Matthew Sardo

Learned more about the making of the Blair Witch Project and I am SO angry on behalf of Mike, Josh and Heather. I am one of those people who saw it in the theater and was completely ignorant about how the film was actually made. All of the confusion and viral marketing around it led to so much misinformation and ambiguity, especially since their real names were used as the names of the characters they portrayed. These three young people were improvisational actors. They were NOT deceived or misled in order to get them to “act better.” They never felt genuinely scared or went truly hungry. Yes, they really camped and no, they were not given scripts, but they knew the general plot line and were given prompts every day to help them improvise. They had to be trained to use cameras. They filmed the entire movie, every scene, THEMSELVES with hand held cameras and without ANY director telling them what to do. It was all instinct and improvisation and acting their butts off. And they made creative storyline decisions that were brilliant and inspired. Michael C. Williams decided to kick the map into the river and he didn’t tell anyone, and he instinctively chose the moment when they were all laughing to inform Heather and Josh of what he did. He came up with that and it was a HUGE moment in the film that changed the trajectory. And Heather responded to it brilliantly, as well. Heather improvised her entire flashlight monologue and cried real tears, not because she was abused or genuinely frightened by the crew, but because she was a GOOD ACTOR. And after this film became huge and broke records for being the most profitable movie ever made, the studio screwed these kids out of a reasonable paycheck that would have changed their lives and been a drop in the bucket for the studio given how huge the profits were. The three young artists who made this movie everything it is did not have agents or representation, so they got nothing. Additionally, because of the way in which the film was marketed and all of the confusion around it, everyone (including other studios and casting directors) thought these three were not really acting. They assumed they were having real moments of hunger and terror and stress, because the studio wanted everyone to believe that. They FILMED and ACTED and WROTE and IMPROVISED a timeless classic, got no money and no credit for it. When the box office broke $100M, the studio sent them fruit baskets. 😭 Hollywood is truly malevolent. This has to be the biggest injustice in Hollywood history.