Wikipedia 10K Redux

Reconstructed by Reagle from Starling archive; see blog post for context.

The_Blair_Witch_Project

Three young film students mysteriously disappear from

the face of the earth.

This film was a huge success because its makers did heavy marketing via the Internet, spreading rumors and suggesting or allowing people to think that the material they shot was authentic and that those three people really disappeared. After the movies' success, sequels were shot, and franchising started, computer games were sold and of course all sorts of memorabilia, but the makers couldn't re-create the success or innovation of the original movie, which they claimed created a whole new way of filmmaking, Method Film-making, named after Lee Strassberg's Method Acting.

In fact the way of incorporating the camera and film team into the plot is not totally new. One of the predecessors of this technique are Danish Dogme95 movies, and, most notably, the Belgian movie Man Bites Dog.