The Blair Witch Project finally breaks the curse of its terrible transfer
A new, more correct version of The Blair Witch Project has been unearthed.
Screenshot: YouTube
Among the most influential and imitated movies of the last 25 years, The Blair Witch Project has never looked right on home video or DVD. That’s not us saying it. We love the grainy whip pans and gushes of snot that The Blair Witch uses to burrow into your terror centers. However, thanks to some clarification by co-producer Mike Monello and a re-release from Second Sight, we can finally face the Witch in all her horrible, stand-in-a-corner glory.
Posting on his various social media channels today, Monello explained that the film was never transferred to DVD correctly. Shot on Hi8 video and 16mm black and white film and edited on a Media 100XR, the film wasn’t fit for theaters. In the Stone Age of 1999, movie theaters did not have video projectors, so Blair Witch was transferred to 35mm film through a process called “telecine,” in which a 35mm camera records the video on a special screen in a controlled environment. When the film’s distributor, Artisan, transferred the movie for DVD and video for home release, they “made a huge mistake” and performed the telecine process again, recording the 35mm film back on video.
“This introduced serious motion errors; it gave the Hi8 footage film grain and muddied all the colors with a brown overcast, killing detail,” Monello wrote. “The edits of that transfer became 3-frame dissolves rather than hard cuts. Everything about it is wrong, but at the time we were not in a position to demand it be redone.”
Thankfully, for those living outside the U.S. or the proud owners of a region-free DVD player, the film has been re-transferred from the original tapes and film. The Blu-ray comes courtesy of the UK’s Second Sight imprint. It will only be available in Europe, though Monello suggests requesting an American release from Lionsgate on their social channels.