Capone interviews Matt Reeves - Director of CLOVERFIELD!

Hey folks. Capone in Chicago here. Last Friday morning, this showed up on our site: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/35062 This four-minute CLOVERFIELD widget was launched into the world as part of a contest. Whoever gets the most people to grab the widget (located HERE) from wherever they choose to post it will get a hometown screening of CLOVERFIELD for them and 30 friends, a movie that people have been gasm-ing about since the untitled teaser trailer dropped before TRANSFORMERS last summer. The release date for CLOVERFIELD is a month away, and some people are simply losing their minds over the prospect of a solid monster movie being produced in America. Is simply hasn't happened in I don't know how long. At BNAT9, a bunch of us were speculating as to exactly what this movie was. I envision it as being much like THE HOST, but with a single-camera POV and hopefully more destruction. I was under some strict instructions about what I could and could not talk about with CLOVERFIELD director Matt Reeves (one of the creators of "Felicity," along with CLOVERFIELD producer J.J. Abrams), but I'm not sure I wanted to ask him the obvious stuff. What does the monster(s) look like? Where do the monster(s) come from? The CLOVERFIELD team got me enjoying the element of surprise with their teaser trailer, and I'd like to go into the film a bit ignorant of the details of this movie. I want to give it every opportunity to scare and excite me; and I think the less I know, the better. I hope I get another shot at talking to Reeves once I've seen the film, so we can dish a little more on specifics, but for now, here's my interview with him. The guy seems genuinely excited to get this film out there in front of people, and I share that in common with him. Capone: Hey, Matt. How’s it going?

Matt Reeves: Great. What’s going on?

Capone: You tell me, man. You’re the one with all the secrets.

MR: [laughs]

Capone: I have to begin by saying this widget material that went up last night is pretty spectacular. We’ve seen a lot of it before, but the stuff we haven’t seen yet gives us a little more information than we had before.

MR: Thank you so much; I’m so glad you think so.

Capone: I’m guessing that the thing that people are going to focus on the most is that we kind of get our first fleeting glimpses of something that’s about as tall as the building it knocks down. I’ll admit, watching that building come down, watching that smoke cloud shoot down the street and the people running away, that’s going to hit a nerve with some people, give them a little ugly déjà vu. You have to be aware of this to a certain degree. What were you guys thinking when it came to that particular image?

MR: I think from the very beginning the idea of making a giant-monster movie, one of the things about it was being able to use the metaphor the way that Godzilla was very much a movie for its time and about anxiety about the A-bomb and all of that terror. So the idea is that this monster can apply to the anxieties of our time. So we always knew that we’d be using the reality of the way that this might feel. So what excited me about when J.J. [Abrams] and Bryan Burk came to me to do this was the idea of taking something that is so outrageous, like a monster movie, a concept like that, but doing it in a way that was completely naturalistic and real. So, one of the things that I did was look at a lot of stuff that was real just to get the feel for people going through these experiences, knowing that we would be trying to sort of approach those feeling because that was, in part, was the movie was about. But at the end of the day, this movie is a giant-monster movie so that at the same time that it evokes those fears. That sequence in particular is probably, I’d say, the one that is the most like that. Because the premise of the movie is that when this thing first happens, nobody knows what’s going on. It quickly evolves into something very, very different than that, although not in terms of tone, because it continues that realism. Obviously they’re in New York and they take this sort of journey to survive the evening against whatever this crazy huge thing is. At a certain point, they begin to realize what it is, in that there’s this huge thing there, and survival becomes the order of the day. There’s this way that the movie both reflects and deals with these fears in a certain way, to approach them, but in a safe way. I think that’s the way a lot of genre movie function, they tap into our anxieties and our fears, and it’s a way of approaching them in a safe environment. At the same time, it’s a way to have an incredible time at the movies, because at the end of the day, the movie is very much a thrill ride. What was interesting to me is creating this experience, and the movie is very much this ongoing experience. One of the things that was also very exciting to me was that I knew because of this aesthetic, which was that we were going to do this one point-of-view Handycam, that it would be very different from how I ever shot anything and how most of the people I was working with had ever shot anything. When you take a sequence that would be maybe a grand-scale action sequence, normally you’d shoot that from many different angles and you’d shoot it in a certain way and edit it together. Here, I knew that if we were going to do this aesthetic, although we have the option of doing a lot of jump cut--and of course we do that because that’s the way somebody might film something like this had they been through it--that there also would be moments where there’s no way they turn off the camera. So what might be, in any other movie, many, many series of shots that contains different visual effects had to be a long continuous master that contained visual effects. If this character wouldn’t have turned off the camera at that moment either by accident or because they were so captivated and they felt this was important to document, there was an imperative to shoot it that way. That’s one of the reasons we chose this clip, because a lot of the pieces that have been seen through the trailers and images like that, they’ve been presented in a way that trailers are, very quick cut sort of thing. In a lot of ways, these are images that have been seen in the trailer but I felt, J.J. felt, and Bryan felt that it was really important to show something that showed the vibe of the film, which was that there will be these ellipses, these kind of jumps, but there will also be these long, continuous, real-time action sections that builds and is a very unusual experience. And we thought that this clip really started to give us the feeling of the experience.

Capone: Was that single-camera POV always the intended way this film was going to look? Was there ever a consideration for more conventional storytelling?

MR: No, no, no. When J.J. and Bryan came to me and they gave me the outline which was written by Drew Goddard, I read through it and I was really blown away by the scope of it. And I was like, “Guys, this movie is huge, and it’s clearly filled with a tremendous number of visual effects.” I’d never done visual effects before. And they were like, “Yeah, but the thing is we feel like there are any number of people who we could bring in who might be the obvious choice for the monster part of the movie, but we’re really interested in what you’re interested in, in the things that you like to do, which have to do more with character and naturalism and realism. And then I got very excited and I realized that the very concept was just so exciting to think about doing something that was epic in scale but intimate in the way you approached it. So that was part of the original idea, and that was really what excited me about it, the idea of that challenge, because it meant that were going to be shooting things in ways that I’d never done before. There was an imperative to get them in both disjointed and long, continuous takes. And you didn’t cover scenes the traditional way. So I’d work with the actors, and instead of shooting a scene from several different angles and spending a couple of hours on that, I’d spend a couple hour doing maybe 50, 60 takes. And we would do improvisations. Drew wrote this incredible script, and we spent a lot of time using that, we’d do the scene bunch of times, and then I’d say, “Okay, you guys know the beats of the scene, let’s go off in this direction knowing what the beats of the scene are.” And a lot of the improvisation is in the movie. And that translated into action as well, that when we were doing these long action set pieces, if mistakes occurred, that was immediately what I was interested in. If the actor fell down, anything that was messy, anything that made it feel authentic. That juxtapositioned with something that was so outrageous—a giant monster—with a sense of authenticity, that was what excited me, and that was part of the original concept. I was very, very excited.

Capone: By doing things this way, you also avoid dealing with a pesky backstory--where did this come from? If you do learn those things, you learn it along with the characters.

MR: I have always been incredibly interested in point-of-view-driven stories, and this one is sort of the ultimate extreme of that sort of thing. What we all thought would be the most exciting was the idea that if what you’re watching starts and you have this sense that it’s found footage, which literally means you’d taken an SD card or a cassette out of someone’s Handycam and you put it in, and you’re watching home movies. You get a sense of who these people were from that. Yet, it has a kind of randomness to it. One of things we talked about when we were working on the story, Drew and I and J.J. were saying, Okay, the idea is that we have a traditional story, a traditional exposition in a certain way. And now that we know what the story is, we have to find ways to submerge it, so it doesn’t happen in a way…one of the challenges of the movie is that you never want it to feel like the camera was in the right place in the right time all of the information that you need, all the beats that you need, the action that you need. We were constantly finding ways to catch back up, to let things happen that were off camera and then get them on camera, and catch things not at the right moment. That’s why all the accidents were fun to film because it was like, “Oh look, when that happened…” which really did happen “that becomes this great building block into this other piece that has another level of authenticity that you wouldn’t normally see in a movie.” So that whole idea about how the exposition would come across and how the elements of the story would come across, it all had to feel as if it wasn’t a movie, but at the same time, we wanted to tell a story. So it was this really interesting challenge, and that was really exhilarating.

Capone: What is “Cloverfield”?

MR: I can tell you, in that our trailer is out now and that’s what we’re trying to communicate at the beginning of the trailer where it says “Case Designate: Cloverfield.” In the same way the Manhattan Project was the name of that program, that’s the same, not of the program, but of the case designate, how the military refers to this particular footage. It’s a code name; it’s how they refer to it.

Capone: The title card at the beginning also mentions that the footage was found in Central Park, which indicates that we get beyond the neighborhood where this going-away party is taking place.

MR: It’s funny, I think a lot of people saw the trailer and the kind of naturalism, and I think they…well the neat thing was the initial surprise, not knowing who any of the people were. Yet, there were another part where people were looking at that and assuming, because a lot of people compared it to BLAIR WITCH, that we were going to not really show you anything, that the experience would be very limited. But that was the thing, when I read the outline and got involved, I was like, this is enormous and this is about how you see everything. Like I said, this is an enormous story shot on an intimate scale, and you do see quite a bit. You go to lower Manhattan, you go…you’re going to see a lot in this movie, you’re going to see the monster. We went back and looked at it after we were done and first putting it together and we were like, “Wow, this feels enormous.” It has all of these different aspects to it and it’s definitely not something where they are just contained in one place and you’re just hearing everything off screen, although that is one of the elements of the thing. And the same way any great classic genre film like JAWS or ALIEN, the way there’s an element of suspense. One of the movies that I saw recently that I thought was applicable, too, in terms of mood was the way CHILDREN OF MEN has those continuous takes. And you get this kind of building dread, and you experience that kind of thrilling, terrifying sense of continuous action that’s going on all around you, and you’re right in the middle of it. The thing that was significantly different about this challenge and what we were doing, and what was exciting for me, was that in that movie what I was so taken with was how, even though the camera was always right in the middle of the action and continually taking it in, it wasn’t a participant. There was something almost Kubrickian about the way it impassively turned; it was very haunting and evocative. But in this case, we knew that it was going to be so point-of-view driven that if the character fell, if the character went through any trauma and he was holding the camera, you were going to see that. And if there was something terrifying and he needed to hide, you were going to see that. It reminded me of the way CHILDREN OF MEN could build tension, but it was whole other thing in that you were right in the middle of it and very aware of the person filming it. I think we all felt from the beginning that you would have a particular connection with the person who was filming it, who you would see for very little of the film, ironically. Of course that person’s behind the camera, but he is your eyes and your guide, and you’d have this association with this group of people who you’ve come to know, but his person behind the camera you’d have a very special relationship, and we feel actually that that is true. We hope that when people see the movie, they feel that way. People we’ve shown it to, that has been the case. That part of it was incredibly unique.

Capone: Admit it, you guys had to be giddy when you dropped that untitled teaser trailer in front of TRANSFORMERS over the summer. What was going on through your head, and what did you think of the reaction?

MR: The thing is, during prep, we were making the trailer. And in a way, it was a certain kind of exercise in learning how to make the movie as well. Drew at that point was still working on “Lost,” and he and I were meeting on the weekend and talking about story and working on character direction to take things in the direction they told me about when they brought me in. Because Drew was so interesting in character, we just had a ball. But during the week, we’d be preparing to make this trailer because one of the concepts, which was so exciting to all of us, was the way that today, you’re so saturated with the media that there isn’t almost anything that could come out that you don’t have some awareness of. You see a trailer and you say, “Oh, yeah. I’ve heard of that movie” or “I know who that person is.” We were all thinking back to when we were kids and you’d see a trailer maybe for something like CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, and you’d say, “What is that?! I don’t know what that is!” And that sense of discovery and that sense of “I don’t understand what that title is” or “I don’t know what I’m seeing, but I have to see that thing.” And there’s a kind of association, a kind of connection that you make with something you discover, and I guess we were thinking that this is kind of a throwback in a sense. And we thought we really had an opportunity here because of the way we’re making the movie and how quick we were making the move and because of the style of the movie, which is meant to be as naturalist and realistic as possible, that meant we were going to cast people that people didn’t know. And we thought it would be really fun to come in under the radar and put out this thing. And people would be seeing trailers for all the big films that they’ve heard about, and then all of the sudden they’d see this one. And when we talked about it originally, we thought what would be really fun is if they would let us not have the MPAA “the following preview has been approved for all audience” banner. We thought it would be fun not to have that disclaimer at the beginning, but we didn’t pursue that too far; we weren’t able to get that. But what we did pursue with Rob Moore at Paramount [director of worldwide marketing, distribution and operations], who said, “What if we don’t put the name on yet?” And we were all like, “This is so fun. This sounds like an exciting way to get people interested in the movie.” And the irony was, we had to go investigate whether that could even be done because when we spoke to the MPAA, they didn’t know how to respond because they said that it had never been done before. Because you wouldn’t normally advertise something by not giving the name. So when we finished the thing, we went through this whole learning curve of what it would mean to film the movie in a certain way, this whole hand-held aesthetic of shooting visual effects and building the story. And we put it together and were very happy with it and really excited, and then we had no idea the people would respond the way that they did. We thought, “This will be fun; people can discover it when they’re seeing these other trailers.” But the kind of life that it took on… And the fun part was, we were shooting the movie at that point, so I would spend the day shooting these scenes and doing all of these takes with the actors and having fun, and then I’d come home and check the internet and see what people were coming up with and how it engaged them and they actually began to project themselves into it and, in a way, create their own stories. I think there’s something about the anticipation of something, and not knowing quite what it is that can be very engaging. And this took on a life of its own.

Capone: The guys that work on “Lost,” they’re used to having people speculate or pass on misinformation about their work on the internet. What was that like for you, though, all of these story rumors, discussions of the source material, creature designs?

MR: It did. Like I said, it was an exciting experience because it was kind of a parallel experience to making the movie. That was exactly when we were in production. The funny part of it was that we were so under the radar when we began, but at a certain point when we started to film, things started to spread in a way that none of us expected it to spread, not like that. Suddenly we started to have to change the name of the movie, so that when we were shooting, people wouldn’t find out. We’d been shooting, and in the month and a half after the trailer came out, there were all of these crazy peeks of anticipation, and we were shooting in New York, and we had changed our name so many times that we were like, “Okay, we need to go with something completely innocuous.” So we changed our name to CHEESE. And the first day in New York shooting under the name CHEESE, fans found us, they knew where we were, where we were shooting, and they were shooting our set and putting it up on the internet before we’d even had a chance to shoot it. So that part of it was the fun parallel experience for us, because we were busy trying to make the movie and trying to find the movie and the excitement of that. Meanwhile, there was this other movie being made parallel to us by these people who were projecting themselves into it. And that was exciting to watch and a really unique experience. I don’t know that I’ll ever experience that again.

Capone: We’ve been given the cut sign, but I hope that I get to talk to you again after I get a chance to see the movie, and we can get into some more of the juicy details

MR: Yeah, I would love that, and I’m thrilled that you enjoyed the clip. I can’t wait for you to see it. We’re in the very, very last stages where we’re just finishing the mix and the color timing, so you’ll see it soon. Take care.

Obviously I could have gone on with Matt for another hour about so many different aspects of this film, and his history as a fan of genre films and monster movie in particular. But I think there’s a lot of good information here that’s probably about as specific as anyone on this film is willing to get at this point. I’ll have one more interview for you soon connected with this movie, and it’s with a guy whose friends are throwing him a certain going-away party that gets rudely interrupted. See you soon. Capone Off the Record, Matt Told Me Everything - Offers of Money Can Get Me To Spill It All