Revealing mistake: As Rob, Hud, and Lily are rescuing Beth from her apartment, the view outside the window is tilted roughly 45°. This is due to Beth's apartment building being partially collapsed against another building, demonstrated previously by an exterior shot. However, the characters are moving within the apartment with no difficulty or apparent change in gravity, even though they should be struggling to remain upright in a significantly tilted apartment. This makes it clear that the scene outside has been added using chroma key technology, and the camera has simply been tilted to create the illusion that they are on an angle. (01:01:30 - 01:01:52)
Cloverfield (2008)
1 revealing mistake
Directed by: Matt Reeves
Starring: T.J. Miller, Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, Michael Stahl-David, Odette Yustman
Audio problem: When the Statue of Liberty's head strikes the top of a distant building before landing in the street, sight and sound are simultaneous. There should have been an audible lag in the sound due to the speed of sound being only about 1000 feet per second. The absence of this lag would be acceptable in most movies but is inconsistent with the amateur home movie theme of Cloverfield.
Trivia: The viral marketing story is incorporated into several parts of the movie. The first is the Slusho! shirt worn by Jason, given to him by Rob. Rob is leaving to work for Slusho! in Japan per his myspace account. Slusho! is owned by Tagruato Corporation, a company whose primary operations is off-shore drilling rigs. The company's logo is visible on the Tanker that is on fire during the Brooklyn Bridge scene. The Easter eggs show the destruction by the monster of Tagruato's Chaui drilling facility located about 2,000 off-shore of NY. The online viral character Jamie is seen passed out on the couch at the party. Her boyfriend, Teddy, who works for Tidowave, is seen on the bridge. Tidowave is an anti-Tagruato operation. At the end, while the camera looks over the Atlantic ocean, you'll see a falling object. The producer, JJ Abrams, has stated that this can be interpreted one of two ways: It's the monster falling out of the sky, or, a satellite which Tagruato reported on their website that they were actively assisting the Japanese government to locate.
More questions & answers from Cloverfield
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Chosen answer: The actors and crew were kept in the dark as much as possible, unless the information was needed for their performance. They didn't know what the parasites looked like until they began filming the subway scene. Actual-size, realistic puppets had been made for filming but were decided to look too artificial and slow on camera, but it gave the actors a chance to see what they would be running from, how their jaws and legs worked, etc. As for the main monster ("Clover"), actors would only know what was in the script and what the director told them.