TL;DR: The Blair Witch Project is considered a proto-example of the “unfiction” genre.
The Blair Witch Project is known as a “found footage” movie - meaning the actual filming of events is diegetic - the characters in the movie are acknowledging they are holding cameras and recording the events that are happening. When the movie was released, they had the actors (who used their real names) agree to go socially silent for a period of time to support the concept that the movie was filmed by three real people who are now missing. There were websites about the Blair Witch “incident” presenting it as real and when the film premiered at Sundance, the creators even plastered some “missing” posters of the cast in the streets around the theater to support the “unfiction”
The “found footage” genre of movies - most invariably horror movies where this works the best like REC and Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity are all presented somehow as edited or lightly-edited “evidence tapes” the audience is reviewing in the “unfiction” that the events were real. So the “found-footage” film genre could be considered within the umbrella of Unfiction.
Cloverfield and many of these types of movies often have in-world websites that might offer “extra footage” not seen in the movie that maintain the Unfiction “kayfabe” that the events are real along the lines of Blair Witch which basically pioneered the “unfiction” type of viral marketing with surrounding lore that many films use today.
Cloverfield specifically ran an extensive ARG (alternate reality game) based on the lore of the film that was optional.
An ARG often uses realistic websites, videos, phone numbers people can dial in real life to hear a recorded message (or possibly even speak to a live actor) to simulate participants “researching” events. Often it will require some form of puzzling, such as actually hacking or viewing the HTML of websites for secret messages, figuring out codes and passwords to gain access to websites, and in some cases creators and cast might interact with the chat/commentors/participants and give certain people extra information or clues or send them physical artifacts. They may place a geocache of clues and documents in the real world that someone will have to physically find and share with the participants. There are usually live game-masters overseeing things and timing releases of information so ARGs tend run for a period of time then end once the game is “solved” or over. However, some ARGs run for years, or might be ongoing with periods of inactivity and then a lore-dump which re-involves the participants months later - the conceit is the characters live real lives and aren’t always available. You might think of an ARG as LARPing, but online instead of face-to-face.
So in short:
- Unfiction: is kind of like a diegetic story presented through websites or found footage videos, or forum postings by "real"people or in some format that presents the plot as happening “real life” even though it is entirely fictional. In most cases these are standalone and aren’t being run by a Gamemaster in real time and won’t change, though Unfiction series might be presented over time, such as videos being published to a YouTube channel. There may be some interaction or puzzle solving events, such as chatting on a message board with in-story characters, or deciphering a url that only appears in one frame of a video to find another video, but the story is either already set or doesn’t majorly change based on the audience’s interactions.
- ARGs are actual Unfiction games happening in real time. They are managed live by GameMasters/Puppetmasters who might be creators or the cast of the story. The participants might hit a wall and have to actually do things to make the story progress, like having enough people visit a website to unlock it, or hacking into an in-game corporation’s website to unlock the next bit of plot. ARGs usually end - the material may still exist to be reviewed, but if you’re not interacting with them when they run, you won’t get as much out of the experience after the fact.
Unfiction examples:
lonelygirl15 was a scripted show, but they had to have the lead character start a vlog and run it normally for a while to establish reality before weird stuff started to happen.
Adult Swim’s This House Has People in It is a creepy government surveillance of an uncanny event.
Marble Hornets made a series based on the Slenderman mythos.
