'Timing and new technologies were key factors' to Blair's success, says professor Tom Schatz, chair of the film department at the University of Texas at Austin. The movie would become Hollywood's first viral sensation, though it preceded Facebook by half a decade. Public disconnect turned out to be a non-issue for Blair Witch, which set up a website dedicated to the fake legend: It was so realistic filmmakers fielded dozens of calls from public 'tipsters' nationwide. 'But when we looked over the footage,' Sanchez says, 'we decided a documentary about a documentary would take people out of the movie.'

The movie initially was to be a faux-documentary about the faux-footage. The 62-page script, which called for chunks of improvised dialogue, changed dramatically over the shoot. Additionally, the filmmakers, to frighten the actors, ambushed them with cameras rolling.

The actors roughed it: They lived in a tent, and ate the kind of bare-bones food usually brought when camping. The movie would be largely ad libbed and shot over eight days. He and Myrick began cobbling together a rough screenplay in 1994 about three student filmmakers who wander into the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Md., to investigate the legend of the Blair Witch. 'Those grainy pictures of UFOs and Bigfoot? Those were a lot scarier than the movies.' , the documentary television show dedicated to mysterious phenomena, from 1977 to 1982. Instead, he says, the directors simply wanted to emulate the true pioneer of found footage, Leonard Nimoy. Sanchez, 44, who is directing episodes of the upcoming BBC paranormal series Intruders, says he and Myrick knew their fictional story of three missing student filmmakers, told through grainy footage, was a novel idea, but had no notion it would resonate to the tune of $141 million, the highest-grossing found-footage film of all time. Hollywood's first 'found footage' flick, which turns 15 years old Wednesday, launched a sub-genre in Hollywood horror. The joke, it turns out, was on the movie's skeptics. 'I told Dan, 'This is either going to be a great movie, or we're going to be the joke of the year.' ' 'We were carrying flashlights, batteries and food to the actors' of the $60,000 movie, Sanchez recalls.

Sanchez, a first-time filmmaker, says he had an epiphany. with The Blair Witch Project co-director Dan Myrick. Ed Sanchez remembers the night in 1998 when he walked through desolate Maryland woods at about 3 a.m.

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