1-18-08 Project Cloverfield - Warning! Spoilers

Quint from AICN has landed some sneaky pictures of what looks like the set of the upcoming Star Trek movie directed by J.J. Abrams. The working title of this particular movie is called "Corporate Headquarters" but as we all know by now Abrams loves to mix up the code names of his movies to film in secrecy.

You can clearly see the giant blue-screen in the background and a spacecraft parked in the shade. Also, the uniforms look spot on when compared to these early leaked images of Star Fleet extras.

With a little help from Cinema Blend I see that back in November there were casting calls for extras for a project called "Corporate Headquarters" which called for “Vulcan type eyebrows” and cadets and military types.

Paramount Pictures and Bad Robot Productions moved the opening date of the J.J. Abrams directed Star Trek XI film from the original date this Christmas to a May date the following year. There have been different reasons given as to why the sudden move of the opening dates that range from script rewrites that need the writer's strike to end first to the simple reason that the cast and crew just needed more time to meet the deadline.

Star Trek XI producer Damon Lindelof, who also is co-creator and head writer of the hit Television show Lost, took time to give his opinion on the change in dates.

"Moving Star Trek XI from December 2008 to May 2009 will have positive benefits, says Star Trek XI producer Damon Lindelof.

As reported by Trekmovie.com, according to Lindelof, based on Paramount's growing understanding of the movie, Star Trek XI was more appropriate for a summer release.

"It was being presented to J.J. [Abrams]," said Lindelof, "and I have been hearing the same thing from the studio, that based on the dailies they have been seeing and hanging out on the set and seeing and beginning to understand what the movie is, I think that they are starting to look at it as a big summer crowd-pleaser as opposed to a very sci-fi, not-as-accessible-to a-wider-audience Christmas release. So the reason that they have moved the release date is for their ability to market the film and sort of position it as the Pirates of the Caribbean for next summer."

There are other benefits to the later release. "On a budgetary level probably the most significant effect it will have is that we will not have to rush our post [production]," explained Lindelof. "As you might imagine there are a gazillion effects shots. I have seen some of the early work being done by ILM and [visual effects supervisor] Roger Guyett and it is nothing short of astonishing. So they’ll basically have more time to render those effects than they would have if we had to release it by Christmas. So that will probably make the movie a little less expensive to produce."

Lindelof also talked about how the move would affect the release of a full movie trailer. "Obviously the schedule is now going to change to accommodate the new release date," he said. "My guess is that the strategy will turn more into a slow burn. But at this point we also have to be cognizant of once the film is done, and the more we shoot the more likely it is to invite spoilers if we are holding everything back. So we still want to release those images. As far as for the first trailer trailer, I heard we were still on for the summer to have a full trailer for the movie. But I would not be surprised if they decide to hold that back."

Those working on Star Trek XI wanted to make the movie appealing both to long-term fans and yet attract a new audience. "When we all sat down and started to talk about whether or not we wanted to take on Trek, the question was very simple and that question has remained the same: do we think we can make it good?" said Lindelof. "And there is a way to make that movie where the fans will feel that literally four decades of storytelling and canon is not being ignored, but you make the movie so there is an access point for people who want to come in and hear the band for the first time, as it were. We talked about that and kicked some story ideas around and became totally infected with it." (source)

I've had a few requests to look into the Aladygma rumors. /Film found a little bit of info on the possible Cloverfield sequel codenamed Aladygma. Knowing J.J. Abrams and his ability to defy truth seekers with his magical mystery box, Aladygma is probably something different and new.

If anyone is good at anagrams take a pop at "Aladygma." Abrams and Bad Robot are know for their anagrams and obscure references so let me know if anything comes up.

A Google search finds an Aladygma website with the text "Start date 00 | 11 | 22 | 88" and "coming soon next day?" in the bottom right. This site is probably unrelated but who knows with Abrams?

Now, if you spell Aladygma backwards, and who wouldn't, and switch a letter you'll get Amgydala. This is an actual word which is means "One of the basal ganglia in the limbic system of the brain thought to control motivation and emotion. It may also contain the memory of recent events."

Some Star Trek updates to pass on to you. The official Star Trek Movie forums are up and running for you fans to get in and toss around theories and ideas. Links to the forums are on the main site as well as International sites for the movie and the Star Trek Facebook page.

• Star Trek Official Movie Site >

The Oceanic Air "New" Gold Pass Commercial as aired on January 31, 2008 after the premier of the 4th Season of Lost. The viral ads being pumped out of Bad Robot right now are centering around Lost and very little has trickled out about Cloverfield.

The above billboard photo I took here in Knoxville, TN, about one month ago. Since then someone has spraypainted "Find 815.com" over the middle part of the sign. The site mentioned is a game related to Lost so if you really dig the viral mind games of Cloverfield and Lost be sure to get started with this new one.

• Find 815.com >

The Bad Robot viral crews are hard at work promoting the fictitious Oceanic Airlines. Commercials and billboards (see here) have popped up around the country and now a company van is rolling around select neighborhoods. Love the bumper sticker. (source)

J.J. Abrams and crew are taking Star Trek down a familiar path. A small viral campaign for the sci-fi movie is popping up and I hope they keep going with it. By viewing the main website for the movie you can access the shipyard where construction crews are building the Enterprise. (click here and hit the small red button near the "under construction" text below the trailer after it loads)

Star Trek is also getting a Facebook page. Cloverfield had a Facebook page which they used to promote the widget contest which featured exclusive pre-release footage of the movie. Star Trek fans keep an eye out there for possible exclusive updates.

• Star Trek on Facebook! >
  

J.J. Abrams is a busy man. Cloverfield will most likely start the year as the first blockbuster while his new Star Trek movie will end the year in similar fashion. With the Cloverfield movie you'll notice the first look at the Star Trek movie with the new trailer in which J.J. steps behind the camera to direct a motion picture for only the second time. The first being Mission Impossible 3.

Also at the beginning of Cloverfield (as well as the Star Trek teaser) you'll notice that Bad Robot (Abrams production company) gets a 3-D makeover on their logo. You can see it a little in this Star Trek Teaser Trailer video below. You'll also see the same text used for both movies.

• 'Star Trek' First Look: The New Enterprise >
  

From concept to screen, Entertainment Weekly goes behind the Cloverfield mystery to figure out exactly why producer J.J. Abrams is fascinated with mysteries. Producer Brian Burke explains "Our feeling was that it was exactly the kind of movie we wished we could have seen when we were 13."

• Continue: 'Cloverfield' Making a Monster >
  

More debate and mystery surrounds the Cloverfield ending. When you sit through the 12 minute ending credits, which I recommend to witness the killer "(Roar!) Cloverfield Overture", you will find a garbled audio track at the very last part of the credits. It sounds like Rob is still recording on the camera. Here's a clip of the audio track.

It sounds like someone says "Help us..." and a bunch of garbled audio. However, the guys at Unfiction have played the last part of the audio clip backwards to reveal this (click the blue triangle to play)
boomp3.com

At the very end you'll hear: "It's still alive!"

Freaky! The Cloverfield Monster is still alive. So that brings us to the next question. Will there be a Cloverfield sequel? Can we see Cloverfield 2 in the near future?

Lizzy Caplan stars in Cloverfield and sits down and talks about the secrets of Cloverfield. Okay, slightly misleading title. "Cloverfield" star, Lizzy Caplan, tells us what she hasn't been allowed to talk about and what she's had to do to keep the "Cloverfield" secrets.

This is the first confirmation that I've seen where Cloverfield was NOT going to be the name of the flick and was always just a code name for shooting. Bad Robot will tell you they wanted it all along but I have argued that they stuck with it because of various reasons. Mainly that they tried a few out to get reactions like "monstrous" that received so much backlash. By the time they had to pick a title they were left with few options.

"Cloverfield" star, Lizzy Caplan, tells us what she'd do if the Statue of Liberty's head landed at her feet and what she thinks about the way the movie's used every day technology to tell the story.

Actress Lizzy Caplan talks about the fake MySpace pages for the Cloverfield cast members.

"Cloverfield's" Fake MySpace Pages

Fans of the viral world of Cloverfield will be slightly upset when they find out their world of Slusho and Tagruato are allegedly not in the movie. Was there ever going to be a Slusho tie-in?

Actress Lizzy Caplan gives her take on how the guys at Bad Robot are just messin with our heads!

"Cloverfield's" Lizzy Caplan & Slusho

J.J. Abrams produced Cloverfield, a monster movie for the YouTube era, opening Jan. 18.

TIME's Hollywood correspondent, Rebecca Winters Keegan, sat down with him on the set of the new Star Trek movie he's directing, where Abrams talked about sci-fi as catharsis, the age of self-documentation and why we're so obsessed with the end of the world.

• Continue: Read the entire J.J. Abrams interview with TIME >

The title of the J.J. Abrams produced monster flick derived its name from a road, not a monster. Moviesonline sheds some light on the situation:

“We started working on the movie, and it became like a nickname. But we thought, ‘There’s no way that’s going to be the title of the movie,’” Abrams recalls. “We even had another title, ‘Greyshot,’ the name of the bridge that Rob and Beth are hiding under in Central Park at the end of the film, which we were all set to announce at Comic-Con. But, by that time, the name ‘Cloverfield’ had already leaked out, and the fans already knew it by that name, so we just decided to stick with that.” (source)

I'm really glad they didn't go with "Greyshot?" That's about as good a title as "Monstrous."

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 >

Matt Reeves, the "Cloverfield" director, gets to be one of the lucky few to witness the creation of J.J. Abrams "Star Trek" movie. Reeves talks with MTV to discuss peaking in on the "Star Trek" dailies.

If it seems like MTV is getting a few more "Cloverfield" stories than most it's because Viacom owns both MTV and Paramount, who is distributing "Cloverfield."

• ‘Cloverfield’ Director Starry-Eyed Over ‘Trek’ Trailer, Footage >
  

Sources tell Shock Till You Drop that Cloverfield director Matt Reeves and the Bad Robot crew have cobbled together a lean 'n mean 90-minute tale for the Cloverfield's running time. Shorter run times also mean more showings in the theater and hopefully a nice and quick story.

• Cloverfield's Running Time, Slusho Commercial >