Building a Better Monster

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 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."

Not only is the creature disoriented - he's downright angry. "There are a bunch of smaller things - humans - that are annoying him and shooting at him like a swarm of bees," observes Reeves. "None of these things are going to kill the monster, but they hurt it and it doesn't understand. It's this new environment that it finds frightening."

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"). "So much has been done in so many different movies with large creatures that the trick was to find a way to create a unique character," explains Abrams. The producer had first become familiar with Page's work through the designer's series of instructional DVDs for The Gnoman Workshop. "One of the things that struck me about Neville's instructional videos was the way he approaches everything from a realistic point of view. He develops non-existing creatures, but can explain to you their physical makeup, musculature and skeletal structure."

Adds producer Burk, "Neville was the first person we met with. And he's amazing. He doesn't just think about designing the creature, he thinks in terms of how it would walk, how it would breathe, what its skin would be like, how it lives - everything." Once Page's designs were complete, it was up to Tippett Studio to implement and refine the monster for inclusion in the few - but crucial - shots in which he appears. "We did a test, where we inserted him into some background plate shot in downtown L.A.," explains Leven. "We experimented with different looks, in terms of not only the creature itself, but how it would interact with the camera and with light."
Another facet of the design was added at director Reeves' suggestion. "I wanted him to have that sort of spooked feeling, the way, when a horse is spooked, you can see the white of its eyes along the bottom. And you see that when the military is firing on him, where he becomes completely agitated and confused."
As part of a "post-birth ritual," as Abrams describes it, the monster is seen early on scratching his back on a building (destroying it in the process), to remove a layer of parasites that are set loose to wreak their own havoc on the city."Drew and I were struggling with, 'When you have a monster that size how do you keep the characters from seeming totally irrelevant?'" says Abrams. "How do you have any one-on-one struggle?" Explains Goddard, "Because he's so big, we knew it was going to be difficult to have intimate sequences. It's not like any of the characters could fight him or that anyone could even figure out a way to hurt him."
And because of that, the idea of the parasites was born. "They're these horrifying, dog-sized creatures that just scatter around the city and add to the nightmare of the evening," Abrams says.

"The parasites have a voracious, rabid, bounding nature, but they also have a crab-like crawl," Reeves explains. "They have the viciousness of a dog, but with the ability to climb walls and stick to things."

In addition, the parasites also move more rapidly than their giant host counterpart. "Tippett Studio has a lot of expertise with these kinds of fast-moving creatures that can destroy people and rip them to shreds, which is always a lot of fun to work on," says Leven. "They're like little whirling dervishes that just destroy anything in their path. They're totally deadly."

heard its the debris of a satelite owned by Tagruato

FACT ONE: It Came From Japan
Producer J.J. Abrams took his son to a toy store in Japan and saw rows and rows of Godzilla toys. Feeling that the U.S. lacked a giant monster of its own, he decided to a make his own creature feature that would be filmed entirely through the point-of-view of the people on the ground, running for their lives.

FACT TWO: "Felicity" Fans Are in for a Shock
Abrams picked his childhood friend Matt Reeves to direct the film. Together, they created Felicity, a show about young New Yorkers looking for love. But while the most exciting moment on that show was the time Keri Russell cut her hair, in this movie the entire city gets hacked to pieces.

FACT THREE: This Poster Doesn't Lie
As a kid, Abrams loved Escape From New York. But he felt cheated that the image of the Statue of Liberty's head lying in the street on the movie's poster wasn't actually in the film. Abrams finally got to see it on the big screen in the teaser trailer that appeared before Transformers last summer.

FACT FOUR: They Never Meant to Call It That
To keep the movie a secret, the project was given the codename "Cloverfield," after a street near Abrams' office. The filmmakers had planned to release the movie as Greyshot, the name of a key Central Park location. But the temporary title spread through the internet so quickly that crew decided to keep it.

FACT FIVE: Will There Be Anyone Left for a Sequel?
In the exclusive clip below, Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and Beth (Odette Yustman) run to catch the last helicopter out of Manhattan. Do they make it? We're not telling. But Director Matt Reeves has stated that if they do a sequel, it might take place during the same monster attack, but seen from another camera.

source : http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/justthefac...loverfield.html

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