gizmodo.com/347463/the-real-camera-behind-cloverfield
com/gadgets/The_REA L_Camera_Behind_Cloverfield For those who've seen the unique monster movie Cloverfield, you know that the story is supposed to have been shot by the aptly-named character "Hud" with a cheapo handheld consumer camera. You know, something you could grab at Best Buy next weekend, use once and forget about forever.
jpg It's a 1080p camera that shoots anywhere from 1P to 60P a second, so 24P shooting (the exact framerate of film) is no problem. jpg That's not quite the case, since such a puny card could never write an uncompressed 4:4:4 (full color space) image in real time. Instead, filmmakers probably used Sony's SRW-1, which can hook directly to the camera to allow both easy shooting and recording speeds of 110MB/sec (versus an SD card's 20MB/sec). Sony hasn't made that number public, but their next camera down runs $115,000. And while we know Cloverfield's main character was a hotshot VP of some sort, he probably didn't invest that much into his Coney Island video* fund.
These huge companies with their huge budgets dont have the balls to make good films so they have to pad their babies with the ol' "this was shot on non pro equipment. The whole film cost us 4 grand, which isn't low budget... When inde filmmakers (that are truly independent and not in bed with such small companies like Sony) claim the same thread, then yes, you should applaud.
Before the real action started I found "Hud"'s use of the camera to be almost childish, and after the monster showed up I would have expected even an idiot like him to try to do a little more with the camera than he did. Granted they spent most of the time running around the city but even when they weren't running he was swinging the camera around like they were. Hell, you can buy an image stabilizing handheld camcorder for $99 on Amazon these days. Maybe it was because of the annoying camera usage that I also took issue with a number of plot points throughout the movie. I won't go into details here (don't want to post spoilers) but suffice it to say I counted at least half a dozen things that appeared to me to defy physics, logic, military training, etc.
However, if you are trying to simulate a handheld consumer camera, they must have forgotten about the "Skywalker Sound" audio track as I am sure a home cam would be full of hiss, wind noise, fumbling, auto gain... Now,(this bothers me) suppose you use some atomic weapons on something like Godzilla, let's just say that anything electronic would not survive, right? But hey, I went to see this as a "fun, get-together, let's be entertained" monster movie. Granted, JJ could have cut another 3 minutes of jerky-vomit-induction handheld shots, I approved.
This movies was like the retarded lovechild of Godzilla, The Blair Witch Project, and War of the Worlds. I would honestly be shocked if it makes a single dollar after this weekend.
I was very interested in cloverfield up to the point where I learned the whole movie was filmed using the shot with a handheld camera" gimmick. Everyone knows they're watching a hollywood movie, so what's the point of pretending it's just "some guys home video?" Give me a good story with good acting and good camera work.
It is really small and felt the most like a small consumer camera." After testing the Viper, the Panavised F900 and the then-brand-new Sony CineAlta F23 at night in downtown Los Angeles, Bonvillain decided to use the F23 for the New York phase of shooting. "I found the F23 to be more sensitive in available light situations. Unlike the Viper, which comes back with a green bias that has to be dialed out, the F23 looked a lot more natural to my eye."
WD40: Actually, you'll want to wait for about 30 minutes into the movie to see anything worth watching at all. The first half hour is dumbass Hud walking around a cliche NY loft party with the camera trying to hit on a girl (badly).
JRo: paying for a movie and liking it are 2 separate things. I think a lot of people (including me) got duped into the Hollywood hype machine and JJ Abrams name attached to this "movie."
As did the (probable) majority of the audience who could be heard clapping as the credits rolled. I'm not saying this movie will change your life, far from it. But it really is the first "Giant monster destroys city" movie not just shot from but also from the perspective of just some average joes. There's no miniature singing Japanese women, no flying dragons with lasers shooting out of their eyes, no scientists explaining everything, and no grand military plan to cause a volcano to erupt on the monster or some crap. If you wanted to know what it'd be like to be in a city attacked and not know wtf is going on, see this movie. But it really is a fairly clever premise, and an interesting take on an otherwise tired genre.
it's nearly impossible to track crappy footage for special effects. I wonder if that was a consideration in making this film. Either Thomson or Sony would be a good choice to film this, both cameras can detect quite a bit of information with very little light. That was shot with the Thomson Vipercam, and was lit with...
Way to reference a really frightening, emotionally charged and very real event douchebags. Oh yes and I've also survived being impaled on a piece of rebar that went straight through my heart, then bled out for a few hours, then had my friends tear me off of it. It wasn't a big deal I was running around within minutes.
I'm wondering if this is how Giz researches most of it's posts. They used several different cameras, including the HVX200, Thompson Viper, and some $400 handheld jobs. Please Gizmodo, Mark, whomever, don't state an absolute if it's not an absolute.
Don't go to a full price showing, but see it in a decent theater with diminished expectations. Assume that there isn't a character you'll meet that you won't want to die and if that's cool, then watch it.
That's my biggest problem with Bourne 2 and 3 They spend thousands on training and choreography and waste it b/c from our view it's just a bunch of blurry flailing. I won't go see movies that are Blair Witch like - it was good, it was unique, but it's done.
Argyle: As one who has also witnessed the horror here in NYC, all I can say is: lighten up Francis. If a big ass monster is destroying the city and knocking down buildings, should the debris explode into a flurry of rose petals? The bitching of the movie-going public is why movies will start to suck hard in the future.
Argyle: That rebar scene was one of the many that I had a big issue with. My brother was in a 40mph head-on car crash that broke his leg. He passed out from the pain when the paramedics were finally able to pull him out of the car. That girl would have passed out from a combination of blood loss and pain when they pulled her off that rebar. Another one I had a problem with was the helicopter flying pretty much right next to the monster, almost begging to be knocked out of the sky by it. Any military helicopter doing an evacuation would immediately head AWAY from the danger and not fly parallel to it. It should have been flying south or east as fast as it could, not north where the monster was.
Kaiser-Machead: A big-ass monster destroying the city doesn't mean you throw all logic out the window. Argyle had a legitimate gripe over that particular scene. I can certainly believe a person would get impaled by a piece of rebar but there's no way that she would have walked away after getting pulled off it. The combination of shock, pain, and blood loss would have caused her to pass out. Seeing her running around like she hadn't been seriously injured was just too much for me to swallow.
I was in a car accident one time, and these insensitive clods insist on putting high-speed car chases with impressively catastrophic collisions in all these new action movies. It's like making a movie that is engaging, exciting, and interesting to watch is more important than the feelings of all of us car accident survivors.
IphtashuFitz: I wasn't referring to the scene with the rebar at all, but rather the scene when the monster first attacks. If something is knocking buildings down, it's reasonable ...
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