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Cloverfield Discussion
I don't get to see many movies with a 4 month old in the house, but I managed to escape to see Cloverfield. Stop reading immediately if you don't want spoilers. It's Blair Witch's first person camera work, applied to a small (for the genre) budget monster movie. The monster is cool. The little monsters are cool. The acting is sometimes good, sometimes awkward. The action is often great and very intense. And it will undoubtedly be the most hyped movie of 2008 until the spring blockbusters arrive. I really enjoyed the movie, but I'm posting this so you guys can have a place to talk amongst yourselves about this movie. Groundbreaking movie-making or just hype-making? I'm not sure. I'm also not sure my skull can handle watching it again- that jerky camera action gave me a headache. (Also, there was a Star Trek teaser trailer attached, and I'm almost ashamed to admit that I want it so badly it made me hurt. Please Abrams, don't screw it up)
I enjoyed Cloverfield, what I saw of it. The problem I had was that I didn't anticipate it making me motion sick. They really don't give you any clue in the trailers that it's going to be full of a jolty, sudden, quick movement. It seems obvious enough in hindsight, that "Hey, a movie filmed from the point of view of somebody's home video camera *might* just make you motion sick, dummy." On the other hand, I haven't really seen anything with that type of shooting, so I feel like they could have given me a little warning.
A little history: I get simulation sickness from first person shooters. I used to be able to play them with no difficulties, besides maybe a game here and there (I seem to recall Hexen being one of the first to bother me). After a break from gaming, I came back to discover I'd pretty much lost all tolerance for FPSs. It might be possible to build a tolerance back up, I don't know. Being nauseous isn't fun, so I haven't really attempted it. Dimenhydrinate (Dramamine) and meclizine both made me drowsy, so I gave up on it.
I don't get seasickness.
Anyways, my point is, if you get simulation sickness, you may want to skip this one, or bring some dimenhydrinate or meclizine along. I made it maybe 45 minutes or an hour into the movie (run time is 1h 30m) before I had to keep my eyes closed.
Good afternoon,
> I don't get to see many movies with a 4 month old in the house,
> but I managed to escape to see Cloverfield
Here's the trick my wife and I used for our "dates" when our son was younger - one of us would drop the other off to watch the movie and then go shopping for a couple of hours with child in tow. Then back to the theater where we'd do a hot driver swap, and the first to watch the movie then shopping for a couple of hours with child in tow. Then back to the theater to pick up the other, and we head off to dinner to discuss the movie. We took turns being first.
Take care,
cb
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
Generally, I liked the premise of this film, but the shaky cam literialy killed it for me. After 45-60 minutes of non stop camera going in every direction possible, you just can't watch it without losing your head, and you tend to just zone out and listen at the rest of the film. One of my friends literaly couldn't breathe for a few minutes due to the vertigo.
At some point they should have made him turn on steadycam or maybe they should have made Hud a Video Camera professional by trade to explain some more camera steadiness in the film.
It wouldn't surprise me if they make a Cloverfield "Vertigo free edition" When it comes out on DVD and hopefully if they make a sequel, they'll use a news crew team to tell the story. At least I would hope their camera shots would be less all over the place.
On an kinda off topic note, this is why I like full size video cameras over handheld ones. The full size camers were infinetly easier to keep steady over the handheld ones. and with today's tech they could be a lot lighter and easier to use. (not to mention hold a full size hard drive or DVD) At least they make the sholder mounts for the handheld ones I guess.
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An effect similar to this is one that i'm sure all of us are aware of. When you're building a website (or gui, or whatever it is) and your boss is like "we need more sections, it looks really plain..." but you don't have any CONTENT to fill those sections with. Same thing....shaky cameras have their place....but sometimes people look at a shot and go "this shot is boring....lets SHAEK THE CAMERA!"
if you want a movie that REALLY over does this...watch "Manic".
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*stop reading if yer a spoilers nazi*
Anyone else notice at the very very end, when they're at coney island, in the background you see something fall from the sky into the ocean near a boat. To me this is them trying to say the monster came from space, chilled out in the ocean for about a month, then came out and smashed stuff up.
Yeah, you can certainly do some stabilization. It would still look funny because your would still get motion blur but without the camera movements to motivate it. Unless you decreased the shutter time to reduce that in the first place.
As with most camera things changed in post (like correcting the exposure), it's a heck of a lot easier to just do it right when you shoot it. That's why we shoot test footage.
I just posted a review on my blog: http://blakeyrat.com/2008/01/19/cloverfield/
... the monster sucked! All I can say about the monster is that it's a good thing the cast and crew kept it such a tight-lipped secret, because if they'd released photos of it I think it would have hurt their chances at the box office. Yes, gentle viewers, New York was being destroyed by a monster that not only had killer lice, but literally could not stand upright. Being one hundred feet tall? Scary. Waddling around on flippers? Not scary. The two even out to give the general reaction, "eh." When the reaction to the main character of your film is "eh" (and let's face it, people go to kaiju films to see the monster), then you got problems.
I'll paste the text here, but I'm still thinking of going back and revising it.
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The one sentence review: Cloverfield is unfortunately kind of disappointing, and bring your Dramamine if you're sitting close to the screen.
Look, I like kaiju movies. I like serious Godzilla, the Godzilla of the 50s and 90s. I like crazy Godzilla, the Godzilla of every other decade. Yes, even Godzilla's Revenge. (What? It's funny... don't look at me like that.) I like crazy Gamera, and I believe honestly that Gamera truly is friend to all children. I like the serious Gamera of the 90s, which are still pretty crazy when you think about them, just with more gruesome effects. I even like Garuda, even though it's not really in the same genre.
I'm also the first person to proudly say that despite its name, kaiju movies are an American invention, damnit. Even if you don't think King Kong counts, there's still this awesome little flicked named The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms which not only fits the genre's conventions perfectly, but was released a year and change before the original Godzilla and had special effects by Ray Harryhausen and was written by Ray Bradbury and you really can't beat that.
So what I'm getting at here is you'd think I'd enjoy Cloverfield simply by default, and I didn't really. It had some moments that were truly worthwhile, but the film as a whole just didn't gel for me for whatever reason. And it didn't help that...
Spoilers Ahead
The second problem is that Cloverfield doesn't explain anything. Where does the monster come from? I dunno. Why is it in Manhatten? No clue. How come when the little killer lice bite you your head explodes? Shrug. I'm ignoring the questions that apply to all monster/horror movies, such as: "how come weapons that can penetrate 20 thick reinforced concrete are useless against fleshy creature?" and "why the hell are they just standing there gaping when they're in mortal danger?" Even Spielberg's War of the Worlds gave a BS explanation for the alien's presence. (They buried the spaceships a million years ago, then teleported into them under cover of a thunderstorm... God that movie sucked.)
Cloverfield also makes use of the new popular technique to make movies and TV shows look "more real" by not using a steadicam at all. Actually, the entire movie is a first-person viewpoint from a camcorder held by one of the characters, which flashbacks provided by the un-erased parts of the tape he was recording on, so that when the camera jogs or skips you see a few minutes of what it recorded a couple weeks before the events of the movie. I thought that was pretty clever. I'm not a huge hater of the hand-held camera look like a lot of people are, but I do want to warn you if you're going to see the movie that this camera movies. There are several-minute long scenes of it pointing randomly downwards while the characters are running. There's one shot where the camera falls 40 to the ground. (I want to know what model that is, damn it's durable.) Unlike, say, I Am Legend or Battlestar Galactica which are filmed with hand-held cameras that are held pretty steady, the camera in Cloverfield really, really moves. I sat too close to the screen, don't make the mistake I did.
So, in short, despite some exciting moments, I think the negatives of Cloverfield outweight the positives and I left the theater pretty disappointed.
Comment of the year
Saving Private Ryan used hand-held cameras, but with a MAJOR difference: They were attached to Steadicam setups: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steadicam
The Steadicam is a quite old invention in Hollywood used so that the camera has freedom of movement (much more-so than being on rails), but also remains steady with no vibration the entire time. Even reality TV shows like Cops use Steadicams to improve the camera work.
Recent movies like I Am Legend and Cloverfield have dispensed with the Steadicam and been filmed with just plain ol' hand-held camcorders with no kind of image stabilization. In I Am Legend, it's not so much an issue because the camera doesn't move nearly as much as it does in Cloverfield. This is an "artistic" choice to make the show look more "gritty", like the amateur camcorder footage of car accidents on the local news. It's a fine effect, but it shouldn't be used for an entire movie.
Comment of the year
The Host (, Goemul - "Monster") is a 2006 South Korean monster film, which also contains elements of comedy and drama films. The film was directed by Bong Joon-ho, who also co-wrote the screenplay, along with Baek Chul-hyun. Starring in the film as members of an unremarkable family thrust into the middle of extraordinary events were Song Kang-ho, Byeon Hee-bong, Park Hae-il, Bae Doona and Ko Ah-seong. The film has been accused of being anti-American, due to the portrayal of Americans in the film, and was lauded for this content in North Korea, a country where anti-American sentiment is high. - Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Host_(film) I have not see Cloverfeild yet but I think the plot might be the same and I did hear that they were going to make the Host again.
Any deceleration event violent enough to kill the crew in the front of a helicopter is going to seriously fuck up any of the passengers in back. Having experienced a minor helicopter crash (UH-60, Afghanistan), I can tell you that the pilot and copilot are in the best place to avoid injury. Between the impact absorbing seats, the five point restraints, the helmets, and the strong fuselage structure around the cockpit, they walk away without a scratch when everyone in back has sprains, contusions, and even a few broken bones. A crash that conveniently kills the crew and leaves the passengers intact like that is a sign if sloppy writing, of putting adherence to basic common sense logic second, because getting the story out of the corner you've painted it into has to come first.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
No doubt, someone will try to claim that the photography was Cinema Verite.
It wasn't ! It was Cinema Bloody Shit.
Not just amateur quality, but infantile !
The acting was juvenile.
The plot was ill conceived.
The dialogue was absolutely retarded:
e.g. Person1: "Hammer down is at 0600 hours". Person2: "What time is that?". Person1: "6am" Person2: "I knew that!". No wonder the USA is in utter decline with this state of educational ignorance amongst its' College Graduates.
How dare the film-makers (and film distributors) launch this crap upon the public, with little warning or trailers to forewarn of how bad this movie is.
Every one who attends should demand their money back from cinema management when exiting.