The Blair Witch Project

Today, I will going to identify the modes of representation that I found on this documentary film, The Blair Witch Project.

Documentary

It is many ways to represent the film of documentary film. As recommended by Bill Nichols, we should look at documentaries through the techniques selected by filmmakers when they record/shape the events, which is the six modes of representation: Poetic, Expository, Observational, Interactive, Reflexive and Performative. A documentary film is a nonfictional film intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education, or maintaining a historical record, therefore audiences believe that documentary film depicts not imaginary but real event. Filmmakers assumed to observe the events the whole events as an objective of documentary films. The Way to approach documentary is shape events, instead of manipulating them and the choices of filming technique that made by filmmaker.

Theory Discussion

As I said in the post of March of the Penguin, Poetic is a way of representing the reality through series of fragmented visual and subjective impressions, loose association and incoherent acts. This mode of representation stress on tone, mode and affect much more than displays of knowledge or acts of persuasion. Then, the second of the mode of representation I going to discuss is Expository, This mode of representation address audience directly, providing visible information in the imagery and unseen information in the voiceover, they intended to descriptive and informative. The overall effect of this mode is objectivity, a direct and transparent representation. Besides, observational also is one of the modes of representation that suggest by Bill Nichols. This mode allowed the filmmaker to record without interruption or unobtrusively what people did when they were not clearly addressing the camera. This mode has no intervention by the filmmaker in the filmed events. This record consists of direct sound, available light, and base on observation without the manipulation or distortion of the event. Next, there is Interactive mode of representation, the filmmaker’s presence to be known to the audience by way of the filmmaker interacting with the filmed interviewees through this mode. The ways to make the audience notice the filmmaker’s presence are posting questions on/off screen as a mediator for interviewees and audiences. Furthermore, there is Reflexive mode of representation, this mode of representation is giving the audiences know that they are focused on film properties and film process by using the way of the filmmaker exposes the techniques employed for representation, challenging the documentary’s means of revealing the reality and truth. Lastly, performative mode of representation which applies the fiction style of the film to create a non-fiction film.

Synopsis

Three film students travel to Maryland to make a student film about a local urban legend... The Blair Witch. The three went into the woods on a two-day hike to find the Blair Witch, and never came back. One year later, the student's film and video were found in the woods. The footage was compiled and made into a movie. The Blair Witch Project.

Analysis

The poetic mode of representation could be seen in the “The Blair Witch Project” where Heathers explains the incident that happens at the Coffin Rock, she presents the incident by stressing out the mode and tone of the tragic incident in the Coffin Rock. This film also applies the expository mode of representation where Heather explains about the incident about a high number of children laid to rest in Burkittsuille. She used a professionally trained and authoritative voiceover this film. Compare to the other filmmakers Mike and Josh, Heather is much better doing the narrator of the film. Furthermore, this film used the Observational mode of representation, the scene when Mike accidentally knocked over the building stones, we can through the camera DAT from Josh was shooting Heather with not interrupted while she fixes the stone back. On the other hand, when they record the entire event in the forest also one of the observational with a direct sound and light was used in this film. The scene of Heather discovered a thing that tied with a lot of branches, she opened it while she was shooting the thing after she found out the thing was the ear of Josh, she shocked and the footage not clear and very hard to know what is it. Next mode is the interactive mode. This mode is applied by using interview. We can see Heather is interviewing those interviewees. For example, Heather do the interview with the people who live in Marybrown, Heather asked a woman to explain the details of the mysterious old women in the forest. The woman was describing the blair witch, Heather is the person throwing the ideas to the women when she is answering the questions to get the answer needed. Moreover, when they are asking the two fishermen about the blair witch at the riverine, Heather rephrase what they had answer but then is corrected by the old man and also the kid covers his mother's mouth when the mother was answering the question about the blair witch, it makes the whole film looks real.  Lastly, they exposed the equipment that they want to bring before doing the blair witch documentary as example foods, cameras and also the transport to shows the reflexive mode of representation. The camera can be seen on the scene like the footage of Josh recording Heather while testing the camera and at the same time Josh from Heather’s camera. Another scene is when Heather was confessing to her parent, Mike and Josh’s family by using her camera to record herself while crying. And also when they were running, we can know they used a handheld camera to record the documentary film because the footage was shaking when they are running in the woods.

Conclusion

The blair witch project has applied the modes of representation which includes the poetic, expository, observational, reflexive and interactive. Furthermore, the blair witch project is a mockumentary film because this is a fiction film. This film really inspired me, the technique of the camera shooting make the whole film feel realistic.