Walter Benjamin and the Blair Witch Project?

“...for the first time – and this is the effect of the film – man has to operate with his whole living person, yet forgoing its aura. For aura is tied to his presence; there can be no replica of it. The aura which, on the stage, emanates from Macbeth, cannot be separated for the spectators from that of the actor. However, the singularity of the shot in the studio is that the camera is substituted for the public. Consequently, the aura that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the aura of the figure he portrays.”

In the Blair Witch Project, the audience is the camera. Unlike a stage show, the audience cannot see everything, and therefore in cinema, we depend on the camera to show us what to look at, and what to focus on. Benjamin states that there can be no replica of aura, and although this is somewhat true, The Blair Witch Project overtly attempts to recapture this aura for the masses. And in my opinion, it has the definite possibility to work. Seeing this for the first time, and not knowing anything about the film, I found myself seriously questioning if it was real or contrived. The beginning of the movie states that three college students went into the woods to make a documentary about the supposed "Blair Witch", went missing, and their footage was found a year later. The entire film tries to capture the feeling of what went on in the woods, and tries to show the audience exactly what happened, and put them in the situation.

Blair Witch attempts to give the audience the feeling of the original aura. By starting the film with a disclaimer that what you are about to see is in fact real, and the film you are about to see was found after this situation actually occurred, the audience sees it as if it were real. Using unknown actors and a rural wooded setting, the audience has little reason to believe this story is made up. The shakiness of the camera work, the old film that is used really makes an effort to show the audience the aura of what the setting and characters are really like. The landscape is not illuminated with fancy studio lighting, it is lit with nothing but what comes on a basic camcorder. It was also said that when filming, the actors playing the three college students were not told what was going to happen, they were actually camping in the woods, had minimal food, and were not told where they were going next. By doing this, the filmmakers really attempt to recreate the aura of the original situation, although they can never get the original aura, they get one that is equally frightening and realistic.

“Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web. There is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law. Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art.”

Unlike other films, the Blair Witch Project shows the entire film from one general perspective, that of the three film students making the documentary. We never find out what their families are doing, if they start a search, what is going on outside of where the woods are. We also never see or find out who or what is terrorizing these three students. There are no fragments that come together, just one view from the students cameras. Filming in this way creates a genuine fear in the audience, because they feel as though they are experiencing it. Even the times of confusion, mixed camera angles and shots added to the reality of the film. By concentrating only on these characters, the film captures an immediate sense of realism. The way the scenes were set up, the lighting, the camera work, everything about it made it seem as though it could be real. I had my doubts, as with any film, but I was easily swayed to believe this was in fact reality.