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Truth, Lies, and Videotape

It’s not that we’re wet blankets here at Pop Omnivore. We’re not. We know how to have fun. It’s just that some things are kind of, you know, hard to believe.

Take Cloverfield. In the new movie, a big, ugly monster runs amok in New York as a small, attractive band of 20-somethings tries to survive, filming everything with a handheld camera (think Godzilla meets the Blair Witch on 9/11).

So what’s straining credulity? For us, it’s not the monster, or the characters’ decision to film it even as they run from it, or even the fact that 20-somethings can’t afford huge Manhattan lofts like the one in the movie. No, what really raised our eyebrows was the camera itself.

We learn early on that the bulk of Cloverfield—a 12-hour period, from nighttime monster attack to daytime denouement—is shot on a single tape (not hard disk), during which time the camera is never recharged, and its (presumably battery-draining) exterior light is mostly on. Which made us wonder: Just what kind of super-technology are those 20-somethings using, anyway?

So we asked Ed Baig, tech columnist for USA Today and author of a couple of those Dummies books.

“Your instincts are basically correct,” Baig told us via e-mail. “If indeed they are using tape in the movie, then the actual footage would be an hour or two, tops, depending on the shooting mode. And though battery life varies by camera, its a safe bet they'd have to either carry spare batteries or recharge what they've got somewhere along the line.”

We won’t go so far as to say, “We told you so.” This is Hollywood, after all. We’ll just sit here, eyebrows raised, and try to wrap our heads around the movie’s other implausibilities. Like that part where the 20-somethings run up 57 flights of stairs … without wheezing … after fighting for their lives all night … with no food, water, or rest … half-drunk from the party they attended.

-Jeremy Berlin

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