It’s been a really interesting for me, as a person who still watches as many narrative films each week as I do documentaries, to pick up on an interesting trend that’s been going down for a little while now.
I’ve been noticing a striking amount of documentary techniques are starting to get employed in big budget Hollywood cinema. This goes back at least as far as 1999’s phenomenally successful “Blair Witch Project,” which apart from being one of the first major film releases to successfully mount a “viral marketing” campaign (though the film is admittedly far from big budget) played out exactly like an amateur documentary might. The fact that the film was initially greeted with an Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” level of “oh-my-God-this-is-really-happening” panic was to me an incredibly brilliant and successful attempt at using the reality and authenticity normally associated with the documentary medium to great effect.
My own initial exposure to the film was a few months before its much-lauded theatrical release via a friend’s copy recorded onto an oft-taped over,ancient VHS tape. The low-res quality of the copy I was watching added to the spooky effect, and by the time the film’s final shock occurred, I was all but ready to fortify my home and beginning skimming the Yellow Pages for an exorcist or a “Ghost Busting” agency of some sort.
I ain’t afraid of no ghost, but quite frankly, witches scare the tar out of me.
When I realized that the film was staged, I grew to appreciate it all the more, and by the time the film’s star Heather Donahue began appearing in Steak ‘n’ Shake commercials, I realized I could breathe a sigh of relief and that the film’s three adventurers were in fact alive and well (and peddling milkshakes to the masses).
Another recent revelation came when I realized that yet another horror filmmaker, Rob Zombie, had recruited cinematographer Phil Parmet (who among other things was the director of photography on the bona fide classic documentary “Harlan Country USA”). Parmet’s gritty hand-held style lent an even more authentic feeling to the proceedings and managed to ramp the intensity up to 11 (to reference yet another famous film to take cues from the doc medium. I’m going to be very disappointed if you can’t guess which one).
Documentary style shooting has also been very kind to the action genre of late, with Paul Greengrass’ latest film adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne saga “The Bourne Ultimatum,” chock full of rough and tumble hand-held sequences and jarring fight scenes that seem an awful lot less staged than they would were they shot in a more traditional Hollywood fashion.
But the film I write this entire blog in the honor of and wait with baited breath to catch tomorrow evening’s midnight sneak -preview of is the mysteriously marketed—and equally mysteriously titled “Cloverfield”—brought to us by Lost/Alias mastermind J.J. Abrams’ production company Bad Robot.
What little I’ve been able to glean from the early reports I’ve read (mind you I’m always careful not to delve too deeply into spoiler territory) makes the film seem as though it’s truly the final frontier of documentary techniques being used to great effect in a narrative film. Imagine a Godzilla film shot entirely by the hand held cameras by the folks that are experiencing it and you’re somewhere close.
So there we have it—the grit, grime and realism of the documentary medium and the CGI driven big budget Hollywood extravaganza have not collided so much as they’ve found an interesting point of symbiosis. I for one think the way the film is put together will add a level of unprecedented intimacy to a genre (the monster eats city ouvre) and even reinvigorate the idea of disaster films for a whole new generation. As both a documentary nerd and a great proponent of a good monster movie, I’m not at all embarrassed to admit I have pre-purchased my ticket and I am literally counting the hours. Lay it on me J.J. Abrams.
