Cloverfield

In the realm of novelty movie genres, found footage is probably one of the most famous, and also one of the most divisive. People are always kinda torn on whether or not they like this style. On one hand, it provides and interesting change of pace from typically movies and allows for some cool tricks. It also gives some better insight into the characters involved, seeing them from an up close personal space. On the other hand, found footage movies are typically shaky and can easily cause viewers to get motion sickness. The reason I bring this up is because these were some of the comments surrounding J.J. Abrams' 2008 sci-fi film, Cloverfield.

This movie revolves around the idea of a group of friends trying to escape New York as a giant monster starts wreaking havoc on the city. This style of filming was used before, in movies such as The Blair Witch Project, and has since been used many times, like in the Paranormal Activity series of movies. However, when this movie first came out, it kickstarted the trend. It was really interesting to see how the characters react in the situation and every little nuance of their personality that gets caught on camera. Another nice touch is how they used the effect of stopping recording, as periodically, seeing how the camera guy is recording over another characters video which gives some background to the movie, it switches between the present with the monster and the past with the boyfriend and girlfriend on their date. The main criticism is, of course, the shaky camera, as it made seeing what was going on difficult and did make some movie goers motion sick.

Overall it was a solid and enjoyable flick that gives a new perspective to the millions of people running from the monster instead of the heroes fighting it off.

Star Wars The blog Post Strikes Back!

What’s better than a Star Wars blog post? A second Star Wars blog post nobody wanted, and this is abut who should helm at least the first installment of a brand new trilogy. First off the bat is George Lucas’s best friend and Indiana co-conspirer Steven Spielberg. He hasn’t touched upon the genre of Sci-fi fantasy in a while and is one of the greatest directors of all time. But he has basically taken his name out of the running wit these comments "I've asked [Lucas]. He won't let me do one. I wanted to do one 15 years ago, and he didn't want me to do it. I understand why - Star Wars is George's baby. It's his cottage industry and it's his fingerprints. He knows I've got Jurassic Park and Raiders. But George has Star Wars and I don't think he feels inclined to share any of it with me." Next up in line would be LOST’s very own J.J. Abrams, he has already shown us he can reinvent a great sci-fi series with his reboot of Star Trek. A lot of us in the nerd community think he would be perfect to do the same with Star Wars. But probably my favorite right now would be Brad Bird. Yes the Incredible’s director has proven himself when it comes to filming a great live action movie with the recent Mission Impossible film. He is very open about his love for Star Wars and he is this nerds pick to helm the start of something really great. 

Super 8 & Optical Flares

This past summer was one of the biggest blockbuster movies that I can remember. It was one of my favorite from the summer and made me feel like a kid again.

It's the story of a group of young boys who witness a train accident and all these strange events begin to occur. Granted a lot this seemed far beyond realistic since it was about aliens but I truly appreciated the story because it truly captured a kid. All kids want to do is play and explore. In the movie, all they wanted to do was explore and create their own movie based around what was happening



Another thing to point out were all the lens flares. For a few years, lens flares have become a very stylistic attribute to the image. These were seen in the 2009 Star Trek, which was also directed by Super 8's J.J. Abrams. Since learning After Effects, videocopilot.net has a package called Pro Presets, which contains Optical Flares. The person created Optical Flares, Andrew Kramer, worked on both of Abrams' movies to create these futuristic flares seen on screen.

I very much felt like I was watching ET since it was produced by Spielberg. These kids had some sort of a connection with this alien creature since they are sheltered as children like alien in previous time. All in all it was one of my favorite movies from the summer.