My Hollywood System-Chapter 30: [Bonus Chapter]

“A movie shot on a camcorder?”

James muttered the words with a shocked expression on his face. For a second, he thought Will was joking, but the young director simply nodded his head.

“Yeah, it’s a movie shot on a camcorder. An old camcorder at that.”

“Are you joking?”

“I’m not.” Will shook his head, but James interrupted him before he could add anything else.

With an exasperated expression, he said, “Are you kidding me? Do you think anyone would want to pay to watch something on a camcorder? You can’t be serious; you’re giving me a video recording, calling it a movie. Do you think we’re running a circus here?”

Will pursed his lips. If this was normal, he would have backed up and left the place right now, but another plan concocted in his mind, so he chose to stay behind.

“You can judge that after watching this movie,” Will replied.

James stared at him for a moment, and then shaking his head, he added, “Alright, I will watch it, but on one condition.”

“Oh, what?” Will asked.

“Don’t call it a movie.”

“…” Will smiled but chose to remain silent, for now at least.

They both then went to one of the rooms with a projector on a big table.

Both Will and James sat on each side of the table as the movie began to play.

“So, what’s it about?” James asked, “The plot.”

Will organized his thoughts and told him the gist of the story, “It’s about three students who decide to go into the Maryland backwoods to cover the mystery behind the Blair Witch incidents. However, they end up losing their map and later, things take an unexpected turn.”

“Oh?” James frowned, “This is pretty generic… I am surprised why you are so confident in this? I don’t even have high hopes in terms of execution, considering everything was on a camcorder.”

“Not everything, but most of it,” Will smiled, “And the reason why I am confident, well, you will know in the first scene.”

“Oh? Let’s see, then.” James shrugged and switched on the projector.

[A black screen appeared, and three slightly shaking words appeared in which – The Blair Witch Project.

It remained like this for a second, giving an old movie type of vibe and then, the screen blinked, and two sentences appeared on the wall.

In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods in Burkittsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary.

A year later, this footage was found.

The two sentences remained on the black background, and the screen was slightly shaking, which foreshadowed the grim nature of the story.

It remained like this for about ten seconds, and suddenly, the screen blurred, and slowly, Heather appeared in front of a camcorder, which a stranger was holding, maybe her brother.

“It’s coming blue; wait a sec.”

“Okay,” Heather smiled while arranging her hair in a bun.]

“You weren’t joking…” James commented while staring at the wall, “So you’re planning to make it from a real-life incident? But… isn’t that what everyone does? All horror movies are… based on a true story.”

Even though he did have a valid argument, James was about the natural and rawness the movie gave, especially with camcorder – which felt like a perfect choice for this movie from the get-go.

Will didn’t respond with anything and simply waited for James to finish the whole movie first.

But this isn’t the only reason why Will was confident that James was going to watch the whole movie. It was also because of the near-perfect editing done on the video. f𝘳𝚎𝑒𝚠𝑒𝚋𝘯o𝘃eƖ.co𝓂

While shooting the movie, they had recorded as much as possible, and by the end of the last day, they had more than twenty hours worth of video recording, which then went through extensive editing for days and finally, only about eighty minutes long movie was left.

Will wanted the movie to be as crisp and clear cut as possible, with each scene being meaningful, either to the plot or the character development.

James continued to watch on, and with just a few minutes in, he was going to have his fit huddled above on his chair.

On the screen was Heather showing the ??????????????? town landmark while speaking from behind the camera.

[??????? ?? ??? ???????? ??????? ?? ??????????????? 1894

“This is Burkittsville, formerly Blair. It is a small, quiet Maryland town.” Her tone was professional, which signified that she wasn’t here to have fun rather enjoy.]

Because of the black and white recording, there was an added grim vibe to the movie, which was like putting petrol on fire in terms of a horror movie.

The movie continued on, James’ face was already serious in just the fourth minute when Heather introduced the graveyard of infants.

[“There is an unusually high number of children laid to rest here.”

The camera moved away from her face as Josh focused on the headstones around the cemetery.

As he turned it back to Heather, she continued.

“Most of them passed in the 1940s. Yet no one in the town seems to recall anything unusual about this time. To us anyway. Yet legend tells a different story. One whose evidence is all around us, etched in stone.”

Another shot of an angel statue was taken, and that’s when the scene came to an end.]

“Did you guys create this cemetery?” James couldn’t help but ask.

“No,” Will shook his head, “It’s a real place and a real town, with a real history.” 𝘧𝓇𝒆𝗲𝓌𝙚𝙗𝓷o𝘷𝒆𝘭.𝐜𝚘𝒎

“Oh,” James nodded and continued to watch.

This was his last comment for the remainder of the movie because he was fully immersed in this horror survival incident, and with how perfectly the editing was done, it was just a matter of time before he got scared shitless.

Not only the tent scene, where the three main characters themselves were terrified of the noise outside, there was also the scene of children’s laughter coming from the forest.

But what stole the saw was the millisecond appearance of Blair Witch’s shadow, which alone gave a jolt so suddenly to James that he almost fell off the chair, staring at the screen with a terrified expression.

“This…” He regained his composure after an unknown amount of time, and when he turned towards Will, he found the latter taking away the movie files from the projector and putting them back in the bag.

“Um… let’s go.” James stood up.

“Hm?” Will raised his eyebrow at him, “How was it?”

James gulped and sighed, “It was not bad…”

His words trailed off as he looked at the young director. He has thought that the movie would be even worse than a third grade independent movie, but it has clearly given him a scare, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had been this scared by a horror movie.

But in the end, can he really call this a movie?

It was more like a home video in James mind. He couldn’t help but be sceptical of his decision.

…

//DreamNote//

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