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Eduardo Sanchez
Writer / Director

One-half of the brainpower behind "The Blair Witch Project" (1999) phenomenon, Cuban-born Eduardo Sanchez (along with co-editor-screenwriter-director Daniel Myrick) engineered one of the greatest rags-to-riches stories in cinema history, putting hope into the hearts of independent filmmakers everywhere that they too might someday make a blockbuster for peanuts. Central to their success was a potent premise that enabled them to turn all the weaknesses of low-budget filmmaking into the picture's strengths. Fed up with a genre that had come to rely on irony and special effects, they conceived the ultimate campfire ghost story, a 200-year-old legend about an outcast, a cursed town and a series of child murders and unexplained disappearances. Long before they had assembled their actors, they created an eight-minute trailer that was essentially a mock documentary of the back story of the Blair Witch. A fortuitous meeting with John Pierson led to the trailer playing on Pierson's "Split Screen" (Independent Film Channel) in 1997, and the strong reaction from many viewers buying into it as a genuine story buoyed their enthusiasm.

Years before, the filmmakers, friends and collaborators since film school at the University of Central Florida, had discovered that they both got a kick out of the intersection of horror and documentary. "Our common vision for this film," Sanchez told THE BOSTON GLOBE (July 11, 1999), "sprang from having felt the same fear as kids watching that stupid show 'In Search Of' with Leonard Nimoy. It still creeps us out." They came up with the inspired concept of casting three actors with improvisational skills to play student filmmakers who had come to investigate the Blair Witch and disappeared without a trace, except for their "found" footage. Having selected their actors, they embarked on an inventive shoot that thrust them and their production team into the role of the witch, hectoring the filmmakers during their eight-day ordeal in Maryland's Seneca Creek State Park, chosen for its varied terrain that could convince viewers the characters were lost in the middle of the woods. The cast and crew's exploits, which Sanchez and Myrick call method filmmaking, produced 20 hours of footage and some surprisingly naturalistic performances.

In fact, the film taken by the actors proved so good that Sanchez and Myrick abandoned their original plan to use it only for the last half-hour of the film after vainly trying to incorporate their own 1940s-style newsreel and a reality-based TV show called "Mystical Occurrences". Recognizing that a coherent narrative existed in the "found" footage alone, they took the daring leap of making the movie a completely shaky-cam affair, and as Sanchez recalled in EMPIRE (November 1999): "We were definitely scared. We were scared we were making a piece of shit." Though "Blair Witch" was not for everyone's tastes, it definitely touched a nerve without showing any acts of violence, proving that the unseen is often more frightening than the seen. The universal terror of being out in the water and unable to touch bottom that "Jaws" (1975) exploited so well was certainly analogous to the archetypal fear of things that go bump in the night, and Sanchez and Myrick put horror back into the imagination of the viewer by revealing some very raw emotion on the faces of their worn-down actors.

Sanchez was also responsible for creating the Blair Witch web site (www.blairwitch.com), a repository for the mythology which helped drive the hype and spur interest in the movie. The site's deadpan look at the disappearance of the students, as if it were a continuing news story, gave no clue that the story was fiction, though the filmmakers certainly never tried to pawn it off as truth on the interview trail. They had originally hoped to sell it to cable and make a modest return on a film that Sanchez has joked "cost about as much as a new Ford Taurus with all the options," but when its debut at Sundance led to a deal in excess of $1 million from Artisan Entertainment, they still had no idea of what was to come. Material originally intended for the film appeared as the pseudo-documentary "The Curse of the Blair Witch" on the Sci-fi Channel just prior to the film's July release and helped fuel a runaway box office. By November it had grossed over $140 million domestically, a testament not just to clever marketing but to two men who had set out to scare people and created a video verite masterpiece in the process.

Michael Corrente
Writer / Director / Producer

Michael Corrente is is an American film director and producer from Pawtucket, Rhode Island. His films include A Shot at Glory , American Buffalo, Outside Providence, Brooklyn Rules and Federal Hill.

Growing up in Rhode Island, Michael Corrente was exposed to the movie by his father who regularly took his son to see whatever foreign-language films were playing in the area. Those motion pictures and a high school field trip to Providence's Trinity Square Repertory Company to see a production of "A Man for All Seasons" convinced the youngster to pursue a career in the arts. Following completion of his studies at the Trinity Repertory Conservatory in 1981, Corrente bartered his abilities as a contractor in return for rehearsal spaces and production opportunities, mounting over 25 productions. In 1984, he set out for Manhattan where he wrote the one-act, semi-autobiographical "Federal Hill" and eventually established the Studio B Theatre Ensemble.

Eventually he expanded the one-act to full-length and produced and directed its Off-Broadway premiere. Drawing on his experiences living in a slightly insular Italian-American community, he crafted a story about a group of buddies--small time hoods whose lives are upended when one falls for a coed. Knowing he had strong material, Corrente teamed with film director Bill Durkin to shoot "Title Shot" (1989), a nine-minute reel which they hoped could be used for fund-raising purposes. Over the course of the next few years, the script for Corrente's debut feature, also titled "Federal Hill" took shape. Shot in less than a month in 1993 on black-and-white stock and a very low budget, "Federal Hill" utilized the city of Providence as a major character as well. While modest in scope, the film's expert cinematography and Corrente's spin on what could have been familiar material won over critics. There was a slight brouhaha when Trimark, the film's distributor, made public its plans to issue "Federal Hill" in a "colorized" version, claiming that contemporary audiences wouldn't go to see a black-and-white movie. While the director was willing to consider such a move for a video release, he greatly opposed tinting the theatrical release. Eventually Trimark backtracked and agreed to let the release print remain in black and white and allowed Corrente to oversee the "colorization" of a home video version.

Corrente was signed by Castle Rock to helm the feature adaptation of David Mamet's three-character drama "American Buffalo" with Al Pacino set to star. When Pacino balked at using a relatively novice helmer, the studio put the project in turnaround where it languished until the Samuel Goldwyn Company agreed to distribute it. Teaming Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz, "American Buffalo" premiered at the 1996 Boston Film Festival. The majority of critics again were impressed with Corrente's handling of actors but as Mamet retained the claustrophobic settings of his original, the overall effect was that of a filmed play rather than a re-imagining or reinterpretation of a work.

While he worked on developing other projects (including "The Yellow Handkerchief"), Corrente and his actress wife Libby Langdon (who co-starred in "Federal Hill") served as producers for the romantic comedy-drama "Say You'll Be Mine" (1998), the screenwriting and directorial debut of Brad Kane. At the same time, he was working on a long-cherished project, the film adaptation of Peter Farrelly's novel "Outside Providence" (1999). Corrente had bought the book for one dollar at a second-hand store in 1988 and quickly obtained the screen rights from its author for the same price. Responding not only to the story's Rhode Island setting but also its skewed sense of humor, he was certain it could be translated into a screenplay. Success, however, intervened. Corrente went off to make his films and Peter Farrelly with his brother Bobby crafted the low-brow comedy hits "Dumb and Dumber" (1994) and "Kingpin" (1996). When the three convened to pen the script, the Farrelly brothers were impressed with Corrente's disciplined approach, which was in direct contrast to their more laid-back style. Financed partly by Wall Street investors and Rhode Islanders, "Outside Providence" began shooting in the fall of 1997 with Corrente's pal Alec Baldwin in the pivotal role of a hard-drinking, blue-collar parent and newcomer Shawn Hatosy as the protagonist. Harvey Weinstein at Miramax picked up the film and allowed the director to fine-tune it until its release in the summer of 1999 to generally positive reviews.

Patrick Smith
Writer / Producer / Animator / Director

Patrick Smith has written, produced, animated, and directed five award winning films from 2000-2006.
Smith made his directorial debut for the Emmy
nominated MTV series "Down-Town", continuing on
to direct the popular animated series "Daria." His
bizarre, morphing style tells symbolic stories of identity and emotion, and have extended beyond film. His
Public Art Installations have earned the artist a multitude of accolades outside the world of animation, his fine art
is currently represented internationally by CVZ Contemporary Gallery in New York. Smith is a Senior Thesis advisor at the Pratt Institute in New York, a fellow with the New York Foundation of the Arts, and
a curator for multiple international film and animation festivals. His studio is located in Tribeca, New York City.

Thomas A. Ohanian is an accomplished strategist, designer, and inventor of digital media products and workflow solutions.

Drawing upon his 23 years in the digital media industries, his designs and efforts in product creation and evangelization have led to the widespread adoption of digital nonlinear video and film editing systems, workflow strategies, and LAN and WAN digital media collaboration. He is an Academy Award® and a two-time Emmy® recipient