on a true story or whatever. Just keeping that ambiguity lent
[46:33] to the fear, lent to the lent to the scares, I think helped out a
[46:36] lot with that. So that was our end goal is to
[46:39] make a scary movie. Before you got picked up or
[46:41] before you went to Sundance? Can't imagine in your wildest
[46:44] dreams that you would have expected the film to do as it
[46:48] did. What were your expectations?
[46:50] Yeah, it was. It was quite surreal.
[46:53] I think fairly early on, I remember having a conversation
[46:55] with Ed. I don't remember exactly when it
[46:57] was. I remember having the
[46:58] conversation with him when we were like outside the office in
[47:02] Orlando. We're looking at the footage.
[47:04] I think we're one of those days. We're just outside getting a
[47:07] brush of fresh air from the edit Bay and, and having lived with
[47:10] the footage for a while. And, and I remember thinking,
[47:12] like, man, if we can convince people that this is real, it's
[47:15] going to be a big deal now. Big deal in my mind was like,
[47:22] maybe do as well as pie did, right?
[47:24] Or maybe a little better, you know?
[47:26] The Aronofsky film. Yeah, Darren Ionoski, a big
[47:29] success with π with Artisan the year before, it's like we could,
[47:32] we could, you know, and you know, we're indie film makers.
[47:34] We're complete nobodies. And we're like, if we just get
[47:37] bought and make our money back and maybe get ATV deal, that
[47:41] would be huge. So we're like, I'm thinking,
[47:44] well, if we can convince people that this is real, I think, I
[47:47] think this could be pretty popular, but still very much
[47:50] within the realm of reality at the time.
[47:53] And then when we got to Sundance, I think it was Jeff
[47:56] Dowd, actually one of the producer Rep at the time, saw
[48:00] the movie during our first screening and he was one of the
[48:02] few people said this, this thing's going to make 25,000,000
[48:04] at the box office. And we're like, what?
[48:07] That's crazy. So that was another indicator.
[48:10] Kevin Fox, who's our producer who came on a little bit later,
[48:13] who helped set up a relationships with Endeavour,
[48:16] the the agents, as well as Artisan.
[48:18] He saw a screening on the rough cut that we did in Orlando and
[48:23] he was like the like the one like real Hollywood producer
[48:26] dude that had a resume that had seen anything about the movie.
[48:31] And a mutual friend that was working on the East Coast met
[48:34] him and said you kind of come see my friend's movie.
[48:36] It's called Blair Witch. They're doing a test screening
[48:39] on Saturday. You want to come and check out
[48:41] Okay, whatever. So he came and checked it out
[48:43] and after the screening and it was a pretty long cut at that
[48:46] time and the after the screening, Kevin came up to Ed
[48:48] and I said you guys are going to be famous.
[48:49] That's the first thing out of his mouth.
[48:51] You guys are going to be famous. I'm like, what, you know, And
[48:54] we're just like, we just want to sell the movie.
[48:56] So we got these little indicators early on that it was
[49:00] kind of a special movie or it was like out of the ordinary.
[49:04] And even at Sundance, as big as it blew up at Sundance, we
[49:07] really weren't prepared for how big it became.
[49:12] And when I say big, I meant like ubiquitous.
[49:16] It was in the fiber of everything in our culture, it
[49:20] seemed like. And I think it was once we got
[49:22] into Cannes that it sort of took on a life of its own.
[49:26] It was, it was bigger than all of us once we were in Cannes.
[49:30] And that's when the machine really hit high gear and we were
[49:35] sort of along with the ride. But yeah, it, it ultimately blew
[49:40] everybody's mind. It was, it was crazy.
[49:42] Yeah, and mine as well at the time.
[49:45] Yeah. So the film, I mean, this is
[49:48] this all happened 25 years ago. It's just celebrated its 25th
[49:51] anniversary. And, you know, a lot of things
[49:53] have changed in the years since. Do you think it would have still
[49:56] it would still have the same impact today?
[49:58] I mean, it's always a good question.
[50:00] You know so much about successes in in any industry, I think is
[50:04] timing and we hit the right movie at the right time in the
[50:08] right way. And whether all those planets
[50:10] can align again. For a movie like ours, I think
[50:13] the closest approximation was Paranormal Activity.
[50:16] I think 10 years later that was a huge success.
[50:20] And some people say it can, it can't be repeated, it can't be
[50:24] done. I'm, I'm never say never.
[50:27] So yeah, I think anything's possible.
[50:29] I I don't know if Blair Witch itself could be the same success
[50:32] it was back in those days. It sort of took everyone by
[50:34] surprise. And we were still a little naive
[50:37] with regards to the Internet, like believing everything on the
[50:39] Internet was kind of true and where we know it's not now.
[50:44] And I think it was so different. I mean, it was like it was so
[50:47] sort of counter culture to what Hollywood was putting out at the
[50:50] time. No one had seen a movie like
[50:53] that before on the big screen. It was completely different.
[50:56] And we're now it's pretty commonplace.
[50:57] So, so someone else will come up with a different idea that'll
[51:01] blow us all out of the water. It always happens.
[51:04] But whether or not it could be another Blair Witch to the level
[51:07] Blair, which became, I don't, I don't know if that's possible.
[51:09] I just, it was such a a product of timing back in the late 90s.
[51:15] I mean, it just sort of closed out that whole era of
[51:19] independent film. You know, it just was pretty
[51:23] epic in its reach. I mean, I've been to places all
[51:27] over the world and it's rare to find someone that has not heard
[51:30] of Blair Witch Project. I mean, they may not have seen
[51:33] the movie, but they've heard of it, you know?
[51:35] And it's like, I don't, you know, movie or no movie, it's
[51:38] just anything like, I mean, any product does not have that sort
[51:42] of penetration. And I'm still amazed to this day
[51:45] when people reference Blair Witch in a book or a novel or
[51:47] whatever, they still reference it like, wow, wow.
[51:49] I just, I can't believe I was a part of that thing.
[51:52] But it does. It does elevate past the
[51:55] filmmaker. It elevates past the process.
[51:57] It just becomes its own entity after a while.
[51:59] It's like a virus and, and takes on a life of its own.
[52:02] And, and, and, you know, as a case study, it was really
[52:05] interesting to kind of witness during, during, during that
[52:08] time. I mean a magnificent feat 25
[52:10] years. It's going to weigh in the blink
[52:11] of an eye, but the Blairwood Project is as relevant as ever.
[52:14] And I mean you can see that in the number of handhelds or 4
[52:18] documentary horror films that are 10 a penny every year since.
[52:22] And that's as a direct result of your film, which is is pretty
[52:26] incredible. You've and like I said, and
[52:28] countless times when talking about this film, it changed the
[52:30] game forever. Yeah, it's pretty humbling.
[52:33] It's pretty humbling. And it's exciting too.
[52:36] I mean, as a film maker, as an artist, it's it's one of the
[52:39] most, I think, rewarding things to hear another film maker, a
[52:42] young upstart film maker making movies because you're film
[52:46] inspired them to be a film maker.
[52:47] And it's like you might be the next Scorsese or the next
[52:49] Spielberg. You know you got your start
[52:51] because you saw my goofy little movie, and that is it's very
[52:55] rewarding. It's great to hear that.
[52:57] Yeah, Bess and I mean you've been working non-stop in the
[53:01] years since and you currently got a a new project out.
[53:04] Dan, can you tell me a bit about that?
[53:06] Yeah, this was sort of kind of came out of left field.
[53:08] I've got a, a friend of mine, Christian Crumple, who's I've
[53:11] produced a couple of projects with.
[53:13] I did a movie called Skyman a few years back and kind of
[53:16] touches into that Ufology kind of stuff.
[53:19] And I met him on that project and he was sort of plugged into
[53:22] the special operators community in Florida and introduced me to
[53:27] this gentleman, former SEAL operator named Michael Sorelli.
[53:31] And Michael was putting together a world record attempt to jump
[53:36] skydive into 7 continents in seven days.
[53:40] And it was to raise money for Folds of Honor, which they put
[53:43] money into scholarships for the children of of the of the fallen
[53:47] and 1st responders and say, well, this sounds like an
[53:48] amazing project. So Michael post we say, hey,
[53:50] could you do a documentary about this?
[53:52] And like, well, yeah, it sounds like like the coolest thing ever
[53:56] and for a great cause. So we went all in and went to
[54:00] training at in Arizona and jumped out of airplanes and, and
[54:05] started the the whole venture January of last year where we
[54:09] started in Antarctica. We did our first jump in
[54:11] Antarctica. Then we went on to Santiago and
[54:13] then Miami and then Barcelona and Abu Dhabi and Cairo and Per.
[54:18] So we covered all 7 continents and then we did it actually in
[54:21] six days and six hours. So, so we blew away the old
[54:26] record, which was over a period of months.
[54:28] And, and yeah, they broke over all four, four world records.
[54:31] They broke all the tandem records and they broke the
[54:33] single jump records as well. So it was really a big success.
[54:36] And so I spent about six months cutting it with, with brilliant
[54:40] editor Michael Cross, who worked as editor on the project and,
[54:44] and it has since been released. It's in theaters now as we speak
[54:47] and sort of finalizing it's run theatrically and then we're
[54:50] hoping to get a streaming deal here shortly.
[54:52] So it's, it was a, it was a great experience for a really
[54:55] good cause and and it was a lot of fun.
[54:58] Cool. So that's it's called 777. 777
[55:01] yeah, you can go to the website and@legacyexpeditions.com and
[55:05] and check it all out and see the trailer and whatnot.
[55:08] Cool. Great.
[55:09] And what about in the future, Dan?
[55:11] Have you got anything bubbling away?
[55:13] Yeah, I always have something in the works.
[55:17] There's a reality show that I've kind of think would be cool, a
[55:19] scary reality show that I'm working on with a Co production
[55:22] team right now. I'm writing a couple of scripts
[55:25] as well, you know, a couple passions of my heart I've been
[55:28] working on for the last year and potentially another documentary.
[55:31] I've kind of got the documentary bug now on a what I feel is a
[55:35] very poignant and relevant issue in today concerning AI and
[55:41] energy consumption. Oh yeah, big themes, big, big
[55:44] themes. So we're working on that
[55:45] potentially for an early 2025 production.
[55:49] So we're we're seeing how that shapes up.
[55:50] So yeah, keeping busy. Great.
[55:51] Keeping busy. Yeah, excellent.
[55:54] Well, it is has been wonderful speaking to you.
[55:56] Dan. Thank you so much for coming on
[55:58] the show, spending your time. Incredible to hear these stories
[56:01] and wish you all the success with 777 and everything else
[56:04] coming up in the future. Thanks, Luke.
[56:06] I really appreciate you know the time and and it's always fun to
[56:09] talk about it. Great.
[56:10] Thank you. Pleasure.
[56:11] Sure. A huge thanks to Dan Myrick for
[56:19] his time and his wonderful stories.
[56:21] Be sure to check out 777 wherever you can.
[56:23] It is a great watch. As for all the right movies, our
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