Cloverfield Subway Parasites Visual Effects Explained

Tags: cloverfield

Artist Neville Page talks to sci-fi blog io9.com about his design for the monster "Clover" (as he calls it) from Cloverfield.

Here's an excerpt:

How many iterations did the monster go through? Were there different versions with it walking upright, etc? Were you told specifically to avoid any Godzilla-esque designs?

If an iteration was a sketch, then maybe 50 or so. I really did not have the time to invest in this as I had wanted to, because I was still wrapping up Avatar. So. weekends and evenings were all that was available. With that, I had to be very efficient with my time and the process of development I chose. There were many different versions that we explored as we were all looking for what it could be. There were tentacles, there were fewer limbs, more limbs, no limbs... big, broad strokes in search of Clover. I am not recalling being told to NOT do Godzilla like designs, it was more implicit. Since it was not a Godzilla movie, it would have been a huge mistake to do things like it. However, it still needed to be huge, have a head full of teeth, arms and legs, and, because of it coming out of the water, I felt it needed a tail to justify an aquatic potential origin or existence.

What inspired your design? What sources did you draw from?

Well, once we had a direction the inspirations were definitely aquatic. Especially with the head. There is a very complex skeletal structure in there for eating, but you don't see it at all in the movie or toy. Clover also has a complex breathing system and more than one way to eat. But, again, it is hardly obvious in the film nor toy. Honestly, the biggest inspiration is less about one or two other animals, but rather inspired by biological plausibility in general (ignoring the fact that something that big could never live on land). Sometime the cart has to lead the horse and you make it cool first then justify it later, but I always try to give the creatures I design a "good reason" to be. As for the parasite, I knew that I wanted something thin and vertical and light. Kinda like a flea.

Read the full interview here:
io9 Talks To Cloverfield Monster Designer Neville Page

Tags: cloverfield

Tags: cloverfield, transmedia

Tags: cloverfield, transmedia

Here is an assortment of Cloverfield-related video and radio interviews from across the country:

Cloverfield Video Interviews

Cloverfield Radio Interviews

Tags: cloverfield, transmedia

http://imdb.com/title/tt1060277/faq

(don't read this FAQ if you haven't seen the movie yet!)

Tags: cloverfield, transmedia

http://tagruato.jp/

http://tidowave.com/

Tags: cloverfield, transmedia

http://cloverfieldclues.blogspot.com/2008/01/cloverfield-and-lost.html

Tags: cloverfield, transmedia

Tags: cloverfield, transmedia

Producer Bryan Burk talks about the making of Cloverfield and how his early love for Star Wars and filmmaking as a whole influenced himself and his friends -- producer J.J Abrams and director Matt Reeves -- to make a monster movie full of surprises.

Excerpt:

Did working on Cloverfield with Matt and J.J. trigger any memories for you from being the producer of Matt's student film?

When I was in college, Matt was in grad school and J.J. had already graduated and sold his first scripts for Taking Care of Business and Regarding Henry. I remember the biggest obstacle we had was a scene in Matt's student film which is called Mr. Petrified Forest where there's a plane crash. And we didn't know how we were going to pull it off. It's a scene where a guy is in a limo and he's being driven to the airport and he's about to take the flight and freaks out and looks out the window and as he looks out you hear a plane crash on a front lawn and there's mayhem everywhere. Well, it was all fine and dandy on paper, but the big question was how are we going to recreate a plane crash in a student film?

J.J. said, "If you write it, I'll build it." The morning we were supposed to shoot the scene, sure enough, J.J. shows up in his car with this huge plane tail section he built himself with balsa wood in pieces sticking out from the back. He put it together in the yard and we had people running around looking like they were injured in a crash with dry ice all over the place. Matt even ran by screaming, with a dog. We basically recreated a plane crash in the front of Matt's mom's house.

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Read my full interview With Bryan Burk here:
A Monster Hit: Bryan Burk Talks Cloverfield

Tags: cloverfield, star wars rocks