1-18-08 Project Cloverfield - Warning! Spoilers

First off, thanks to everyone that helped my site grab a prize in the Cloverfield Facebook Contest in December.

If you remember there was a contest to "grab" the html code for the Cloverfield video and see how many times people grabbed the code and put it on their site. Well, I was very fortunate to have a lot of help and I ended up with a nice Cloverfield prize pack. Inside the package were the following:

1. 2 Cloverfield coasters
2. 6 Cloverfield postcards
3. 2 medium "I saw it.." Cloverfield posters
4. 1 Cloverfield cup
5. full-size Cloverfield poster
6. Slusho shirt
7. Cloverfield hat
   

The first, official main-stream Cloverfield movie review (that I know of) has surfaced. The mystery and speculation is gone from trying to guess the validity of reviewers and random posts.

AICN's Harry Knowles has seen the Cloverfield movie and has been kind enough to post about it. AICN is a legit and very big site so you can take this one to the bank. To sum it up without spoilers, Harry was blown away by the movie and claimed it was "a bold genre-reinvention unlike anything we’ve ever seen before."

He compared it to Saving Private Ryan with Monsters instead of Nazis.

You can catch the full review linked below (spoilers warning) and know that security was tighter than ever for the screening which means you most likely won't be seeing a screen cap of the monster before next Friday.

• Harry knows what CLOVERFIELD is!!! (Full review-Spoilers warning!!) >
  

/Film has posted detailed descriptions of the Cloverfield Monster. It looks like not only are you going to be able to see the Cloverfield Monster in the movie, but it will be highly detailed and thought out. J.J. Abrams and crew brought in experts from Phil Tippett's studio to make the Cloverfield Monster highly articulate.

I'll write a little bit about the article but be warned of spoilers below. I'll leave the specific spoiler details to you find at /Film (at the bottom of the post). Some people would not like to know any details, so please beware.

Sorry, no photos of the Cloverfield Monster yet.

---

---

The producers left out one key detail of the Cloverfield Monster: Where it's from.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of these "blackboard" scenes so it's nice to hear they didn't waist their time trying to get all technical. For those of you who have read this blog over the length of the Cloverfield chaos (thank you!) you'll know a bunch of people tried to claim they had the storyline to Cloverfield. Many claimed the Cloverfield storyline had these "blackboard' scenes with scientists and all kinds of detailed explanations. It's nice to know we can officially rule them out.

"And where is he from? “We don’t say – deliberately,” notes (Cloverfield writer Drew) Goddard. “Our movie doesn’t have the scientist in the white lab coat who shows up and explains things like that. We don’t have that scene."

(via /Film) The visual effects for “Cloverfield” were produced under the direction of visual effects supervisors Kevin Blank, Eric Leven of Tippett Studio and Michael Ellis of London-based Double Negative. Tippett created all the shots that include the monsters, while Double Negative was responsible for all of the other destruction and sequences which did not include the monster.

---

The concept for the Cloverfield Monster (affectionately known simply as “Clover” in-house) is simple, says Abrams. “He’s a baby. He’s brand-new. He’s confused, disoriented and irritable. And he’s been down there in the water for thousands and thousands of years.”

And where is he from? “We don’t say – deliberately,” notes Goddard. “Our movie doesn’t have the scientist in the white lab coat who shows up and explains things like that. We don’t have that scene.”

For the monster’s design, Abrams engaged veteran creature designer Neville Page, who had just finished creating characters for James Cameron’s upcoming “Avatar” (and is currently working on Abrams’ “Star Trek”).

• Finish Article: Cloverfield Monster Details Revealed (Warning: spoilers) >
  

---

A semi- humorous look at the world as it has been touched by J.J. Abrams.

Unfortunately, she discusses her interest in the film and brings out the Cloverfield-9/11 connection at the end.

---

A look at the production of new movies Cloverfield and Paranormal Activity, which both borrow heavily from the infamous Blair Witch Project.

---

This is a limited time advertisement, but Cloverfield is the latest movie to take over the homepage of MySpace.

Cloverfield Commercial #6 - Who Would You Go Back For?

The trailer sparked a blogging frenzy.

Now, The Times Christopher Goodwin takes a look at the "Cloverfield" mystery from the creator of "Lost" that's got everybody talking. In a media world in which whole movies are leaked onto the internet before they have been released in cinemas, could Paramount and J.J. Abrams have kept something this big this secret?

• Cloverfield - The first monster hit of 2008 >
  

I'd like to thank Dan from the U.K. for shooting these images of the Cloverfield advertisements at a nearby college this week. The Cloverfield posters aren't named and only have the "2008" text in the corner.

Hat tip to the boys at unFiction for finding the UK Cloverfield Site. The key to the site going online is that an official release date for the U.K. has been announced at 01/02/08. Before you might freak out and think the Brits will get the movie a few weeks early just remember their dating system is a little different than ours and that's really Feb 1, 2008.

• Cloverfield UK Offiical Movie Site >

Also of note from unFiction is this article in the upcoming Maxim magazine featuring a blurp about Cloverfield. The article is titled "Blair Witch 2.0" and the post creator was kind enough to type out the article text. (source)

"THE BLAIR WITCH 2.0
Lost mind-tripper J.J. Abrams talks about his big-screen beast.

The best thing about Transformers wasn't Megan Fox's washboard abs, but a preview that screened beforehand. The jumpy camcorder footage of a monster attacking Manhattan was far scarier than the 'bots--even though the monster was never shown. So began one of the sneakiest marketing campaigns since the Blair Witch started rustling around in the woods. (At press time the movie's official title was allegedly Cloverfield.) "The idea is to surprise people," says producer Abrams, no stranger to pulling fast ones over on crowds. "This is a monster movie, but you've definitely never seen it done this way." In other words, the entire movie, like the preview, is shot as if the characters were holding the camera themselves. "The scope is massive, but it's always very human--and more intense and scary because of that perspective." The real question: Can the flick live up to the insane Internet hype? Yes, says Abrams: "The creature is as shocking and unexpected as the preview." -- Robert Levine

EDIT: This is the issue of Maxim with Mischa Barton on the cover. I have a subscription, so I get it early. No idea when it'll be on stands. (probably a week)"

The (new) official site for the Cloverfield Movie has updated their menu to include a plot summary.

While this Cloverfield Movie summary does not really offer new information, it does pin down some clues that had us all wondering. The Cloverfield Monster is officially pegged as being the size of a skyscraper and the video style of the Cloverfield Teaser Trailer looks to be in utilized for the picture.

• Cloverfield Movie Official Website >
  

Via Flickfilosopher, a critics take on the Cloverfield marketing.

Cloverfield is back. Remember the trailer for an unnamed movie everyone was so excited about a few months back, the one before Transformers about a mysterious monster attacking New York and knocking the head off the Statue of Liberty? There’s a second trailer now: it debuted before Beowulf over the Thanksgiving weekend and immediately afterward started showing up on YouTube in an impossible-to-watch cell-phone-cam version.

I watched it anyway, and found myself getting a little cheesed off. Not about the movie itself, but about how Paramount is marketing this. I can’t go into a press screening without having my bag rifled and my body wanded in search of cameras and other recording devices -- when I upgraded my cell phone recently, I made a point of getting one without a camera in it so I wouldn’t have to check it with the minimum-wage “security” guards who regularly harass we critics and our guests at screenings. It’s not like those pristine DVDs and downloads of new movies are coming from critics sneaking their cameraphones into press screenings, but we get subjected to this anyway.

But Cloverfield makes it clear, I think, that Paramount wanted geeks to camcord that new trailer, wanted it to end up on YouTube. Perhaps no one in Paramount’s marketing department realized that the first teaser trailer would be such a viral hit on the Web this summer, but they had to know the second one would be. This is the first movie for which “piracy” is a planned part of the marketing.

You can now watch that new trailer (as well as the teaser) in crisp, clear, “official” versions at Apple.com, and it’s even more obvious that it was not primarily intended to be seen in theaters but in a format you can freeze and rewind and rewatch. Lots of intriguing stuff slips by a mere frames. And, of course, you don’t have to bother with analyzing it yourself: All the Cloverfield nerds have done it for you. At CloverfieldNews.com, there’s an ongoing discussion about what each and every shadowy image and garbled sound might be. The sprawling Cloverfield fan community has even ferreted out a connection between the movie and Heroes.

Some folks, like my fellow Film.com contributor Eric D. Snider, are tired of all the coyness on the part of Cloverfield producer JJ Abrams and all the literal gameplaying required to figure out what the damn movie is about. I figure the gameplaying isn’t meant for us grownups but for kids with tons of time on their hands. Who else could be able to post something like this: “For the last few weeks, we have been devoting all of our time to the myspace accounts of the characters.” Seriously? All your time? To a movie that hasn’t even opened yet, and might turn out to suck. (That site, Cloverfield Project, hasn’t been updated since August, so perhaps someone got a life.)

I wonder if all these folks realize that they’ve become unpaid marketing managers for a multibillion-dollar corporation. (source)

/Film got their mitts on the new official Cloverfield Poster. The title has been added to the bottom instead of the top as earlier this summer (See: )

Also noted in the unFiction area, there seems to be a rather obvious lack of Liberty Island with that black shape below the Statue of Liberty. However, that is just the base of the statue blacked out to give that illusion.

• Official Cloverfield Poster >
  

Cloverfield now officially has its own website.

With the latest trailer released this week, the J.J. Abrams produced monster flick was officially given its name as "Cloverfield."

With the addition of the Hi-Resolution trailer to the Apple trailer site, the domain name cloverfieldmovie.com went active. Thanks for the Anonymous tip whoever you may be.

For now the cloverfieldmovie.com site only redirects to the Apple trailer site, but we can expect some updates soon.

• Cloverfield Official Website (Cloverfieldmovie.com) >
• New, Hi-Resolution Cloverfield Trailer Online >
  

A quick viewing of the new Hi-Resolution Cloverfield trailer had something strike me as odd. I have yet to check with UnFiction to see what all they dug up, but hopefully some of these can be useful.

First off, did they redo the entire scene where Rob enters his Farewell Party?

Sure enough they did.

The opening shot of both trailers shows Rob entering a surprise party. In the latest trailer his hair is sticking up a little and he's got a new, geeky friend.

Most telling are the touch ups done to the Statue of Liberty's head. Note the glossy look in the new trailer with the added claw marks. Also, a muted green look is added to the trailer instead of the original , reddish street light look

Rob introduces himself. The image is blurred and some digital code-looking jargon covers the screen.