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People believed that what they had just seen was real. An Albany detective even called in to offer his help in finding the ‘lost’ filmmakers. People posting on the bulletin board soon started discussing the morality of the faked footage after Pierson came clean. While the filmmakers decided that they did not want to explicitly state that the film was a real piece of evidence of a disappearance, the short film had the desired effect in generating interest in the project. Grainy Pictures, Pierson’s company, decided to invest $10,000 in the film.

The GPS allowed the small crew to track the progress of the cast within the 6,300 acres of the park and ensure their safety. The cast were also given a CB radio and had a code word between them which they could use whenever they needed to break the scenario. The CB radio was not supposed to be used unless there was real danger but the GPS unit meant that the filmmakers could leave their limited directions for the cast at certain pre-programmed locations. According to the stars of the film, they were guided to milk crates each day that contained three plastic canisters.

Sánchez says in an interview with the A. V. Club (1999) that they ‘didn’t want to put those kinds of limitations on the actors’. Having no dialogue forces the cast to make up their lines on the spot. Their characters become free flowing constructions. Though this can cause the need for far more editing in the post-production stages with vast amounts of unusable footage, it can also create moments of realistic spontaneity in keeping with the film’s mockumentary and vérité style aesthetics. The Blair Witch Project was originally conceived of as a more traditional mock-documentary with the footage shot by the actors only meant to feature in the last part of the documentary on the curse of the Blair Witch through the ages.