A semi- humorous look at the world as it has been touched by J.J. Abrams.
A look at the production of new movies Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity, which both borrow heavily from the infamous Blair Witch Project.
One of the most startling facts that we get out of interviews with the cast of Cloverfield is how much secrecy there was during the entire project. Michael Stahl-David plays Rob Hawkins, a 20-something prepping for a big move to Japan. His farewell party is crashed by the Cloverfield Monster and is caught on tape."It felt like we were on a search for truth together," the actors says commenting on the film's natural slant and the wiggle room for improvisation that opened up as a result during principal photography. "[director Matt Reeves] wasn't going to make me do something I didn't feel was real. If there was something on the script I didn't feel quite like it would happen in that moment, we wouldn't do it. I would say something else, do something else. It wasn't about trying to be clever and come up with your own stuff. It's not a very talky movie, it was more about questioning what would you do in this situation? What would I do?"
"I think in some ways it's as much a survival movie as it is about the monster," he continues. "The monster is definitely the problem, but you're seeing it the way we would, we don't pan back and watch it perfectly. It is going to be exciting. It is contemporary film vocabulary - this kind of first-hand account, something that could've been on YouTube or something. Someone just holds up the camera and starts filming, there are probably other accounts, [our footage is] just the one the government happens to find."
Cloverfield's challenges on set arrived, Stahl-David says, when he was asked to react to a creature that would later be added via CGI. He was privy to the beast's guise through early conceptual renderings, still, "Shooting that stuff was not easy. Honestly, the camera work helped sell the [monster stuff] 'cause the camera's going crazy too. I was always trying to get specifics about what the special effects were going to be. When I saw the teaser [trailer], you see me look down the street and I see something way in the distance coming. I was like, 'You know, I don't really buy that. That's not how I'd react to something that far away.' You just try to get something specific about what they were going to put in there."
The viral marketing of "Cloverfield" is starting to pay off with lots of buzz centered around the movie which opens 1-18-08. Wired Magazine, The Australian, Movies.com, and even the U.S. News and World Report are talking about the first must-see movie of 2008.6) The most profitable film will be the monster movie Cloverfield .
