{"id":809,"date":"2009-04-08T21:29:48","date_gmt":"2009-04-09T02:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rreynoso.com\/blog\/?p=809"},"modified":"2009-04-08T21:29:48","modified_gmt":"2009-04-09T02:29:48","slug":"keepin-it-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/reviews\/keepin-it-real\/","title":{"rendered":"Keepin’ It Real"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reality Filming has a long, sordid history and in recent years it has both blessed and threatened the television and movie industry. Reality TV, for example—and with no judgment on my part—has given us American Idol<\/a>, Survivor<\/a>, Jerry Springer<\/a>, Cops<\/a> and PBS’s Manor House<\/a>. Some of these shows have managed to dethrone traditional television dramas like Firefly<\/a> (and possibly even the recent Dollhouse<\/a>, or so the Rumors whisper<\/a>). Film wise, reality has given us quite a number of stories but in recent years they have started following the fame of Reality Television with the likes of Borat<\/a> which might be funny in the short term but there’s no real substance to them; they’re really just a recording of how people react in certain situations. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What I think is important is when writers take that gem from reality television and perfect it, remove some of its rough edges and give it a decent story. The goal, I think, is to get these types of movies to have the ability to be enjoyed and re-watched.<\/p>\n

So, even though The Blair Witch Project<\/a> was a very smart use of filming with an interesting enough story arc (the kind you hear around a camp fire) to make the movie enjoyable; it suffered in being\u00a0 a one-time watch. The performances aren’t worth enjoying again and once the Boo moment occurs, it’s over.<\/p>\n

Semi-recently, others like Quarantine<\/a> (remake of Spanish REC<\/a>) and Cloverfield<\/a> decided to try their hand at reality storytelling. Quarnatine tells the story while professional cameras are rolling and Quarnatine tells the story that has been discovered on a recording . And yet, I think it’s this slight difference (like the Blair Witch Project) that brings Cloverfield closer to the ideal.<\/p>\n

You see, Quarantine records a disaster and then lets us see what happens to the people. The Blair Witch Project gives us a peek behind the curtain of a myth only to tell us that there is something awful back there. The genius of Cloverfield is that it tells us the same thing—The Myth is Real—while capturing the very long history of friends becoming lovers on their worst day.<\/p>\n

We get to peak at The Real Godzilla and how very alien it is to real people. We get to watch a man go through overwhelming odds for the girl he loves. We get to watch peeks into fringe science and be nervous about the revelation.<\/p>\n

What Cloverfiled does well, it exceeds at. The audience, like the players in the movie (and like the \u00a0government officials who now have possession of the recordings) don’t know what’s going on; we know enough to be nervous and want to know more.<\/p>\n

So I’ve watched the movie about five times already and each time, I slow the story down to try to see what’s going on and why. What do those bites do? Why did they want to carry away the camera guy? Where did the creature come from and why was it so ticked off? Are there other stories out there like this?<\/p>\n

This is why I think that if Reality Filming wants to get anywhere, and make some progress with the style of storytelling, they will take notes from Cloverfield and move forward. I would really like to see a World War Z<\/a> done in the same way while giving us that breadth of mythos and emotional connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reality Filming has a long, sordid history and in recent years it has both blessed and threatened the television and movie industry. Reality TV, for example—and with no judgment on my part—has given us American Idol, Survivor, Jerry Springer, Cops and PBS’s Manor House. Some of these shows have managed to dethrone traditional television dramas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[295,45,296,294],"class_list":["post-809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-cloverfield","tag-movies","tag-quarantine","tag-reality-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":812,"href":"https:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809\/revisions\/812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rreynoso.com\/reysapoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}