Teaser Trailer

Five young New Yorkers throw their friend a going-away party the night that a monster the size of a skyscraper descends upon the city. Told from the point of view of their video camera, the film is a document of their attempt to survive the most surreal, horrifying event of their lives.

WANT TO SEE! WANT TO SEE!!!!

Anxiety said:

ME TOO!! Me TOO!!!!

This had better not suck, I swear to God!!

I am alternately fascinated and annoyed at the viral campaign for this project. I'll likely end up going to see it in time, but for now I just want a solid word on the plot. This close to the project and virtually nothing's out there!

I really wonder if this'll be an H.P. Lovecraft-based project.

The original trailer freaked me, very realistic...the second trailer i didn't like. I wanna see it, i just hope it dosen't suck...running around with hand held cameras with shitty no name actors with a stupid plotline.

Whats all this Slusho crap?...thing is, $30 million budget...you can barely feed the crew these days on that budget.

liberation said:

Regarding the budget, you're correct. But I've read from someone involved with the project that the movie is going to look like it had a zillion-dollar budget because the money was virtually all spent on production. The no-name talent was strategic.
[Edited 12/6/07 19:39pm]

Well hand held digital cameras cost nothing, they probably borrowed them
Blanks tapes...not much, no name actors...maybe $500, 000 for the lot...but still, even spending $20 million on CGI is small change these days.

The thing that bugs me after having seen the long-form trailer is the hint at multiple monsters or a possible subsequent virus. I so don't want to see another 28 Days Later or Virus.

liberation said:

Brain fart. :Oops:
[Edited 12/6/07 19:48pm]

No small monsters ala Godzilla...just a big ass monster coming toward them destroying everything, they try and escape the city...how hard could that be?

No weird rubbish with snow cones or drinks, since JJ Abrams directed Mission Impossible 3 i don't hold out much faith, i know he's not directing this...but still.

I think the guy is overrated, Alias and Lost sucked...IMO.

Exclusive: Cloverfield Director Speaks!
IGN discusses the highly-anticipated monster movie with helmer Matt Reeves.
by Scott Collura
Link

December 14, 2007 - Cloverfield. 1-18-08. Slusho. Untitled J.J. Abrams Project. Call it what you want, but there's no getting around the fact that when Paramount's mysterious monster movie first came to the attention of general audiences this past summer with a from-out-of-nowhere trailer that ran before Transformers, it struck a nerve. As sure as the Statue of Liberty's head is removable, Cloverfield instantly had viewers in a tizzy after that clip debut. What exactly was Cloverfield?

Well, it's been about six months since that first trailer and we still know very little about the actual plot of the film aside from the fact that a (presumably giant) monster -- or monsters? -- attacks New York City, the fallout of which is recorded from ground level via camcorder. Fans have done their best to unlock more info about the storyline, pouring over the viral marketing campaigns that have surrounded the picture, mostly to no avail. But IGN Movies got the chance to talk to the film's director, Matt Reeves, in an attempt to get some of the mysteries settled once and for all.
Back to Reeves, though. He remained pretty tightlipped about plot points throughout our interview, but he did have some very interesting things to say about the project even as he managed to avoid giving up the film's secrets. Which isn't to say that we didn't try.

For starters, we asked him what was up with all the name changes?

"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!"

Reeves adds somewhat cryptically that there was another title that they almost used.

"There was this other title that we really loved," he recalls. "And it was again another title that had to do with an aspect of the movie you would have to see the movie to understand what it was called. And so it was in a way another mysterious word. And when it finally came down to it, we thought, 'Well, first of all, it's been Cloverfield in our heads for all this time. And second of all, the idea that everyone already knows that it's Cloverfield, and we're going to change it from one word that people think is mysterious to another word that people think is mysterious? What's the point of that?' So we were like, 'You know what? The movie is Cloverfield.'"

As for that "case designate" reference, anyone who has seen the clips from the film knows that "Cloverfield" is the case name that the government has assigned to whatever or whoever is doing all that destruction in New York.

"In the way that the Manhattan Project was the name of that program, that's what this is," says the director, though he specifies that doesn't mean that it was created by the government the way the Manhattan Project was. "And it's not a project per say. It's the way that this case has been designated. That's why that is on the trailer, and it becomes clearer in the film. It's how they refer to this phenomenon [or] this case."

The top-secret nature of the film has always been a part of the plan. In fact, it came as a reaction of sorts to the current trend (thanks largely to Internet sites like IGN) among movie fans towards knowing everything about a movie long before it ever hits theaters. Cloverfield is an attempt to get back to that youthful innocence about movies that the film's makers recall from their childhood.

"You know what we thought?" asks Reeves. "When I got involved with [the project], one of the things that J.J. was talking about that we all got excited about was the idea that because the film was going to feel realistic, that meant we could cast unknowns. And that meant also that we were going to be making it in a way that would be made quite quickly. And people didn't know about this movie. And we thought, in today's environment … you know everything about every movie before it comes out. There's so much information that comes out, people are so media savvy. And we were just remembering when we were kids and movies would come out and you'd see a trailer and you were like, 'What was that?!'

There was that sense of discovery. And so we all got very excited about the idea of putting together this trailer for a movie that no one had heard of. And because of the accelerated schedule and knowing exactly when it was going to come out, we knew that we'd be able to make this trailer and then put out this movie, and people would know nothing about it. And that would enable there to be that sense of discovery from when we were all younger, that there wasn't so much media saturation. And so that was definitely part of the concept."

Adding to the mystery and excitement of that first trailer was the suggestion from Paramount marketing guru Rob Moore to not include a title with the clip. This notion only further excited Reeves and Abrams and the rest of the team, and of course in retrospect we know that it was a decision that added to the allure of the project immensely.

"We thought, 'That's very interesting. Who's ever done that before?'" says the director with a laugh. "And we actually went to the MPAA and said, 'Can we do that?' And they didn't know what to say at first because no one had ever done it. And we thought, 'Well, I guess that makes sense because when you're marketing something you want people to know what it's called.' But this idea of kind of throwing this thing out and seeing people that you didn't know [in it] and seeing them in this story that you've never heard of, and that not even having a title, we just thought that would be incredibly fun for people to discover. And then what we didn't anticipate was that the response to it would be as strong as it was, and that was very exciting."

Part of that response, of course, has been (in some quarters anyway) an almost obsessive attempt to uncover every little detail possible about the story. Is it a giant monster in the film? Monsters, perhaps, as in plural? Little monsters? Voltron? The speculative permutations have been as various as they have at times been ridiculous. Reeves will not confirm or deny any of this talk, besides acknowledging that, yes, Virginia, there is a monster in his movie.

"We really wanted to make a movie where essentially, at the end of the day, it's this giant monster movie, but we really wanted to make it from this point of view," explains Reeves of Cloverfield's point-and-shoot, ground-level technique. "What was interesting to me was the idea of doing what is essentially this epic scale, huge movie, but doing it from this very intimate point of view and very naturalistic point of view. And we thought it would be great, especially since everyone would know going in that it's a monster movie, to start a movie and do it in this very [realistic] style as if it was found footage. [You] get to know these characters, and in a certain way [we got to] make a character relationship film."

In fact, it was Reeves' background in character drama that got him the job on Cloverfield. He's known Abrams since he was a kid, and the two went on to co-create the hit show Felicity together.

"We've known each other for forever and have been friends since we were young and have just always trusted each other creatively," he says. "In college, I would show him my films -- I went to USC's film school -- he would show me his scripts and he wound up being one of the producers on the first film that I directed. Then we decided to do Felicity together. We created the show, and I directed a bunch of those as well and did the pilot. And there's actually a film that I wrote that I'm going to direct which he's involved in producing, and we were talking one day and he said, 'We would really love you to do Cloverfield first.' And my friend [producer] Bryan [Burk] also was like, 'Listen, we think you'd be great for this.' I said, 'Well, first of all I want to make my movie.' And they said, 'Do that after this. Just look at this.'"

So Reeves read the outline for the project which had been put together by Abrams and Drew Goddard, who eventually would go on to write the Cloverfield screenplay. Reeves found it to be "just fantastic," but he wasn't certain as to why they had asked him to direct their monster movie.

"I was very taken with it, but I was like, 'This is huge, it's visual effects, it's a monster movie. Why are you thinking of me?'" he remembers. "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.' And then I got very excited because the idea of doing sort of an outrageous idea, but doing it sort of naturalistically with a real aesthetic, was a real exciting idea. So that got me hooked. I jumped in."
[Edited 12/17/07 7:27am]

Lammastide said:

Yeah, there's a new Swedish movie called "Arn" that will open in a few days, and from what I've seen its $30M budget (which actually is the biggest budget in the history of Swedish film) has made it look very epic and expensive since there are no huge stars in it. I think it's a wise decision since there are plenty of good actors out there that just haven't been discovered yet, but who do the job at least as well as the big names.