ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese talks Cloverfield and The Batman director Matt Reeves on found footage horror and meets Steven Spielberg. Cloverfield is the received a limited edition 15th anniversary 4K UHD and Blu-ray Steelbook release which comes out this week.
Tyler Treese: Cloverfield has really stood the test of time and I think one of the aspects that makes the film better is how you handle the found footage. What we see in the movie as a viewer is just as important as what is off camera and what we can’t see. Can you talk about your method of using that limited perspective to your advantage?
Matt Reeves: Yeah, I mean it’s interesting because what you’re describing is exactly the approach that I’m trying to do because one of the things that I’m trying to do in research is … obviously we know that we want to do this kind of on Godzilla-like the movie from the point of view of the crowds running on the ground, but that idea of limited perspective and how that drives anxiety and panic…obviously there are a lot of movies that have done that , but I watched a lot of documentaries and There was some footage that we saw in a documentary of someone filming.
They had a Handycam — it was an Iraqi soldier and they were in a tent and there were bombs coming and all of a sudden they went under their bed and all you could see was… horrible. It is only the voice and the limited perception.
And there is something about the idea of holding back the entire view that puts a lot of anxiety in the viewer. The other thing is, I think early on, I remember JJ saying, “You know what’s so great about this idea? You can always cut.” And I said, “No, actually you don’t always cut because you have to have a reason to cut, or the audience goes, ‘Well why did he cut there?'” So that means that made the movie. It was more difficult because not only was our vision limited but it ended up being a longer, continuous take than maybe what was originally intended, because I kept thinking, “Okay, we have to think every time the camera … the camera falls and so it’s gone or finally he feels that this moment is over so he turns it off.”
Or we have to look at all things. But it’s actually about seeing a lot of – I mean one of the crazy things, like when we shot the party scene, we had Josh Sheppard, who’s done a lot of storyboarding for me since – in in fact, he’s in every movie I’m in. It’s been done since – he put together this thing where he found this party on YouTube and these guys were filming themselves. [The] The guy has a going party and stuff like that, there’s a line from it where this guy says, he goes, “What are you gonna do man?” He said, “I don’t know anyone. You’re my main dude.” And we literally [were] said, “Oh, that’s great!”
But there’s something about the vibe of people filming each other and what you’re seeing, what’s not on camera, and just trying to make it feel real. However, the horror of it and the development of that part… I think that’s always the thing you don’t see that’s scarier than what you see because your brain is filled with the worst thing you can think of. . So going to the subways and having to turn on the night vision and those moments where, in the dark, you go, “Wait, wait, wait, there are some … I hear sounds,” all those things. goes into that almost reptilian part of our brain and says, “Uh, something bad is going to happen.”
Yeah, definitely the Jaws mentality of less is more. I read that Spielberg had any advice for the film. Can you talk about your interaction with him?
Spielberg didn’t come while we were shooting, but what he did was he watched the movie while we were finishing it and then he gave us some advice about the last moment with the alarms going off — the idea of the whole city alarms as we reach that kind of …Strange love moment” where you realize things are going to explode and that kind of thing. So he had an influence, actually, on the last moment of the movie when we were mixing it. He had a lot of great ideas that we did, which was a lot of fun. It’s fun. It was very nice.
He talked to me after finishing because one day, I called Bryan Burk from the set of Star Trekwhere he was sitting with JJ And the writers and Bryan and he said, “Oh hey, where’s the director of Cloverfield? I want to talk to him.” So Bryan was like, “You better go to Paramount now. Spielberg asked where you were. I was like, “Oh! Okay!” So I went and I just sat down and then he turned to me and after he’s talking, he was giving them a lot of input on the script and stuff and he was really lovely. Then he turned to me, he walked away, “Wait, that’s your directed Cloverfield?” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “You scare me.” And I said, “Oh.” It was great. There is no higher compliment I can get than that. Steven Spielberg scares me. It was great.
Cloverfield has entered the public consciousness deeply and I feel like no other show has done anything like South Park doing a two-part parody special. Have you seen the episodes and did you enjoy this spoof?
do you know I’ve never seen that, but now I have to look it up! Here’s the thing: I remember there were a lot of different spoofs, but no – actually that’s how I first learned about it, so I’ll definitely check that out. That’s weird.
Cloverfield was really your breakthrough as a director. What was the biggest lesson you learned from its production, either business or creative?
Gosh … I guess that’s what it is for me Cloverfield a breakthrough for me and understanding the ways in which you can do genre and still make filmmaking personal. That movie was so much about … to know how it was made, I really had to check it out. It’s almost therapeutic, like my own anxiety. So when you talk about that idea of a tight look and how things feel, there’s something very positive about the idea that goes through – all of it – when we’re after 9/11 and the the idea of feeling like, “Gosh, here we are at a moment of such uncertainty,” and the idea of a moment that could act in a way that would grow to the kind of import and impact that never fully existed. who understands what our center is and that fear. … first of all, I’m a fearful person anyway.
I realized that maybe that movie was the first thing where I was really put to the extreme in my fear of what we were doing and I’ve been doing it ever since. So I think it was really this idea that opened it up for me, because I’ve always liked genre films, but to understand what it could open up in terms of storytelling. Where you can explore things through metaphors of what you’re doing in the real world, but do it through fantasy or do it through something that has some sort of genre element and find that intersection between in something that has a kind of pop sensibility but also a personal feeling. And I think that, for me, really comes from Cloverfield.