From concept to screen, Entertainment Weekly goes behind the Cloverfield mystery to figure out exactly why producer J.J. Abrams is fascinated with mysteries. Producer Brian Burke explains "Our feeling was that it was exactly the kind of movie we wished we could have seen when we were 13.""J.J. Abrams wanted to keep the movie's very existence under wraps until the debut of the teaser, which he'd already sketched out. ''When I was a kid, a trailer was the first place I ever heard about a movie,'' he says. ''I just thought the greatest thing in the world, the thing that would just blow my mind, would be if I saw a trailer for a movie that totally intrigued me but I had never heard of before.''
In April 2007, Abrams learned that in order to get Cloverfield's teaser hitched to Transformers, the filmmakers would have to submit something to Paramount ASAP. Problem was, filming hadn't started yet. In fact, Cloverfield's screenwriter, Drew Goddard, wasn't even finished with the movie's script due to the demands of his day job as a coexecutive producer on Lost. So instead of cobbling something together from existing footage, as most filmmakers do, Abrams & Co. awarded the teaser a shoot of its own.
According to Reeves, ''a large part of our 12-week prep for the whole movie was used just to prepare for the teaser.'' The actors, who had auditioned for the film without even knowing it was a monster movie, felt crunched too. ''We were like, 'What? We don't even have a script!' They gave us a couple pages of outline and we just went with it,'' says Odette Yustman, whose character spends most of the movie trapped in her apartment awaiting rescue. Improvising proved to be a blessing for the crew.
The film ''had a lot of complicated logistical issues,'' says Reeves. ''How do we do the special effects? How do we make it all look naturalistic? How do we edit? We used the trailer as a workshop; the experience taught us how to make the movie.''
- Continue: 'Cloverfield' Making a Monster >
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