A "Secret" Movie
So I saw Transformers the other day. It was a pretty decent movie except the director bought into the ill conceived idea that shaking the camera all around would somehow make the action scenes more intense. I mean it’s supposed to be a special effects movie… not something to make me dizzy. Shaking the camera DOES NOT make the viewer feel like they are “in the action”. It makes our eyes jiggle around in our skulls and gives us a headache! STOP IT! Anyway, back on track. Before the movie was a trailer for a movie with no name that had all of its footage shot on and from the perspective of a handycam. Starts off somewhat sublime and then hell starts to break loose with some sort of large creature noise and explosions; the cars, building debris and such being tossed around was a nice touch. Then it goes to the black screen that usually shows the title, producer(s), director and main actors/actresses. This screen is up for less than 2 seconds (including cross fade) and then just the date for the release of the movie. Someone filmed it and put it up on one of the video sharing sites so I got to pause it on that frame. The title and actors/actresses are not displayed on this screen. So what is this movie called, what is it about?
Honestly, I completely forgot about it until Jason Bock pointed it out on his blog. Thanks for the nudge, Jason. Of course, where to go look for more information? Ummm. One of the sites that I happen to be listed on, of course! IMDB.com. Doing a little poking around on IMDB, J. J. Abrams has a project listed as “Untitled J. J. Abrams Project (2008)”. The synopsis states:
A giant monster movie (currently referred to internally as Cloverfield; the monster itself is referred to as “The Parasite”, not to be confused with the film project The Parasyte) that is shot using home video cameras from the point of view of people who are experiencing an attack on New York City.
Sounds a little gimmicky though ILM is doing the special effects so who really knows. It’ll be interesting nonetheless.
Well see how long they can keep things a “secret”. The last movie I remember (although I wasn’t old enough to understand the idea behind keeping a movie secret, or that it was a secret until it’s release on DVD and them saying it was done that way in the extras) when Star Wars was being filmed. Even if I were, it would have been a whole lot easier to keep a movie somewhat secret back in 1977. However, doing the same thing today has to be even more difficult. Someone trying to do so has at least two things going against them. First, there is a lot of competition in the box office, so they need to promote as early as they can in order to as many people into the theaters given how short of a shelf life a movie has on the big screen these days. Second, we have this wonderful medium we call the Internet at our fingertips. Information is much more readily available today than it was in 1977. ;-)