Two Quotes from The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction:

“...for the first time – and this is the effect of the film – man has to operate with his whole living person, yet forgoing its aura. For aura is tied to his presence; there can be no replica of it. The aura which, on the stage, emanates from Macbeth, cannot be separated for the spectators from that of the actor. However, the singularity of the shot in the studio is that the camera is substituted for the public. Consequently, the aura that envelops the actor vanishes, and with it the aura of the figure he portrays.”

“Magician and surgeon compare to painter and cameraman. The painter maintains in his work a natural distance from reality, the cameraman penetrates deeply into its web. There is a tremendous difference between the pictures they obtain. That of the painter is a total one, that of the cameraman consists of multiple fragments which are assembled under a new law. Thus, for contemporary man the representation of reality by the film is incomparably more significant than that of the painter, since it offers, precisely because of the thoroughgoing permeation of reality with mechanical equipment, an aspect of reality which is free of all equipment. And that is what one is entitled to ask from a work of art.”

The novelty (or perhaps contrivance) of The Blair Witch Project can essentially be likened to its unique use of perspective. The first of the two quotes above from Walter Benjamin's essay places the reception and thus interpretation of art onto the perspective from which the recipient views the piece in question. In a live performance, the essence of Macbeth is inseparable from that of the actor who merely portrays him. With the advent of film as a pervasive form of mass culture the camera forms a sort of mediator between the performance and the audience: much of the meaning of the events transcribed on screen is dictated by the camera. In doing so a sort of self-conscious detachment is created, alienating many of the visceral elements of watching a film that arise from experiencing a situation first hand, and effectively altering what Benjamin refers to as the 'aura' of the performance.

This, however, is the nature of film in general. In the second quote Benjamin compares film to painting as much as to live performance. As with painting, another art in which a mediator exists between artist and consumer, a filmmaker generally tends not to replicate reality exactly nor obfuscate it completely, but rather to create a representative version which may or may not speak to deeper, more personal truths, either about the artist or about the human condition, or is at least entertaining. Where the two mediums differ is that painters are aware of this divide and actively employ it as a part of their trade. On the other hand, filmmakers arrive at this place by attempting to come as close to reality as possible, or by filtering reality as recorded by the tools of their trade to their own specific vision. As such, film can in many ways be seen as the art of channeling reality. Thus, to a modern audience film would appear the more relevant medium.

Where The Blair Witch Project comes into all of this is that it attempts to remove, at least partially, this mediator between the audience and the performance. Ironically, it goes about achieving this by making the audience aware of the camera's presence. Most films are shot and edited to be viewed as though the camera weren't there, giving the audience a sort of god's perspective. This enables the viewers to witness all of the proceedings effectively but unrealistically, as though looking through a portal into an alternate universe. Blair Witch counters all that by being as self-conscious as possible. The camera becomes a sort of silent fourth character carried along by the actors and actively telling the story to the audience, making the experience of watching the film more akin to the experience of being told a story by an actor in a live performance and resurrecting some of the aura that Benjamin is referring to. This worked perfectly, so well that upon watching the film many viewers expressed feeling cheated, as though they had been convinced something had happened which hadn't. This may of course have had a lot to do with the advertising campaign, which I believe for awhile actually claimed Blair Witch comprised of actual recovered footage.