Cloverfield Director Matt Reeves IGN Interview

Clovefield Director Matt Reeves returns to an interview by IGN this time out. He discusses some of the same items as the "Shock" interview (see here) but adds a lot more new, juicy information. This is just part I of the interview with IGN. They advertise part II will be released soon with details of the film style and how the Statue of Liberties head got down to mid-town.

Reeves and J.J. Abrams were the driving force behind the Felicity series which helped Reeves get the job behind the camera for Cloverfield. However, Reeves couldn't help but wonder why a character director was asked to do an action flick.

"The big thing for J.J. and for Bryan was that my concerns primarily -- and everything that I've done so far and everything that I'm interested in and the movie that I was going to make with J.J. that I wrote -- it's been all character-based. I'm very interested in naturalism and realism and we tried to have that kind of tone between the characters on Felicity. They were like, 'Look, there's no question, we know you love movies and you can get the monster part. And there's a million people who you would think of for the monster part, but we're interested in what you would do in terms of the tone. In how you would do that and what you would do with the characters.'"

Then, there's the question of the Cloverfield title and the rumored name changes. Reeves goes into detail why they stuck with Cloverfield and why they were forced to use alternative names like Slusho and Cheese.

"There were various titles along the way, but the first title and the end title has always been Cloverfield," explains Reeves. "When I read the outline it was Cloverfield. And 'Cloverfield' is the case designate. And when the first draft of the script came out it was Cloverfield. It's always been Cloverfield. And then we started changing the name over the course of making the movie because the irony was that when we first started no one knew anything about the movie and there was no danger in people finding out where we were and stuff. But then there was such excitement, and we were just in the early stages of shooting when the trailer came out, and that excitement spread to such a degree that we suddenly couldn't use the name anymore. So we started using all these names like Slusho and Cheese. And people always found out what we were doing!"

• Part I Matt Reeves IGN Interview: Exclusive: Cloverfield Director Speaks!