Paranormal Activity
Conglomerates and Video: 1975
Paranormal Activity
1)After six years of doors slamming ominously, sheets moving eerily and bodies levitating
mysteriously, the “Paranormal Activity” franchise is reaching a conclusion.
2)Paramount has said the six-film series, which uses a found-footage format to track a
ghostly presence in a variety of suburban homes,
will end with the 3-D “Ghost Dimension."
The “Paranormal Activity”
1) series started as a ghost story made on a shoestring budget.
2) The first movie was (New York Times article : Ghostbusters on a Budget:
If Things Go Bump in the Night, Grab a Camera Click Here) shot in 2006 in the home of its
writer and director, Oren Peli. The NYT article doesn't work - so see full article below:
3) Its scariest moments came courtesy of a stationary video camera set up in the corner
of a bedroom.
4) The film forced audiences to search the screen in silence for evidence of paranormal
activity, first with subtlety, then with increasing intensity.
Film Introduction
1)The film played the Screamfest Horror Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2007
2) and eventually caught the attention of Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks.
3) After Paramount released it in 2009, “Paranormal Activity”
earned more than $100 million at the box office
4) and led to ”Paranormal” 2, 3 and 4 and
5) “Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones” that would bring the series domestic total to
$380 million.
6) Other directors helmed the movies and new writers were hired, but Mr. Peli, 45, has
had a producer credit on all of the films.
Interview with Mr. Peli
1) Speaking by phone from Los Angeles, Mr. Peli explained what he thought
of the found-footage genre now, why he directed only the first film and
what he had learned from fans of the franchise.
2)Here are edited excerpts from that conversation.
Q. What were your goals when you were making the first “Paranormal Activity”?
A. I wanted to make a movie that would do well enough that I could quit my day job.
I was working as a video game programmer. It wasn’t so much that I hated the
programming part, but I hated most of my co-workers.
Up until then, I thought, to be a filmmaker, you need to go to film school, you need to
work your way up and maybe you’ll get a chance to direct a movie. But then I saw
“The Blair Witch Project”
(NYT article: FILM REVIEW; Vanished in the Woods, Where Panic Meets
Imagination Click Here) - Link does not work - See article below
and looked at other films like “El Mariachi”
(NYT article FILM VIEW; Poverty Becomes Oh So Chic Click Here) See article below...
and
“Open Water,” see review below -
(NYT article: FILM; A Couple Go For a Morning Dive .Click Here - See Below)
where the filmmakers picked up a video camera and made a movie.
I thought, if ever I have an idea, I’ll do the same.
Q. Why didn’t you direct any more “Paranormal” movies?
A., Honestly, I was burned out. I spent two years making the movie and two years waiting
for its eventual distribution. The movie became a huge hit and exceeded everyone’s
expectations. I thought, cool, I’m done. I didn’t feel the need to do it again. Let someone
else come in with a fresh idea for the story and fresh eyes for directing.
End of Interview
Ghostbusters on a Budget: If Things Go Bump in the Night, Grab a Camera
A scene from "Paranormal Activity."
A scene from "Paranormal Activity."
Credit...Paramount Pictures
Paranormal ActivityDirected by Oren PeliHorror, Mystery, ThrillerR1h 26m
By A.O. Scott
Oct. 8, 2009
MOVIE REVIEW | 'PARANORMAL ACTIVITY'
Ghostbusters on a Budget: If Things Go Bump in the Night, Grab a Camera
A scene from "Paranormal Activity."
Credit...Paramount Pictures
Paranormal Activity Directed by Oren Peli
Horror, Mystery, ThrillerR1h 26m
By A.O. Scott
Oct. 8, 2009
“Paranormal Activity” is a crudely made, half-clever little frightener that has become something of a pop-culture sensation and most certainly the movie marketing story of the year. Midnight showings in college towns and then in big cities, announced through minimal, viral publicity, have generated frenzied word of mouth and long lines at the box office.
And now, to capitalize on this success, Paramount is giving the movie, written and directed by Oren Peli on a minuscule budget of $10,000, a full commercial release. Starting today, you can see it during daylight or dinner hours. It won’t be the same, though. At the midnight screening I attended last weekend, by far the most entertaining thing about the movie was the audience.
“Oh no. Oh hell no.” That was a stocky gentleman in the row behind me, whimpering as a door swung open on-screen. There was a lot of screaming later on — when, for example, the same door slammed shut — and also laughter, both anxious and mirthful. There was, above all, the sense of a communal, half-clandestine good time that is all too rare in an age of corporate entertainment. I was on the job, and also chaperoning a teenager, but I felt as if I’d snuck out of the house and broken curfew.
By any serious critical standard, “Paranormal Activity” is not a very good movie. It looks and sounds terrible. Its plot is thin and perforated with illogic. The acting occasionally rises to the level of adequacy. But it does have an ingenious, if not terribly original, formal conceit — that everything on-screen is real-life amateur video — that is executed with enough skill to make you jump and shriek. There is no lingering dread. You are not likely to be troubled by the significance of this ghost story or tantalized by its mysteries. It’s more like a trip to the local haunted house, where even the fake blood and the tape-loop of howling wind you have encountered 100 times before can momentarily freak you out.
The film starts abruptly and never leaves the nondescript house in San Diego where a young couple is dealing with an unusual problem. It seems that Katie (Katie Featherston) has been troubled by intimations of a supernatural presence, which her boyfriend, Micah (Micah Sloat), has decided to capture on video. He rigs up a camera in their bedroom, which starts to pick up things that go bump in the night.
During the day, he and Katie argue about what to do, and their quarrels occasioned some interesting relationship advice from members of the audience. Half expressed the strong conviction that Micah should get as far away from that crazy shrew as possible, while the other half thought she should throw that idiot and his camera out of the house. Instead of seeing a couples therapist, they briefly consult a psychic (Mark Fredrichs), who can’t really help other than to provide the movie with a flimsy pretext for keeping poor Katie and Micah at home.
Further plot summary is beside the point. Weird stuff continues to happen, and Mr. Peli shows a measure of ingenuity in producing scares out of the simplest imaginable effects. You see no monsters, very little blood and nothing you don’t anticipate, and yet it all has some impact. A number of horror movies, from “Blair Witch” to “Diary of the Dead” to “Cloverfield,” have used make-believe amateur footage, but “Paranormal Activity” does so in a way that is rigorously sloppy, almost convincing you that this is a poor doofus’s record of his girlfriend’s harassment by a demon.
But the suspension of disbelief ultimately depends on the late-night crowd. In a sparsely attended theater, or at home on DVD, the creakiness of the film would be much more glaring, and its lack of subtext and visual polish would mute its modest, fleeting pleasures. It works best when it comes out of nowhere, because that’s, in the end, where it goes.
“Paranormal Activity” is rated R. People tend to swear a lot when scary stuff happens.
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
FILM REVIEW
FILM REVIEW; Vanished in the Woods, Where Panic Meets Imagination
The Blair Witch Project
Directed by Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sánchez
Horror, MysteryR1h 21m
By Janet Maslin
July 14, 1999
See the article in its original context from July 14, 1999, Section E, Page 1Buy Reprints
Like a cabin built entirely out of soda cans, ''The Blair Witch Project'' is a nifty example of how to make something out of nothing. Nothing but imagination, and a game plan so enterprising it should elevate its creators to pinup status at film schools everywhere. Shot in only eight days with no real script, this little movie is a locomotive pulling a Web site, a mythology, a special on the Sci-Fi Channel and assorted tie-ins in its wake. And all of it, including the film's cult status, has been skillfully spun out of thin air.
The horror genre is ideal for the bare bones (pardon the expression) nature of this undertaking. And it enabled the filmmakers to turn a near-total absence of resources into a creative advantage. Five friends who had come out of the University of Central Florida's film program realized that the best way to make a movie without sets, costumes, music or special effects would be to incorporate that spareness into the story. With no easy formulas to fall back on, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez (who are jointly credited with writing, directing and editing) give their audiences no easy idea of what to expect.
''The Blair Witch Project'' begins by announcing the disappearance of three documentary filmmakers in the woods of Maryland in 1994 and presents itself as the scenes they left behind. That way, its scrappy home-movie style is completely, even ingeniously, appropriate to its story. It so knowingly summons the atmosphere of a no-budget indie shoot that we even see the filmmakers filming themselves buying marshmallows for their trip, and zooming in to a tight close-up of the plastic bag. It also amusingly differentiates between the solemn, self-important documentary being made (with a narrator sitting in a cemetery talking of stories ''etched in stone'') and the behind-the-scenes slacking and carousing of the crew.
The on-camera filmmakers, Heather, Mike and Josh, are played by Heather Donahue, Michael Williams and Joshua Leonard with a warts-and-all improvised verisimilitude, no doubt heightened by the conditions under which they worked. As documentarians exploring the legend of the title witch, on a mission that eventually leads them into the woods under increasingly scary circumstances, the actors were put through a comparable wringer during shooting.
They actually wielded the film's cameras, and they were left cold, hungry, lost and increasingly angry, just like the characters they play. One byproduct of this approach is an acute sensitivity to things that go bump in the night. Another is the gratingly limited vocabulary, full of virtually nonstop bleepables, which makes the film somewhat hard on the ears.
Opportunities for horrific special effects are under every rock here. More interestingly, the filmmakers confine themselves to using the rocks themselves as alarming effects, not to mention the twig figures that, when found hanging from the trees in the morning, cause a considerable stir. In a textbook illustration of how a literal image counts for less than its implicit horror, the ''Blair Witch'' crew creates a string of spooky occurrences in the forest. It would seem that someone is following the filmmakers, making strange noises outside their tent, leaving creepy souvenirs for them and so on.
''The Blair Witch Project,'' a most inventive departure from standard horror fare, is frightening only insofar as its characters' panic seems real. Everything else is left to the imagination. And the imagination works overtime watching the acuity of these talented filmmakers, and wondering what bright idea they'll have next.
''The Blair Witch Project'' is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes endless profanities, one mysterious gory artifact and much implicit menace.
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT
Written, directed and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez; director of photography, Neal Fredericks; music by Tony Cora; production designer, Ben Rock; produced by Gregg Hale and Robin Cowie; released by Artisan Entertainment. At the Angelika Film Center, Mercer and Houston Streets, Greenwich Village. Running time: 87 minutes. This film is rated R.
El Mariachi Article
FILM VIEW; Poverty Becomes Oh So Chic
By Caryn James
Feb. 28, 1993
Credit...The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from
February 28, 1993, Section 2, Page 13Buy Reprints
About the Archive
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.
Two years ago, Matty Rich's "Straight Out of Brooklyn" sailed out of the Sundance Film Festival and into theaters, propelled by the behind-the-scenes story of the teen-ager who rehearsed actors in his mom's apartment and made a movie for $77,000.
Two days ago, "El Mariachi" opened in theaters. It was made for $7,000 by the 24-year-old Robert Rodriguez, who thought his movie would go straight out to video.
Two months from now, who knows? A major studio could release a movie made for a flat $7 by a 10-year-old. It would sell three tickets and turn a major profit.
While Hollywood studios gripe about escalating budgets yet go on making $40 million movies, films made for a pittance have acquired their own cachet. There is a reverse snobbery, something like working-class chic, attached to any movie made for less than $1 million. Cheapness is publicized as a badge of honor, suggesting that these films are nobler, if not better, than their wealthy relations.
The result is a flood of Little-Movie-That-Could articles (the flip side of budget-run-amok tales): Hal Hartley shot his wry 1990 comedy, "The Unbelievable Truth," in his relatives' Long Island homes; Nick Gomez made his movie about small-time wise guys, "The Laws of Gravity," for $38,000 and got raves at last year's New Directors/New Films Festival; Mr. Rich went on the radio and asked the black community to send money so he could finish "Straight Out of Brooklyn," about a family trying to survive in a Red Hook housing project; and Mr. Rodriguez actually had $2,000 left over after shooting "El Mariachi," his mordant genre film about a mild-mannered musician who becomes a gunslinger.
These directors' off-screen stories are about family and community support, ambition, determination, ingenuity. If Horatio Alger were a film maker, he'd have fit right in.
Low-budget cachet is good publicity, but does it make a bit of difference to viewers? A bit. It can change their expectations. For $7,000, "El Mariachi" is a miracle; for $7 million, it would be just fine; for $40 million, it better have Arnold Schwarzenegger as the mariachi who conquered Mars, and a planetful of special effects. This is the same principle that makes mediocre movies that you stumble across on cable seem better than they would have in a theater.
Otherwise, a small budget guarantees nothing, and a film has to perform without off-screen excuses. Mr. Rich scores points for youth, ambition and savvy in getting his movie made, but "Straight Out of Brooklyn" is still an amateurish rehash of "A Raisin in the Sun." His originality and artistic promise aren't visible on screen, at least not yet.
In the impressive "Laws of Gravity," Mr. Gomez shrewdly makes a low-budget look -- drab, gritty colors and jumpy hand-held camerawork -- part of the mean streets atmosphere. The cinema-verite look enhances the realism in the story of a petty hood who tries to save his friend, a pettier hood, from self-destruction.
Open Water
R Adventure, Drama, Horror, Thriller
Directed by Chris Kentis
In this minimalist, digital video thriller, a tourist couple spends their vacation trying not to be eaten by sharks. "I wanted to go skiing," complains Susan (Blanchard Ryan), and you can hardly blame her. She and Daniel (Daniel Travis), her boyfriend, out for a morning of scuba diving, have been left behind by the charter boat, and they bob up and down, fighting panic, exhaustion and each other in a desperate struggle to survive. The film, simply and efficiently shot without special effects or well-known actors, evokes some deep and primal fears, but it is ultimately too small, too under-dramatized, to provoke anything more intense than squirming discomfort. Susan and Daniel are so bland that they could be anybody, which is the problem, and your sympathy for them is fleeting, as if you had encountered them in a short, grisly item on the local evening news. — A. O. Scott
By A. O. SCOTT
Article for Class
A Couple Go For a Morning Dive . .
Author: Deborah Sontag
Date: Aug. 1, 2004
LAST fall, Chris Kentis sat down at the computer in his Brooklyn Heights apartment and anxiously downloaded what his wife and creative partner, Laura Lau, jokingly called their ''home movie,'' to take it to a film festival in the Hamptons.
''Open Water,'' a deep-sea thriller featuring unknown actors, was an intimate creative affair, conceived, written, directed, shot (on digital video), crewed, edited and financed by the couple themselves. To release such an obsessive labor of love into the world after three long years of filmmaking on vacations and weekends -- well, Mr. Kentis, who earns his living cutting movie trailers, just hoped that he wouldn't be booed.
At the Hamptons festival, the filmmakers met with an entertainment lawyer, a talent agent and an acquisitions specialist, designated ''mentors'' who hadn't bothered to see ''Open Water'' because they were too busy catching commercial films like ''Elf'' that were opening in theaters the next week. Mr. Kentis and Ms. Lau, both 40, were depressed by these industry smiles, which were sympathetic or condescending or both.
That depression faded quickly. Variety heralded the film's raw power, declaring it a ''tour de force thriller that deftly transforms its low-budget limitations into spectacular assets.'' That led to the Sundance Film Festival in January, where, as per the now stock indie filmmaker's fantasy, a smoky, back-room bidding war ensued. And on the first night of the festival, Lions Gate bought the $130,000 ''home movie'' for $2.5 million.
Inspired by the true story of a couple accidentally abandoned at sea by a recreational dive boat off the coast of Australia, ''Open Water'' is not a traditional gray-fin horror movie. Shot from the couple's perspective, it is far more unsettling than it is scary in a made-you-shriek kind of way (although the shrieks are plentiful). The audience agonizingly bobs in the water alongside the abandoned divers as squeamishness and discomfort slowly deepen into full, existential, no-exit dread.
Transferred from video to film and with a new audio mix, ''Open Water'' arrives Friday in 12 cities and Aug. 20 on 2,000 screens. Mr. Kentis, who is babyfaced and slightly rumpled, called this ''a little scary, almost absurd and really, really nuts,'' given that when he began shooting, using an Office Depot storage box as underwater housing for his camera, his fantasy goal was ''maybe a couple of nights at the Angelika,'' the art house theater in Greenwich Village.
Mr. Kentis, the film's writer, director and editor, and Ms. Lau, its producer, spoke over lunch in a favorite haunt, a cavernous restaurant under the Manhattan Bridge where conversation is sporadically overpowered by the rattle of subway cars overhead. They needed little prompting, bursting forth, first one, then the other, then both at once, as if playing four-handed piano.
Before their 6-year-old daughter, Sabrina, was born, Mr. Kentis and Ms. Lau collaborated on ''Grind'' (1997), featuring Billy Crudup and Amanda Peet before they were known. It was, they say, a learning experience during which Ms. Lau studied filmmaking manuals to figure out what to do next. They were ''scared to death'' of the experienced crew, Ms. Lau said, which led the filmmakers to posture on the set and try too hard to make ''something that looked like a real movie.''
They wanted their next experience to be more authentic and private. Mr. Kentis was eager to shoot in digital video, largely so that he could dispense with a filmmaking crew, keep costs down and control the creative process more fully.
For more than a decade, he and his wife had been diving on vacations, shooting underwater and making little movies of their trips. Mr. Kentis's thoughts turned naturally to the ocean. He had long been mesmerized by the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, but a film depicting that World War II tragedy would be a major production. The story of the couple abandoned at sea near the Great Barrier Reef, which Mr. Kentis read in a dive magazine, offered a chance to explore a lost-at-sea theme in miniature.
In late 2000, Mr. Kentis, who is ''the water person'' while Ms. Lau is ''the Dramamine person,'' banged out a bare-bones script in about six days. He fictionalized the real-life incident and moved it to an ambiguous tropical location. (The film was shot in the Bahamas, the Grenadines, the Virgin Islands and Mexico and incorporates indigenous music from Fiji in the soundtrack).
The movie rides on the couple, but Mr. Kentis put off any elaboration of their relationship until he found the actors for those roles.
The filmmakers say that they could probably have lured recognized actors just as they could have gotten backing for their venture. But in the interest -- financial and aesthetic -- of creative control and realism, they chose to go with unknowns, hoping that viewers would project themselves more easily into the characters' experience, into their very wetsuits.
Mr. Kentis and Ms. Lau cautioned casting agents that some nudity would be required for the pre-dive scenes and that, once in the water, actors would have to get super-close to some very big sharks -- no mechanical or computer-generated jaws in this movie.
Daniel Travis, who got the male lead, said in an interview that he was anxious about carrying his first feature film but not about anything else. Blanchard Ryan, who plays his live-in lover, did have a serious concern, however, one that she concealed. She wasn't bothered by the nudity, because she assumed that nobody would ever see the movie. But, she said, ''I don't go in the ocean over my knees, because I'm afraid of sharks and who isn't?''
In the summer of 2001, the actors, thrust into a family filmmaking affair, flew down to the Bahamas with the filmmakers, their daughter, their parents and Ms. Lau's sister Estelle, a lawyer who did everything from acting herself to casting extras (including a last-minute boatload of certified divers after the first boatload didn't show up because of excessive partying the previous evening.)
They started with the shark scenes. The filmmakers hired dive experts and shark wranglers, outfitted the actors with protective chain mail under their wetsuits, then motored 10 miles offshore in an old lobster boat. Mr. Kentis, who declined to wear the metal mesh because it restricted his movement, jumped in the water with his camera while Ms. Lau positioned herself to shoot from a platform. And then the wranglers tossed chunks of bloody tuna into the sea.
''There were 40, 50 sharks, gray fins as far as the eye can see,'' Ms. Ryan said. ''And Chris said, 'O.K., get in.' And we basically had to climb in the water right on top of the sharks, because they don't exactly get out of your way. I knew if I chickened out it would have ruined the movie. And Chris and Laura were spending their own money on the production.''
So she took the plunge. ''We had no idea she was afraid of sharks,'' Mr. Kentis said, ''until that first time she got in the water and started crying.'' He imitated her: ''Guys! Guys!''
From then on, Mr. Travis would dive in first, ''to prove we weren't going to be lunchmeat,'' and Ms. Lau would instruct the wranglers to wait until Ms. Ryan glanced away to throw more bait into the water.
During two days of ''shark shoots'' -- as well as during the other ocean scenes -- the actors were tethered to the boat with fishing line, because the current was so strong. They were instructed to hold as still as possible and let the sharks, and Mr. Kentis, swim around them. But they couldn't hold too still, because the tethers were pulling them into tilted positions, and they needed to remain upright.
''I knew we were safe, that it wasn't a snuff movie, that I wasn't going to die, which is, I guess, where I draw the line,'' Ms. Ryan said. ''I was terrified, and I did get bitten by a barracuda. But looking back, it was the most magical working environment -- two actors, two filmmakers, no hair and makeup, no wardrobe and lighting, no crew wanting meal breaks. Just get in the water and do the work.''
During one shooting trip, Mr. Kentis was directing the actors in an underwater conversation using divers' hand signals. When the scene was finished, he was eager to surface, because he was running out of air. But every time he tried to motion the actors upward, they mimicked his hand signals instead of following them, not realizing the scene was over. Eventually, he burst to the surface and they followed.
''Chris was really mad,'' Ms Lau said. ''But we all thought it was really funny.''
To flesh out the fictional couple's relationship, the filmmakers spent many evenings at a Starbucks in Manhattan with Ms. Ryan and Mr. Travis, who have been friends with each other for years. The filmmakers didn't want to generate too much back story, since they weren't going to be cutting away from the water to reveal an affair, say, or a pregnancy. But they wanted the actors to know more than the audience would about their characters -- whom Mr. Kentis called ''a typical, overworked career couple who lay down their hard-earned cash to have a good time and who take their safety for granted.''
The filmmakers tried to take their time with the film, so they wouldn't become the typical harried couple themselves. Also, Mr. Kentis was determined not to lose a single day of pay from his job at a production company in Greenwich Village, and the actors wanted to fit in some paying work, too (which ''Open Water'' was not).
They hadn't intended for the production, which included just six weeks of shooting, to stretch over three years. But Mr. Travis unintentionally imposed a nearly yearlong hiatus by blowing out his knee during a volleyball game.
''The most harrowing part of the film for me was making that call to Chris saying, 'I'm sorry, I'm about to go into surgery, I can't go,' '' Mr. Travis said.
Later in the conversation, Mr. Travis retracted that. ''The scariest part really wasn't the phone call,'' he said. ''It was when we were far out at sea and this tanker passed us by. I just had this moment of really feeling insignificant in the universe.''
That is a feeling that the filmmakers, without being preachy about it, would like to instill in their audience. They were trying to portray the ocean as an ecosystem where, as Ms. Lau put it, ''sharks are in their natural environment and man is not.'' And indeed, it is the ocean, by turns turquoise, cobalt, gray and blood red, that is the true protagonist of their film.
My essay for class:
Discussion: Conglomerates and Video: 1975-
Paranormal Activity (2007)
These pictures capture the true essence of the nightmare for me...
“Now, I’m IN control, think I’m making progress.”
“Babe, Just have a little faith, huh?”
They got it so accurate that I laughed and couldn’t believe Micah was saying what I’ve heard before. The look on Katie's face withholding incredulity as he says he has it under control is perfect. The point is that the realness of the narrative made a connection with me.
The film had openings around the college student markets in 10 rural areas such as North Carolina and Nebraska (Brad Miska, 9/3/15 Link (Links to an external site.)). Perhaps the narrative connection with this demographic was when Mikah tells Katie, "Nobody come in my house, fucks with my girlfriend," and the many ways Mikah tried to take on the demon himself. In his smart cracking average guy dialogue.
The mise-en-scène made them relatable to people in the average suburb. The inside of the house might look grand by San Francisco standards, but it is common middle-class track housing.
They’re telling a story of my (viewer point of view) relationship, my neighborhood and this could possibly happen. I find this appealing in the found-footage genre and see it's appeal to a mass audience.
There are no pretentions of a slick murder mystery with expensive visual effects in found-footage horror film. They are scary because many houses do have creaking sounds as wood floors settle or a rattle of the furnace. As Micah found out, "it’s just the ice machine."
The Blair Witch Project (1999) also seems like a scenario that could happen to a young group of filmmakers on a low budget camping and filmmaking expedition. The pitch darkness of the woods is very frightening. This original found-footage film influenced creator Oren Peli in making Paranormal Activity and also a second wave of found-footage horror films.
The production of the found-footage realistic films, like Neo-realism, shows ordinary people with a problem (a demonic scary problem in these instances) in natural settings and although they are actors, they are unknown beginning actors in both instances. There is also a lot of improvisation.
The seemingly amateurish cinematography of both the films is so simple but again relatable. In earlier decades of cinema there weren’t affordable home video cameras, now anyone can own one. It’s not unique to have a first-person view of what is happening, but it is unique in these found footage films that the camera is one of the characters of the film. Just as we’ve seen in other films, where the landscape plays a part in the film.
The lighting impressed me in both films especially the light sources. Paranormal Activity would have ruined the look if they would have said, "Honey turn on the lights and lets see what’s going on." Instead, the single light source is the one above the lens. We follow the shaking camera with minimal viewing range as Micah runs down the stairs of the dark house and flips vertical blinds or backyard curtains. Simple, familiar and terrifying.
In terms of profit, I felt bad for Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat, the actors of Paranormal Activity. They were paid $500 each on the making of the film which is shocking as they did most of the narrative improvised.
A.O. Scott of the New York Times said it was made on a miniscule budget of $10,000. Our class notes say it made $100,000,000 gross, not including the whole series after it.
I did look up Katie and Micah's 'celebrity net worth' on celebritynetworth.com and after a few more bit parts in sequels and prequels of Paranormal Activity, they both have an estimated celebrity net worth of $500,000 each. A lot less than Peli's $30,000,000 celebrity net worth but more than $500 they each originally received.
They can also bask in the glory that Peli immortalized their own names Katie and Micah as the character names in the film and in a multi-year film series that followed.
Edited by Ida Daroza on Nov 29 at 9:50pm
Grade 3/3
Denah Johnston , Dec 19 at 7:46pm
Dan's response to my essay:
Hello, Ida!
Hmmm...haha. I guess (arguably) that your observation really happens between couples - regardless of where they are in their relationship. The lines, “Now, I’m IN control, think I’m making progress” and the have "a little faith" cliche is something that yeah, we've made a million times (okay, I'm exaggerating) to our partners. like my wife. Have I heard those lines from my wife? I think hardly. But yes, the improvisation really makes the exchange of lines between Micah and Katie all too real and relatable. Thanks for sharing your POV - this is a very honest analysis. Spot on.
Response from Andrew OConnorWatts
Hi Ida. I like what you mentioned about the dialogue and character types being relatable. We all know a Micah, whether we like him or not (I personally do not), and yet the fact that we all know and maybe don't like that guy, because he's such a ubiquitous, underwhelming, average guy, we feel we actually know him and that he's not just a character in a film. There are a million of those guys and yet he doesn't feel like an archetype, just a semi-boring guy you know who thinks he's better than he is. You also mentioned the simplicity of the cinematography. I read that part of some budget-saving measures came from the unnecessary need for a crew. The cameras were mostly placed on tripods and let be, while the actor who played Micah was in charge of most of the handheld camera scenes and was able to effectively shoot because of his time as a cameraman at his former university's TV station.
Don's Essay:
The Prologue, which presents the story as something that really happened, is a staple characteristic of found films. The way it is written is akin to the “Based on a true story” edict used in films which serves as an effective hook. In this age when smartphones (and digital cameras before that) can take videos of any random moment – and even make professional films – the story’s treatment and content makes it very much relatable to anyone who has ever held a camera.
The opening scene where Micah (Micah Sloat) welcomes Katie (Katie Featherson) into their new home is something that most of us really do. We make sure that the camera is ready, the lights are on, the house organized, and we make sure to cover spaces within the house like taking videos of ourselves facing a mirror or panning at second floor hallways, clean kitchen, windows and doors before we welcome a guest. If you would notice, both Micah and Katie play themselves to make it more appear that they are real people who suffered a tragic incident towards the film's end (i.e., Micah's body was discovered by the police at the film's Epilogue while Katie vanishes - completing the illusion of reality - yet another quality of found films).
Paranormal Activity (2007) is deemed as the most profitable movie of all-time in terms of return of investment. The director – the consummate auteur – producer, writer, director, production designer, editor, cinematographer Oren Peli shot the initial film with a modest budget of $15,000. It was later acquired by Paramount Pictures and given an additional $200,000 to revise the ending. Inspired by the gritty and similar found footage treatment of the smash hit The Blair Witch Project (1999), Paranormal Activity became a festival sensation in many film festivals and attracted the audience to flock theaters worldwide and grossed a stunning $193 million at the box office.
Hello Don,
You made very nice points in your essay. I didn't understand the thank you to the families in the first scene. I didn't put it together that those were the actors names. I'm glad I didn't either because that would've been a big spoiler. I can see where it is the sneaky equivalent of saying based on a true story. This statement is true, as they are two real people and why not thank the San Diego Police Department.
I also pointed out that in the decade we are in now, that self-recording can be cut into movies. I think you explained it much better when you said, "In this age when smartphones (and digital cameras before that) can take videos of any random moment – and even make professional films – the story’s treatment and content makes it very much relatable to anyone who has ever held a camera." Very nice and much clearer than how i said it. This type of film wouldn't have been possible two decades ago.
Thanks,
Ida
My response to a student essay:
Hello Don,
You made very nice points in your essay. I didn't understand the thank you to the families in the first scene. I didn't put it together that those were the actors names. I'm glad I didn't either because that would've been a big spoiler. I can see where it is the sneaky equivalent of saying based on a true story. This statement is true, as they are two real people and why not thank the San Diego Police Department.
I also pointed out that in the decade we are in now, that self-recording can be cut into movies. I think you explained it much better when you said, "In this age when smartphones (and digital cameras before that) can take videos of any random moment – and even make professional films – the story’s treatment and content makes it very much relatable to anyone who has ever held a camera." Very nice and much clearer than how i said it. This type of film wouldn't have been possible two decades ago.
Thanks,
Ida
Review from best student in class
Conglomerates and Video: 1975
Paranormal Activity (2007) by Oren Peli follows the story of a family who lives in a haunted house. While living in the house and experiencing paranormal situations they record their life. The film has a home-produced video style or “found footage” to that matter. Paranormal Activity feels like we are actually seeing real-life family being haunted due to its style. In one of the scenes, the couple set the camera to record all night long, looking to capture any weird presence. Switching between fast and normal motion, we observe the door slamming mysteriously, something moving under the sheets of the bed, a sound coming from the living room, the women acting oddly until finally, she appears to lift her husband violently and the film ends with her approaching the camera looking demonically possessed. The scene takes place in a standard bedroom, the camera has a night filter or mode which won´t allow us to appreciate the setting neatly but it produces a frightening effect and finally, the elements that scare are simple yet effective. Paranormal Activity uses these types of conventions all through the film, which allowed the director to spend a small budget. When we think of horror films, we probably think about exorbitant settings, highly aesthetically characters, and scenes with good quality special effects. Paranormal Activity offered a new approach to horror films, creating fear through what appealed to the audience as a realistic feel. It is a film in which one can relate to the events that happen to the family, it makes you think that they can happen to you as well. Of course, its success at the box office has a lot to do with the initial budget but audiences found it so appealing that they continued to make a franchise out of the “small” film. Rec (2007) by Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza, has a similar style and approach and Rec is now a franchise too.
Collapse SubdReview iscussionAndrew OConnorWatts
Hi Ida. I like what you mentioned about the dialogue and character types being relatable. We all know a Micah, whether we like him or not (I personally do not), and yet the fact that we all know and maybe don't like that guy, because he's such a ubiquitous, underwhelming, average guy, we feel we actually know him and that he's not just a character in a film. There are a million of those guys and yet he doesn't feel like an archetype, just a semi-boring guy you know who thinks he's better than he is. You also mentioned the simplicity of the cinematography. I read that part of some budget-saving measures came from the unnecessary need for a crew. The cameras were mostly placed on tripods and let be, while the actor who played Micah was in charge of most of the handheld camera scenes and was able to effectively shoot because of his time as a cameraman at his former university's TV station.
My Quiz:
_________ bought Paramount and also owned MTV, Showtime, and later CBS. That meant Paramount films could play in theaters owned by this conglomerate and later play on Showtime.
In the late 1970s, Studios found themselves with two lucrative markets for their classics and new features: network and cable ______________.
What "found footage" film was purchased by Artisan for less than $2 million and went on to gross almost $250 million at the worldwide box office?
What 1975 film is considered by most historians to be the first blockbuster?
A huge corporation made up of many diverse companies is called a __________.
