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Haxan Films
Haxan Films is an American independent film and television production company headquartered in Orlando, Florida. The company is best known for producing the horror film The Blair Witch Project. The name is taken from the 1922 Swedish/Danish silent movie Häxan ("The Witch").
The company was founded in 1993 by five graduates of the University of Central Florida Film Program Eduardo Sánchez, Gregg Hale, Daniel Myrick, Robin Cowie and Michael Monello. The company sustained itself by producing television commercials and corporate videos. The Blair Witch Project was the company's first feature film, a horror film in the style of a pseudo-documentary.
Sánchez and Myrick had the idea to create their own horror film in 1993, while they were still in school. They were discussing what made horror films scary, and why there had not been any particularly scary horror film in a long time. They discussed films that scared them in their childhood, such as Chariots of the Gods (1970) and The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972). And also recalled how scary the television show In Search of... (1977-1982) was.
Sánchez concluded that what scared him in the case of films about unidentified flying objects (UFO), was the possibility that UFOs were real. He similarly found that films such as The Exorcist (1973) and The Shining (1980) were terrifying, because they played on psychological fears. He and Myrick felt that they could similarly play on their audience's psychological fears, while working with a minuscule budget.
They came up with the idea of a pseudo-documentary horror film, because they found that "cheesy" documentaries about Bigfoot were scarier than regular motion pictures, as their documentary-style suggested that they were based on reality. They wanted their audience to feel like experiencing whatever was happening to their film's characters. And that reality would be inescapable.
Their first film aimed for a sense of realism, while carefully avoiding sensationalism. The "traditional shortcomings of low-budget films" were used as one of the film's strengths, because they added to this sense of realism. They filmed events from a first-person perspective, using a Hi-8 video camera.
Sánchez and Myrick were the film's screenwriters, but actually only wrote a plot outline. They had no shooting script, and left the details of interpretation up to their actors. They created an environment for their actors, and then "let them act within those constraints."
The co-directors' original plan was to film a black-and-white 16 mm film, because they felt that the graininess of the format would feel scarier than regular video. It was producer Gregg Hale who suggested using video instead, "strictly as a financial consideration". The co-directors liked the look of the film format, but came to realize that their main character Heather could reasonably own her own Hi-8 video camera. They embraced the idea, and the use of video did not add to the film's cost. Myrick commented that "video is cheap".
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Haxan Films
Haxan Films is an American independent film and television production company headquartered in Orlando, Florida. The company is best known for producing the horror film The Blair Witch Project. The name is taken from the 1922 Swedish/Danish silent movie Häxan ("The Witch").
The company was founded in 1993 by five graduates of the University of Central Florida Film Program Eduardo Sánchez, Gregg Hale, Daniel Myrick, Robin Cowie and Michael Monello. The company sustained itself by producing television commercials and corporate videos. The Blair Witch Project was the company's first feature film, a horror film in the style of a pseudo-documentary.
Sánchez and Myrick had the idea to create their own horror film in 1993, while they were still in school. They were discussing what made horror films scary, and why there had not been any particularly scary horror film in a long time. They discussed films that scared them in their childhood, such as Chariots of the Gods (1970) and The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972). And also recalled how scary the television show In Search of... (1977-1982) was.
Sánchez concluded that what scared him in the case of films about unidentified flying objects (UFO), was the possibility that UFOs were real. He similarly found that films such as The Exorcist (1973) and The Shining (1980) were terrifying, because they played on psychological fears. He and Myrick felt that they could similarly play on their audience's psychological fears, while working with a minuscule budget.
They came up with the idea of a pseudo-documentary horror film, because they found that "cheesy" documentaries about Bigfoot were scarier than regular motion pictures, as their documentary-style suggested that they were based on reality. They wanted their audience to feel like experiencing whatever was happening to their film's characters. And that reality would be inescapable.
Their first film aimed for a sense of realism, while carefully avoiding sensationalism. The "traditional shortcomings of low-budget films" were used as one of the film's strengths, because they added to this sense of realism. They filmed events from a first-person perspective, using a Hi-8 video camera.
Sánchez and Myrick were the film's screenwriters, but actually only wrote a plot outline. They had no shooting script, and left the details of interpretation up to their actors. They created an environment for their actors, and then "let them act within those constraints."
The co-directors' original plan was to film a black-and-white 16 mm film, because they felt that the graininess of the format would feel scarier than regular video. It was producer Gregg Hale who suggested using video instead, "strictly as a financial consideration". The co-directors liked the look of the film format, but came to realize that their main character Heather could reasonably own her own Hi-8 video camera. They embraced the idea, and the use of video did not add to the film's cost. Myrick commented that "video is cheap".