1-18-08 Project Cloverfield - Warning! Spoilers

The time has come to potentially wrap up the Cloverfield saga. With the release of the DVD April 22nd we're looking at a virtual end to the Cloverfield world we know. Speculation has always surrounded the movie since I first saw that killer teaser trailer back with the Transformers movie on July 2nd, 2007. The future of Cloverfield holds nothing but speculation. Where it heads lies in the fate of producer J.J. Abrams and Paramount Studios.

Can we expect another movie? It's hard to tell. Talk of a sequel was a given since Cloverfield did big bucks worldwide in theaters but it's too soon to tell what will occur with that. A Japanese Magna popped up but didn't make too much noise. The viral machines (Slusho, Tagruato, TIDO) all but shut down after the first few weeks of the movies release. In the end we're left wondering the fate of Cloverfield. At least there's always Aladygma to hold onto.

So get ready to grab your copy of the Cloverfield DVD tomorrow with killer features like "two alternate endings, deleted scenes, commentary by director Matt Reeves and tons of Easter Eggs make Cloverfield a must-own. Now, figure out where to buy it, since no less than four special store-specific editions will be available, ranging from a Steelbook case (FYE and Suncoast), exclusive ringtone (K-Mart and Sears), "T.J. Miller's Video Diary" bonus DVD (Best Buy) and our recommendation, a "Rob's Goin' to Japan Party Mix" CD (Target). (source)

1-18-08.com has received their first update since the opening week of Cloverfield. The depicted picture is of Missing Teddy Hanssen who was last seen on 12-07-07. This coincides with the Jamie and Teddy viral videos that had Teddy and Jamie swapping short, personal videos.

Teddy mentioned at one point that there was trouble aboard his station and captured by Tagruato agents. Teddy even sent Jamie some of the Slusho ingredient. Thanks Jess for the tip!

Here's some Slusho Machine Instructions that were sent to me. The guy said the PDF of the instructions on the Slusho Machine were sent to him after a purchase on the Slusho store. Along with his purchase of shirts were the PDF of the Slusho Machine as well as the indication of the machine being sent with his order along with 8 qts of Seabed Nectar, the prime ingredient in Slusho.

Update: I have the PDF offline now. I few people have sent tips to indicate it's really a different machine that's been altered.

One of Tagruato's subsidiaries is YMR (YOSHIDA MEDICAL RESEARCH) which conducts medical studies.

According to their website on Tagruato, YMR " is a genetic research firm specializing in deep sea bioprospecting. YMR implements Tagruato's advanced exploration technology to study extremophiles found only in the deepest parts of our oceans."

Here's a blog entry from Dr. Hiro Takahashi on his day at work at YMR. (source)

Movie Marketing Madness has been keeping tabs on Cloverfield since the beginning. Chris has analyzed the viral campaign that Paramount and Bad Robot initiated in early July. Since then he has taken a critical look at the movie and the marketing up until the release date last Friday. If noting else, he has established the most complete Viral Guide to Cloverfield I have come across. If you are new to the Cloverfield world or would just like to catch up than I recommend this post to get all the news you need.

• The Tale of "Two Cloverfield Campaigns" >
  

A sharp eye has noted that a Japanese Magna site has a little Cloverfield added to it. Cloverfield Clues found this little image and noticed the familiar Cloverfield viral business Tagruato slapped on the side of a ship. They're still trying to translate it so if you can read the Japanese version be sure to head over and help out.

• Will There Be A Cloverfield Magna? >

Edit: A new lead has emerged with more detail on the Cloverfield Magna. Click here for details.

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The Hollywood Reporter looks at the box office take of Cloverfield when it opens Jan. 18 and hopes to do monster business over the four-day Martin Luther King holiday weekend. (...more)

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It's not easy to hide a 500-foot monster nowadays. But that's exactly what the filmmakers behind Paramount Pictures' "Cloverfield" have done. Producer J.J. Abrams and company have maintained an air of mystery surrounding the movie and its monster. (...more)

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More pity for the Big Apple as a New York reporter looks at why New York City is such a target for destruction, in the movies that is. (...more)

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The supposed Cloverfield monster picture that as been floating around the Internet is a fake. Horror-movies.ca received an e-mail from an "Avid Reader." Seems that its just a picture from some concept art from a video game. (...more)

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J.J. Abram's other film, the one he's actually directing, will premier it's teaser trailer with Cloverfield on Friday, 1-18-08. Expect it to be online the next Monday. (...more)

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So how did this whole CLOVERFIELD idea start anyway? Well, Paramount Pictures has just answered that question! Check out CLOVERFIELD from the beginning! (...more)


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Kaitei No Mitsu (known as "Seabed's Nectar") is the key ingredient in Slusho and has been given approval by the Clovefield version of the FDA called the American Food Association. Despite the tragic losses at the Chuai Stations, where the Nectar is harvested allegedly, Slusho's parent company Tagruato applauded the AFA's decision.

"Members of Tagruato's elite corporate board were greeted with a rare surprise yesterday as founder Ganu Yoshida visited their emergency home screens in a simultaneous teleconferencing broadcast. After much discussion, Yoshida revealed that kaitei no mitsu, the special Slusho! ingredient lovingly known as "Seabed's Nectar", had been approved by the American Food Association.

"Those lost at Chuai would be smiling this day," commented a choked-up Ganu Yoshida, "Tagruato stands strong against the evil of ecologist terror."

Tagruato can now proceed with their extensive American campaign for bringing Slusho! to the western world. In addition to the creation of three Western-only flavors, Slusho! representatives claim that many other surprises are in store for their new audience.

"This has been a dream of ours for a long time," smiles Slusho! Administrative Coordinator Mika Srauy, "We've already secured relationships with several prominent American distributors and are compiling our own Western-oriented marketing team."

The board applauded the news, thanking their friends in foreign lands for such strong support in troubled times.

"Ordinarily there would be more happiness in our celebration but it has been a dark week," admitted Slusho! Administrative Head Ben Miyake, "I am proud to be part of such a brave company." (source)

I love emails like this. Zach Behrens, an Editor at LAist.com had the great fortune of sitting down with Cloverfield Director Matt Reeves. He sent me a little message about the article written by Julie Wolfson and it's a fantastic read for any Cloverfield fan. Reeves goes into depth about the film style and other technical aspects for all you film junkies. You can read the entire article here and I've grabbed some of the key points below.

"It's a great and lengthy article where director Matt Reeves spills the beans on where the name Cloverfield came from, his reaction to all the rumors floating around the internet, how the Iraq War influenced the filming style and how he met J.J. Abrams through the original YouTube of the 1970s, the Z Channel in Los Angeles.

Legions of curious fans have been waiting for January 18, 2008 for months. Many comb for clues online and speculate about every detail. LAist spent an afternoon with the director, Matt Reeves. We asked him to spill some juicy details about the film (including what the title really means), about his longtime friendship with J.J. Abrams, and to describe the wild ride that is Cloverfield."

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LAist: Over the years you have been very selective in your choice of projects. What made you want to direct your first monster movie?

Matt Reeves (picture below, filming Cloverfield): Well, I guess it had to do with the approach. At the time, there was a project I had written and will be directing called The Invisible Woman. I was putting together the cast and we had an actress cast for the lead and then she fell out twice and it just didn’t work scheduling-wise. During this time, J.J. Abrams had been putting together this deal for his new company. He’d been doing television stuff, but he was going to also be moving into producing features in addition to the stuff that he writes and directs. So he was really excited about doing this monster movie, and that was the thing he was telling me about all during my work on The Invisible Woman. It sounded really intriguing and fun, but I never thought that I would have anything to do with it.

One day when we were dealing with all this casting stuff, he and Bryan Burk, who I’ve known since we were kids and introduced me to J.J., asked me to consider doing the movie. They talked about the idea that the movie is obviously a monster movie and there’s that kind of outrageous aesthetic, but they wanted it to feel very naturalistic and real and that was very exciting to me.

I read the outline, which was written by Drew Goddard, who is a writer from LOST and also has a big following of people who knew him when he started on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I thought the outline was outrageous, so I met him, and I loved him. We just started talking about how we would sort of further take that character approach to the story. For me, the reason that it was interesting to do was that I’d be doing something that I’d never done before.

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Was the monster in the film inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu?

It was not. Here’s the thing—there’s been a lot of speculation, but J.J. has already answered the question. What really happened was that during Mission Impossible 3, J.J. took his son to Japan for the premiere. While they were there, they visited a toy store in Tokyo. They saw shelf after shelf, row after row, of Godzilla toys. Just this huge toy store filled with toys. The image was really striking to J.J. He said, “Look at this. This is like a national monster.” He started thinking, “You know, we need our own national monster.” Obviously King Kong is kind of a national monster but not really in that way. That’s a great movie and he’s a legendary figure in film lore, but it’s not really the same thing. So the way that Godzilla was sort of a metaphor for the time, and for that place, the idea of creating a new monster for this time and place came about. It’s an original monster, and a monster that was inspired, really, by Godzilla.

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Which films did you watch to prepare for directing Cloverfield?

I watched a lot of really weird and disparate things. I watched Children of Men because of the continuous shot aspect of it, and I thought it was really amazing, the tension that they were able to build in that. I was so impressed because the camera was very eerie and almost Kubrickian. The camera was in the middle of the space—handheld and right in the action—but it was also detached. I watched Alien, Jaws, The Shining, movies that I’ve always loved that are creepy and scary.

The thing that was most helpful, the stuff that I watched that really informed the aesthetic, was a lot of YouTube videos. Actually, a lot of the stuff that was in that first trailer, the teaser, was directly inspired by just looking at footage that people had of parties and events.

Then I looked at footage of terrifying events. I just wanted to see what happened when people were in the middle of these terrifying events and how they were filmed. There was some kind of gas pipe explosion that was online, really terrifying things. You would see the way people would keep documenting in these moments, what they would see, and how something would happen. They’d kind of miss it and then they would find it. There was also some footage I saw where they gave cameras to troops in Iraq. I was looking at the stuff from the Iraq documentary because it was like, these guys are in a crisis. Where does the camera go when you’re in a crisis? What happens?

There was this one clip in particular that I found absolutely terrifying where some troops were in a tent in Iraq and their camp was being mortar shelled. As the bombs were falling, they took the camera and put it on the ground. The shot itself was absolutely horrifying. There was a troop lying in front of the camera on the ground. There was a tent and the flap of the tent was open, but was so bright outside that with the exposure, you couldn’t even tell what was out there. You see a leg of a table that they’re hiding under and you see the other troop’s foot. You hear indiscriminate screaming and explosions getting closer and closer outside. It’s all obscured, but you could feel it. I thought we have to use that as a driving aesthetic to try and think about how to take these characters in these situations, and know that the camera is supposed to be there. We would be filming in a way that’s not from any safe perspective.

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The film has had a very successful viral campaign. What do you think of Ethan Haas and the other people who took it upon themselves to capitalize on it?

All I knew was that we made this teaser trailer and had not given any information about it. People immediately started making connections, some of which connected to things that we were setting up, but others had nothing to do with us.

Some were amazing. The thing that was most funny was that when we were doing the trailer, we knew that it would have a realistic feel, and we wanted to let people know that it was a monster movie in some way without saying, “Hey look! It’s a giant monster movie!” As a result, we decided after we made it, and while we were doing the mix, to put in some dialogue to make reference to the fact that there was a creature of some sort. One of the things we put in there at the last minute—during the last 20 minutes of our mix when I was there along with J.J., Bryan Burk, and my girlfriend—and I said, “I’ll do one.”

That kind of stuff started building. Then when there was all this weird Ethan Haas stuff, I remember Bryan and J.J. and I turning to each other and saying, “What is that? We don’t even know what that is.” That’s what happens when you confront people with a mystery. You can’t be surprised if they start making connections that have nothing to do with you. That’s exactly what happened.

When I look at the message boards to see what’s going on, and there will be somebody who has purported to have seen the movie and they’ll give details—very specific details—that have nothing to do with the film. I think, “People are amazing!” It’s fascinating and it’s just something I’ve never really been a part of prior to this. I mean, we had online fans during Felicity, but it was very different.

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The drink Slusho appears in Alias and Heroes. With all of the speculation about whether there is a Slusho connection in Cloverfield, it seems that the fans are looking for any kind of clues. Many are looking forward to finding secret messages hidden in the film.

I feel like the movie is its own complete experience. Yet in another way, because of all the viral stuff and the meta parallel story we’ve had building all along, that that’s also part of a puzzle. So, in a way, at the center of the whole thing there’s this one puzzle piece, which, if you knew nothing about Slusho or Tagruato and all of those things, it would play completely by itself.

When we were making the movie, we have the Statue of Liberty moment in the teaser trailer. One of the things that I thought was that because, in a lot of the footage we looked at, there were people pulling out their video phones the moment something crazy started to happen and we started thinking that’s what should happen here. One of the things that we were all thinking about was the idea that if you could find all these other peoples’ video phones or video cameras, then you’d find another movie. All these viral things are like different prisms looking at the same story.

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Is there really a Slusho shirt at the party?

Well, you’ll have to see the movie. Slusho does have a connection though...


Be sure to head over to LAist to get the rest of the Matt Reeves interview. There's a lot more to read and a lot more analysis of the movie.

• LAist Interview: Matt Reeves, Director of Cloverfield >

As Rick James once said (and noted in the YouTube comments as well), 'Cocaine is a Hell of a drug!' Jamie is doing some kind of ninja dance after what looks like the seabed nectar not agreeing with her (see Video #8)

Since Cloverfield was officially given a name back in December we haven't heard much from the first official Cloverfield site, 1-18-08.com. However, since the Chuai Station footage was leaked over the Internet this weekend we have seen a huge spike in Cloverfield-related sites.

1-18-08.com has updated with a new picture showing people escaping the Chuai Station after the Cloverfield Monster went to town on it.

Jamie and Teddy video #8 where Jamie eats some of the Slusho sea nectar. Yum!

Alright European Cloverfield fans. We need your help.

3 news reports from Europe have reported on the collapse of the Chuai Station in the Atlantic. The Chuai Station is one of the sites owned and operated by the Tagruato Corp., parent company of Slusho.

Slusho is the product linked to Cloverfield in various production stages. However, this week it is official that Slusho and Cloverfield are together when Rob Hawkins, the lead character, got hired by Slusho (details here)

In these videos you can see the Chuai Station breaking up and a faint roar in the background. The video is taken from a helicopter transporting Japanese businessmen. I'll work on the translations and if any come up I'll add them in. (Edit: 2 translations at bottom of post)

Altercado Tagruato alemán
Uploaded by UrulokiBlog

Tagruato report - German

Altercado en Tagruato español
Uploaded by UrulokiBlog

Tagruato report - Spanish

Tagruato italiano
Uploaded by UrulokiBlog

Tagruato report - Italian
Here are 2 of the translations from Cloverfield clues:

Spanish Translation by JDR:

[START]


This is an amazing story. Three short and highly dramatic scenes have just been disclosed, which seem to be showing the total loss of a rig in the middle of the ocean. The rig seems to be Chouai Station, which lies in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and sank a few days ago, even though there’s been no official confirmation of the incident.

This is the video, shot from a helicopter which is either approaching or leaving the rig:

[footage]

This rig harbours over 300 workers and scientists. The video seems to show it breaking apart and sinking in a matter of minutes, even though this kind of modern
rigs are designed to keep afloat under the worse circumstances up to 24 hours.

It’s something absolutely extraordinary. Experts are studying this footage and trying to determine the causes of this tragedy. Some sources even suggest the
rig may have suffered some kind of attack.

Tagruato, the Japanese company that runs the rig was forced to appear publicly and make a hasty statement when the footage was disclosed.

Their spokesperson said it has been confirmed that the Tidowave eco group was in the area when the incident took place and he maintains that the group has
infiltrated Tagruato operations in the past causing damage. This footage, shot with a mobile phone on the rig seem to confirm this possibility:

[footage]

Whatever the cause, the violence of this event was registered by the Seismological Institute in Ribadeo (real town on the north-western coast of Spain). The scientists at the institute doubt this kind of effect can be the result of a human-made explosion.

The incredible speed, the scale of the event, and the sheer drama of this incident are clearly shown by this last piece of footage, apparently shot by some crew members of the rig while trying to escape.

[footage]

These are truly shocking images. We have no news about the fate of these people and the person who was behind the camera. We can only hope they could somehow survive. It seems…

[end]

And also, the banner on the bottom of the screen reads "A loss of jobs because of the construction's (loss) is foreseen".

German translation by Matthias:

About 1300 km from the coast of New York 3 days ago a drilling did sink for unknown reasons. recently we got dramatic pictures from the colapse of the platform by international news agencys. (man screams stuff i can't understand) The videos show the sinking of Inexplicable reasons which is also for experts hard to understand. at the moment of the disaster 355 workers were on board. the chuai platform was opened in september 2007 and is one of the biggest drillings in the world. it is operated by the big japanese company tagruato wich has it's central in tokyo. the high advanced drilling system was planned by the company zwichau engeneering in leipzig (leipzig is an east-german town) under the leadership of the graduated engineer dominik möltken. we asked him if the colapse could be caused by a construction mistake. dominik möltken:"from structural reasons there are no evidences that a failure of the basic structure or of one of the security systems could cause such a catastrophe. this is just impossible. this is physically not possible."

although the videos are of very poor quality it seems as you can notice a gun fire from the platform. in the past tagruato was already accused to have a big private army and experts investigate at the moment if the escape-behaviour of the crew is caused by a para-military attack.

actual news report that people where killed, but tagruatos spokesman denies that. Yet it is unclear if germans were on board.

Amateur filmmakers are trying to win big with Slusho in the Happy Slusho Commercial contest. The event ends tomorrow night and here are just a few of the home made commercials submitted. There will be five prize winners for this contest. Each prize winner will receive one (1) Slusho!-skinned Alienware Area-51 m9750 laptop computer (Approximate retail value ("ARV") of $3,000). Good luck everyone.

Chappy has made his video for the official entry into the Slusho Happy Commercial Contest of Joy! The entry period for the contest ends on Jan. 4th, and the winners will be picked within 2 weeks of that. Check out Chappy's blog for more info on his project.

A Very Slusho Xmas

Clovefield Director Matt Reeves returns to an interview by IGN this time out. He discusses some of the same items as the "Shock" interview (see here) but adds a lot more new, juicy information. This is just part I of the interview with IGN. They advertise part II will be released soon with details of the film style and how the Statue of Liberties head got down to mid-town.

Reeves and J.J. Abrams were the driving force behind the Felicity series which helped Reeves get the job behind the camera for Cloverfield. However, Reeves couldn't help but wonder why a character director was asked to do an action flick.

• Part I Matt Reeves IGN Interview: Exclusive: Cloverfield Director Speaks!

A nice little contest is being offered by the producers of Cloverfield that shows the first 5 minutes of the movie. Much of this clip flushes out the opening party scene from the Cloverfield trailer and we see a glimpse of the Cloverfield monster after it knocks the head off the Statue of Liberty.

Jamie and Teddy video #5 deals with the package Jamie was supposed to receive on Dec. 9th. The UPS man delivers the package which Jamie opens. Included in the items is a "Slusho" hat.


I believe Dennis as Cloverfield Clues dropped the above video onto YouTube. He's also typed out the transcript of the audio tape Jamie plays:

• Cloverfield Wrap Party Gifts >
  

Win big with Slusho if you can help them in the Happy Commercial Contest. Slusho is giving away prizes for those that create a 30 second commercial to help share the happiness of Slusho. Hit the link in the player for contest details.

You don't need to drink Slusho to talk to a stuffed Moose, but it helps. A new Slusho commercial, the official drink of Cloverfield, is online and the trippy video makes little sense. The tag line "You can't drink just 6" at this stage has not been decoded. However, in the end it probably won't be explained too much. J.J. Abrams has a knack for leaving details like this hanging.