Below the fold you'll find two brief alternate cuts of the Cloverfield ending that will be included on the April 22nd DVD release. They're more like minor tweaks than full reimaginings (certainly nothing like the earth-shattering new I Am Legend ending we saw in March); the first uses a different sunny flashback grace note to end the film, and the second adds a barely perceptible hint of someone finding the camera in the rubble. Nothing, in other words, to write home about -- though it is interesting to see the different permutations that they tried. The clips do remind me of a question I had after seeing the film in theaters. I'm sure I'm not the only person to have thought of this, but: Does it make sense, from a technological standpoint, for the remnants of the characters' earlier recording to have remained on the camera, interrupting the new footage? Wouldn't that have required them to stop taping, "fast-forward," and start again? I know digital camcorders don't work exactly like old-fashioned ones with tapes, but doesn't overwriting still work in basically the same way? Not that I care much, since I will cheerfully sell plausibility down the river for something that's dramatically effective (which I thought this was), but can anyone that knows more about camcorders than I do shed some light on whether this nifty storytelling device made any sense?
[hat tip: Slashfilm]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-07-2008 @ 9:25AM
Noah said...
okay -
There are random times when HUD stops filming (I remember just after the first attack when they were on the streets to show off footage of the monster to the people standing around.) Now I'm sure he didn't stop the camera right after they watched Clover go by. So that's why we got that snippet and so on.
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4-07-2008 @ 9:31AM
techstar25 said...
It's plausible that they simply rewinded the tape a few times to playback and watch what they had recorded so far. Then stop the playback when the carnival popped up. So there you have at least a few seconds of old footage.
That movie's plot had more holes than a fishnet, but the old footage showing up wasn't really one of them, IMO.
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4-07-2008 @ 10:14AM
The Malcontentq said...
Most new Camcorders do have hard drives, maybe what we're seeing on the tape was what the US Army recovered from the camera's memory because of the damage it must have intercut the video.
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4-07-2008 @ 11:13AM
Paul Nicholson said...
That was one of many gripes i had with the film. Abrams is usually a nit-pickers dream and pays attention to detail.
However, he treated an SD camcorder like a MiniDV (or VHS for goodness sakes). SD camcorders as well as Hard Driver recorders just record each clip as a unique file. HUD couldn't have overwritten the sunny day footage the couple had shot. He would have had to delete it entirely, or find another SD card. It also wouldn't inter-cut like that. Assuming there was room for both sets of video, it would have just started a new file in whatever space was left after the sunny day was shot. We should have seen a few hours of sunny day, then a few hours of chaos an carnage.
Bad form. One of many things i was disappointed in.
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4-07-2008 @ 2:21PM
FutureColumnist said...
Just for clarity's sake, the first has someone finding the camera in the rubble and the second uses a different sunny flashback grace note. No big deal but it threw me off and made me watch the videos again, thinking I hadn't seen something in the second.
Anyhow, I agree that plausibility can be thrown out the window, and I'm pretty dang sure it does with the cameras.
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4-07-2008 @ 4:53PM
las6 said...
As Paul Nicholson pointed out, the camera would have to be one that uses a MiniDV -tapes. And to be hones, a whole lot of cameras still use MiniDV tapes. Just because they are tapes doesn't mean they are automatically worse than the fully digital setups. In fact, most cheap consumer cameras use SD cards and Hard Drives while prosumer cameras still use MiniDV or such.
I'm no expert, but from my experience, the overlapping of the video material is a common problem when re-using tapes. Everytime you start/stop the recording, there is a slight delay before the camera acts. But during that time, the tape moves ahead slightly, leaving behind bits of the old material. Usually only few seconds long, max, though.
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4-08-2008 @ 9:43AM
Eric H said...
las6 is totally right no Flash Memory / HDD camcorder that they would have had could produce that quality of footage.
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