1
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Excuse me.

2
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What scares you?

3
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The dark?

4
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I don't like spiders.

5
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Little tiny dogs that snap their jaws.

6
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Sharks.

7
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Demons, or Satan.

8
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Heights.

9
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Natural disasters.

10
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Putting my hands and feet in places
I can't see what I'm touching.

11
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Clowns.

12
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Something happening to the kids, for sure.

13
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Weird sounds coming from my basement.

14
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My girlfriend, when she's mad?

15
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Growing old.

16
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Being alone.

17
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Dying.

18
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Ghosts.

19
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Being home alone at night in the dark.

20
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Demonic stuff is always really scary.

21
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Fear of the unknown,

22
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not knowing what you're gonna
have happen when you wake up.

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Something that's invisible, unknown,
comes from a different dimension.

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We don't know what it is,
how to defend ourselves against it.

25
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That's a scary concept.

26
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- So, Jason, you just yank on...
- Michael, will you just sit down...

27
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And away the boat goes.

28
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- Michael...
- Okay. It's working now.

29
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Are you sure it's not back there?

30
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It's not back there,
I just took a look in there.

31
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We gotta get out!

32
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Before I made my film,
which was originally titled.

33
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UFO Abduction, and then later on
became The McPherson Tape,

34
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I had never seen
a found-footage film before.

35
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I didn't even know
that there was something

36
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that was kind of similar fo that.

37
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A buddy of mine said,

38
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"Hey, I'll give you a
budget to make your movie."

39
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- And I said, "Okay, what do you got?"
- And he goes, "6,500."

40
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And I literally said, "Great,
for that I can do like a home video."

41
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And then I finished reading
this book called Communion,

42
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and it terrified the hell out of me.

43
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So I thought, "How do I experience,
an alien abduction without the anal probe?"

44
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And it dawned on me,
well, if it was a home video

45
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that you were witnessing this first-hand,
and you had improvisational actors,

46
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then it felt like, "All right,
that might be a great way to get into it."

47
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So my only experience
with the found footage

48
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was out of necessity.

49
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Shit.

50
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Holy shit.

51
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- What the hell is that?
- It's a spaceship, Mike.

52
00:03:01,807 --> 00:03:04,518
When you want to be scared,
you want to know something is real.

53
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And I think found footage,
when it was originally created,

54
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the thing that terrified
people and scared people

55
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was the fact that it could be real.

56
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Could they have done this?
Could they have faked that?

57
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Could they not? It really looks real, but
one of them seems like an actor, it's

58
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that sort of questioning
in the back of your head.

59
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And I had a couple of film students
who came up to me and said,

60
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"Hey, do you know
that you're the father of found footage?"

61
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And I thought they were messing with me

62
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because no one had really
kind of tracked that,

63
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that I was aware of.
And I said, "What do you mean?"

64
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He says, "Well, you made this film,"
you know, blah, blah, blah.

65
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And one of the other students had said,
"Oh, well there was Cannibal Holocaust."

66
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And I'm like, "What's Cannibal Holocaust?'"

67
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Four young and fearless Americans,
children of the space age,

68
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armed with cameras, microphones,
and curiosity.

69
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A lot of people say
that Cannibal Holocaust

70
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is the first found-footage film,
but it's really not.

71
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It's a narrative feature shot on film
that has found-footage elements in it.

72
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A lot like Faces of Death,
it was sort of the thing

73
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everyone claimed fo have seen.

74
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I think a lot of people saw that,
they thought it was real and were like,

75
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"Oh, that part's fake.
Oh, that part's real."

76
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And I, even as a horror fan,
I refuse to watch it.

77
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A found-footage movie is footage
that was found, the whole thing.

78
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Ideally, it's not cut,
it's not edited together,

79
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it's all one long piece.

80
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We pop the tape in
and we were sitting there

81
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on the couch watching it
and we just kind of

82
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kept looking at each other like
this is Blair Witch.

83
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You know, like they go from
the footage fo the people,

84
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you know, looking at the footage
fo the back of the footage.

85
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In the '80s, it was just a different...

86
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You couldn't really pull it
off the same way you could now.

87
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I don't think audiences really responded

88
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to the digital look as well
as they did in the late...

89
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You know, by the time
The Blair Witch came around.

90
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The reason I really love
found footage,

91
00:05:05,639 --> 00:05:07,933
and I think it started with
The Blair Witch Project,

92
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is because when it's done right,
it adds a certain level of authenticity.

93
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And this is like '90 or '91,

94
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and Dan and I had just gone to see a movie
called Freddy's Dead.

95
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You know, it was not horror at all.

96
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And we were like, you know,

97
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it's just weird that horror movies
are not really scary anymore.

98
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You know, like The Shining
and Amityville Horror

99
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and, you know, Jaws
and Exorcist.

100
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We kind of started drifting towards

101
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like The Legend of Boggy Creek
and Chariot of the Gods.

102
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And we started thinking like,

103
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"I wonder if you could
do that, you know, now,"

104
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like you could really do
like a pseudo-documentary.

105
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They utilized the early days
of the internet

106
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in just a way that's so brilliant,

107
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creating missing pages for people.

108
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And at that point,
I don't think mainstream audiences

109
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were so quick to be like, "Oh, it's fake."
They want to believe that it's real.

110
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Unfortunately for the actors,

111
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they didn't let them
appear and do publicity

112
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because they wanted to
maintain the illusion

113
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that the actors were actually dead.

114
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Burkittsville people were calling people

115
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to see if they could help
find these kids in the woods.

116
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That's amazing.
I don't think that's ever happened before.

117
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It does it in a very raw way,

118
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like we literally had the
actors shooting everything

119
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and it very much looks
like an amateurish video.

120
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And I remember
seeing that and going,

121
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"Oh damn, I should have done that."

122
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So I think it kind of disarms people,

123
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and makes you, like,
even if you know it's not real,

124
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your brain's constantly thinking,

125
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"Is this real?
Is this, you know, a YouTube video?"

126
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Here were these kids from Florida
who don't know anyone in Hollywood,

127
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they just bought some video cameras,

128
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ran around in the woods,
you know, with some actors,

129
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and they made a movie that
made quarter of a billion dollars.

130
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So I'm like, "This is mind-boggling!"

131
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I didn't know that you
could make movies that way.

132
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And maybe if, one day,
I have an idea for a film,

133
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maybe I'll give it a shot
if I can do it in that style.

134
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Does it feel strange being back here?

135
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I mean,
I still care a lot about the house.

136
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I feel like, you know,
not only was it my house

137
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for about 12 years,

138
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but it's also the house
that changed my life

139
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because of the movie
that I made here.

140
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So, you know, it feels kind of
weird and special to be here.

141
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So in 2003, my girlfriend
and I moved to the first house

142
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that I've ever lived in.

143
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My entire life I grew up in
apartments, even back in Israel.

144
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So when you live
in an apartment,

145
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you're used to hearing a lot
of noises from your neighbors,

146
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walking down the hallway,
slamming doors and stuff like that.

147
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And when you live in a
house in quiet suburbia,

148
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everything is like super,
super quiet at night,

149
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you don't hear anything.

150
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But we would hear some noises
like the house creaking

151
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and my girlfriend would
get totally freaked out.

152
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She would think there's gotta
be something in the house.

153
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I feel something breathing in my ear
and whispering and there's noises

154
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and I feel there is like
someone walking around

155
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and I hear footsteps
and I, kind of like Micah,

156
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was the skeptic.

157
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And I told her, "There's nothing there,

158
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it's just the house,
don't worry about it."

159
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And there were a few things that happened
that we didn't know how to explain.

160
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Can you hear that?

161
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- I'm going down.
- No, no, no, Micah!

162
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I started thinking like,

163
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"Well, in this day of,
you know, technology

164
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and access to video cameras,

165
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I could set up
a video camera in the house

166
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or in the bedroom, let it run all night
and see If it will capture, you know..."

167
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"Maybe there's something
walking in the house?"

168
00:08:21,584 --> 00:08:24,295
"Is there, you know,
an animal that sneaks in,

169
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whatever it is, maybe we can
capture it with the video

170
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and find out what's going on."

171
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And then I thought how scary it would be

172
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to watch footage of yourself
while you were asleep

173
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and unaware of it
and something is happening.

174
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That would be really creepy.

175
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So I never actually went on
with my personal experiment

176
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'cause I wouldn't have
had the patience to watch

177
00:08:43,606 --> 00:08:45,817
hours of myself sleeping,
but I thought,

178
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"Maybe that's a concept
for a scary movie."

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What is it?

180
00:08:54,117 --> 00:08:56,578
So I spent about a year
doing lots of things,

181
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I was researching film making.

182
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How do you cast people,
you know, about editing,

183
00:09:03,460 --> 00:09:06,296
and practiced the visual effects
and sound mixing,

184
00:09:06,379 --> 00:09:07,380
all that kind of stuff.

185
00:09:07,505 --> 00:09:11,342
Also had to do a lot of home
improvements to my house, to replace...

186
00:09:11,593 --> 00:09:13,513
We had carpets all over
that wouldn't have worked

187
00:09:13,553 --> 00:09:17,015
with the footprints
and Katie getting dragged out of bed.

188
00:09:17,098 --> 00:09:19,768
So I put hardwood floor everywhere.
Painted the house,

189
00:09:19,893 --> 00:09:22,312
just to make it look a lot
more nice and cinematic.

190
00:09:22,520 --> 00:09:25,690
And did a lot of research
on demonic hauntings,

191
00:09:26,316 --> 00:09:30,487
possessions, all that kind of stuff
from a religious point of view,

192
00:09:30,570 --> 00:09:32,322
from the perspective of the people

193
00:09:32,405 --> 00:09:34,341
who believe that they are
being haunted or possessed,

194
00:09:34,365 --> 00:09:37,952
I did a lot of research on that.
A lot of research on found-footage films.

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00:09:38,078 --> 00:09:40,705
Are you happy?
Do you have enough batteries?

196
00:09:41,081 --> 00:09:43,374
I was working full-time
as a video game programmer,

197
00:09:43,833 --> 00:09:45,210
so that was my day job.

198
00:09:45,293 --> 00:09:47,146
So everything I had fo do
with Paranormal Activity,

199
00:09:47,170 --> 00:09:49,380
both during pre-production
and post-production,

200
00:09:49,464 --> 00:09:52,967
had to be in my spare time
in the evenings and weekends.

201
00:09:57,597 --> 00:10:00,975
Scorpion wins. Fatality.

202
00:10:01,643 --> 00:10:04,437
Probably the most important thing
that I needed to figure out

203
00:10:04,521 --> 00:10:07,065
before I kind of green-lit it in my head,

204
00:10:07,148 --> 00:10:10,235
was that I needed to make sure
that I have the right cast,

205
00:10:10,318 --> 00:10:13,446
that can basically carry an entire movie
on their shoulders.

206
00:10:13,655 --> 00:10:17,325
What I did at first,
is I read some auditions in San Diego

207
00:10:17,575 --> 00:10:22,247
and a few people came from L.A., actually,
there was almost no one from San Diego,

208
00:10:22,497 --> 00:10:24,297
and I felt like, you know,
I need to go wider.

209
00:10:24,374 --> 00:10:27,460
So I had to research, like,
"How do you cast a movie?"

210
00:10:27,710 --> 00:10:30,255
And then ended up
renting a theater in L.A.

211
00:10:30,421 --> 00:10:32,298
and put up casting notices.

212
00:10:32,382 --> 00:10:34,634
I was surprised because I didn't have

213
00:10:34,717 --> 00:10:37,595
the name of the project,
no name of anyone involved.

214
00:10:37,720 --> 00:10:39,480
Not that it would have helped
to put my name,

215
00:10:39,556 --> 00:10:41,641
'cause I had no credits
in the film business,

216
00:10:41,850 --> 00:10:44,435
but hundreds,
maybe even thousands of people replied.

217
00:10:55,196 --> 00:10:57,240
The behind the scenes
of the behind the scenes

218
00:10:57,323 --> 00:11:01,244
is always like an interesting concept
because it's so meta, you know?

219
00:11:02,036 --> 00:11:03,830
I had just moved to L.A.
I was brand new.

220
00:11:04,122 --> 00:11:08,251
I was actually... Well,
I was waiting tables, I had no team.

221
00:11:08,334 --> 00:11:10,295
I knew no one in town,
no one in the business.

222
00:11:10,670 --> 00:11:12,005
I was living in a garage

223
00:11:13,381 --> 00:11:17,594
with a sheet hanging down from the ceiling
in-between me and my roommate

224
00:11:17,677 --> 00:11:19,762
and the rent was 450 bucks a month.

225
00:11:19,971 --> 00:11:23,683
And I was actually house sitting
for my high school theater teacher.

226
00:11:23,808 --> 00:11:25,703
He and his wife had moved
to L.A. the year prior.

227
00:11:25,727 --> 00:11:27,145
And I was house sitting for them,

228
00:11:27,437 --> 00:11:29,647
and on their computer
scrolling through L.A. Casting

229
00:11:29,731 --> 00:11:31,816
and I saw the audition.

230
00:11:31,900 --> 00:11:33,776
- Hi, Oren, I'm Katie.
- Nice to meet you.

231
00:11:33,902 --> 00:11:34,986
Nice to meet you.

232
00:11:35,653 --> 00:11:36,696
Have a seat.

233
00:11:37,071 --> 00:11:40,033
I said, "Fuck this project,
this is bullshit!"

234
00:11:40,116 --> 00:11:42,827
I'm not going. That was my

235
00:11:42,994 --> 00:11:45,205
I was like, "This is
the most insane casting notice

236
00:11:45,288 --> 00:11:48,208
I've ever seen. This is crazy."

237
00:11:48,458 --> 00:11:50,418
It's like you're going into this house.

238
00:11:50,627 --> 00:11:54,214
You can't tell anybody where you are,
you can't tell anybody what you're doing,

239
00:11:54,422 --> 00:11:56,549
and we're going to torture you
while we film it.

240
00:11:56,716 --> 00:11:59,344
It was essentially my memory
and what the casting notice was.

241
00:11:59,469 --> 00:12:01,930
I learned later that Micah
didn't even like, really want it.

242
00:12:02,013 --> 00:12:04,033
He was just kind of bored
and he saw it and he's like,

243
00:12:04,057 --> 00:12:05,934
"Okay, I'll just go do an audition
for fun."

244
00:12:06,017 --> 00:12:07,435
It was in this tiny theater

245
00:12:07,518 --> 00:12:09,979
and I showed up with a heads hot,
like you do,

246
00:12:10,188 --> 00:12:11,773
and there was nothing to prepare.

247
00:12:12,023 --> 00:12:17,070
And I was waiting in the waiting room
and all of these women would go in,

248
00:12:18,154 --> 00:12:20,573
and like immediately walk out.

249
00:12:20,949 --> 00:12:23,117
In and out, like,
less than 30 seconds.

250
00:12:23,284 --> 00:12:26,079
People, people, people.
And I'm like, "Okay, that's super weird."

251
00:12:26,246 --> 00:12:29,499
What we would do was exactly what they did
in The Blair Witch Project casting.

252
00:12:29,624 --> 00:12:31,376
Just hit them with questions

253
00:12:31,459 --> 00:12:34,671
and jump right into
the improvisational stuff.

254
00:12:34,837 --> 00:12:38,508
So people would come in and sit in
and I would say, you know,

255
00:12:38,675 --> 00:12:40,593
"Hi, thanks for taking
the time to come here."

256
00:12:40,677 --> 00:12:42,238
"What makes you think
your house is haunted?"

257
00:12:42,262 --> 00:12:43,822
Immediately she's like,
"Oh, well, you know,

258
00:12:43,846 --> 00:12:45,046
I'm hearing things happening."

259
00:12:45,098 --> 00:12:46,849
And she was, like,
immediately in character

260
00:12:46,975 --> 00:12:48,855
and I could have
an entire conversation with her

261
00:12:48,977 --> 00:12:50,057
and she didn't miss a beat.

262
00:12:50,103 --> 00:12:52,397
He's like, "Okay, well, now
there's some stuff happening",

263
00:12:52,480 --> 00:12:54,607
and you're in your house,

264
00:12:54,691 --> 00:12:56,691
"and there's like stuff
happening," and I'm like...

265
00:12:56,943 --> 00:12:59,237
It's okay. Just stay calm.

266
00:13:01,239 --> 00:13:02,699
You know, just experiencing

267
00:13:02,782 --> 00:13:05,243
all this crazy shit
that's happening in my house.

268
00:13:05,535 --> 00:13:09,664
I swear to God, something...
Brian, something just grabbed me.

269
00:13:09,831 --> 00:13:12,583
The next step after that
was to do callback auditions

270
00:13:12,709 --> 00:13:16,045
with both of them together,
basically right after they met.

271
00:13:16,421 --> 00:13:18,381
I'm like,
"Have a seat, do you guys need water?"

272
00:13:18,464 --> 00:13:20,174
"And this is Katie, this is Micah."

273
00:13:20,258 --> 00:13:21,986
"So tell me, how long have
you guys been together?"

274
00:13:22,010 --> 00:13:23,130
- Want me to tell him?
- Yes.

275
00:13:23,177 --> 00:13:25,805
- Okay, well actually, we...
- I'm used to getting it wrong.

276
00:13:26,472 --> 00:13:27,574
They didn't rehearse anything.

277
00:13:27,598 --> 00:13:29,434
They never met before,
it was all improv.

278
00:13:29,559 --> 00:13:33,146
And I remember thinking then
in my head, "This could work."

279
00:13:33,396 --> 00:13:36,482
This could work just because
they were so good and so convincing.

280
00:13:37,233 --> 00:13:40,528
Hello, welcome to our house,
or, actually, your house.

281
00:13:40,611 --> 00:13:44,532
Oren sent us a videotape
of what his house looked like

282
00:13:44,615 --> 00:13:47,660
to familiarize us with the layout.

283
00:13:47,744 --> 00:13:49,787
And he was doing some, like, you know,

284
00:13:49,871 --> 00:13:52,123
like refurbishing of things
in the house fo, like,

285
00:13:52,206 --> 00:13:53,791
make it look better on the screen.

286
00:13:53,875 --> 00:13:55,418
Our production central.

287
00:13:55,501 --> 00:13:58,796
We have all the equipment here
and a whole bunch of stuff.

288
00:13:58,963 --> 00:14:00,243
So this is basically off-limits.

289
00:14:00,548 --> 00:14:04,886
So the actual shoot ended up
being in October 2006.

290
00:14:04,969 --> 00:14:07,180
We showed up
and we kind of got acclimated,

291
00:14:07,263 --> 00:14:11,517
and I basically moved into the bedroom
that's in the movie,

292
00:14:11,601 --> 00:14:13,353
and then Oren and Micah
took the guestrooms.

293
00:14:13,436 --> 00:14:19,692
Oren gave us a very,
kind of intense collection of videos

294
00:14:19,901 --> 00:14:21,694
of various documentaries about hauntings.

295
00:14:21,778 --> 00:14:24,447
Basically just research into the genre.

296
00:14:25,782 --> 00:14:30,745
But because we were playing
a version of ourselves in a way,

297
00:14:30,870 --> 00:14:33,164
there wasn't any sort of
intensive character work,

298
00:14:33,247 --> 00:14:34,749
and because we didn't
have a script,

299
00:14:34,832 --> 00:14:38,044
there wasn't any need
to learn lines or anything.

300
00:14:38,127 --> 00:14:43,091
So the preparation
was less intense than, like,

301
00:14:43,216 --> 00:14:45,093
for a scripted movie, obviously.

302
00:14:45,343 --> 00:14:48,471
They never really knew what the story was
until I was telling them,

303
00:14:48,554 --> 00:14:50,154
"This is the next thing we're shooting."

304
00:14:50,264 --> 00:14:53,309
So it only had to be
sort of, an internal document

305
00:14:53,393 --> 00:14:55,645
for myself and my crew.

306
00:14:55,895 --> 00:14:59,816
And it was like, this weird
color coded, line-by-line,

307
00:14:59,899 --> 00:15:02,026
like, scene breakdown and had different...

308
00:15:02,110 --> 00:15:04,695
Like if it's a blue color,
then it's a nighttime scene.

309
00:15:04,779 --> 00:15:06,989
If its a green color,
it's a daytime scene.

310
00:15:07,073 --> 00:15:10,326
If it's in italics, it means
there's a special effects shot there.

311
00:15:10,493 --> 00:15:12,679
All these, kind of, like,
things that only made sense to me.

312
00:15:12,703 --> 00:15:16,165
There was no real normal day.
Like, we woke up,

313
00:15:16,249 --> 00:15:18,793
we talked about
what we were gonna shoot.

314
00:15:18,876 --> 00:15:21,587
We shot it for hours
upon hours upon hours.

315
00:15:21,921 --> 00:15:23,297
Just leave me alone.

316
00:15:23,381 --> 00:15:25,508
Will you stop following me
with the camera!

317
00:15:25,925 --> 00:15:28,553
The first shoot was a week.
So it was seven days,

318
00:15:28,636 --> 00:15:30,155
pretty much shooting around the clock.

319
00:15:30,179 --> 00:15:32,181
Not a lot. I mean, we did
sleep, but not a lot.

320
00:15:32,265 --> 00:15:34,684
I think Oren's sort
of relentless work ethic

321
00:15:35,685 --> 00:15:39,272
was mirrored by our own desire
to make something that mattered

322
00:15:39,355 --> 00:15:41,649
and make something that was good.
And we all wanted...

323
00:15:41,732 --> 00:15:44,485
We would not stop
until the scene was good.

324
00:15:44,569 --> 00:15:45,736
- Wow!
- Let's do it again.

325
00:15:45,820 --> 00:15:47,947
What was the problem?
That sounded good.

326
00:15:48,030 --> 00:15:49,030
I think it was good.

327
00:15:49,073 --> 00:15:50,843
I just think we should get
another take for safety,

328
00:15:50,867 --> 00:15:52,052
there was kind of a weird moment.

329
00:15:52,076 --> 00:15:52,994
Okay.

330
00:15:53,077 --> 00:15:55,329
The crew pretty much
consisted of myself,

331
00:15:55,413 --> 00:15:57,748
my girlfriend at the time
that I was living with,

332
00:15:57,832 --> 00:15:59,935
and I told her, "Look, we're
to shoot a movie in the house,

333
00:15:59,959 --> 00:16:00,877
you might as well help,

334
00:16:00,960 --> 00:16:02,840
you won't be able to sleep
in your bed anyways."

335
00:16:02,879 --> 00:16:06,257
So she was helpful.
And then my best friend, Amir,

336
00:16:06,340 --> 00:16:09,218
who I've known since I was
13 years old, in Israel,

337
00:16:09,302 --> 00:16:11,062
and I told him
the whole story and asked him,

338
00:16:11,137 --> 00:16:13,532
"Do you want to help?"
And he's like, "Sure, sounds like fun."

339
00:16:13,556 --> 00:16:15,159
"But I don't know anything
about film making."

340
00:16:15,183 --> 00:16:17,119
And I said, "You know,
that's perfect, neither do I."

341
00:16:17,143 --> 00:16:21,439
The only real crew member that we had
was a makeup girl named Crystal

342
00:16:21,522 --> 00:16:23,083
to come and help us for a couple of days.

343
00:16:23,107 --> 00:16:28,279
We shot the majority of the nights
in the first movie in one night.

344
00:16:28,362 --> 00:16:29,614
God damn it!

345
00:16:29,989 --> 00:16:34,076
I'm tired of this motherfucking poop
in this motherfucking attic!

346
00:16:34,368 --> 00:16:36,913
It's time to kick some demon ass!

347
00:16:37,163 --> 00:16:40,791
I remember laughing,
sitting in the hallway,

348
00:16:41,042 --> 00:16:45,004
all of us laughing just in this,
kind of zone of delirium

349
00:16:45,087 --> 00:16:46,887
where like none of us
are functioning anymore.

350
00:16:46,923 --> 00:16:50,760
Just all of us, Oren, Micah and myself,
just crying, laughing on the floor.

351
00:16:50,843 --> 00:16:52,386
Oren has just revealed to us

352
00:16:52,470 --> 00:16:56,057
that the name of the movie is
Demonic Poop in the Attic.

353
00:16:56,265 --> 00:16:59,769
The name was a problem.
We thought about Captured.

354
00:17:00,269 --> 00:17:05,107
We thought it means two things,
both like Katie's captured by a force,

355
00:17:05,191 --> 00:17:09,237
and also something's captured on tape.
And we just had, like, this notepad,

356
00:17:09,362 --> 00:17:11,364
Anyone that has any idea for a name,

357
00:17:11,447 --> 00:17:13,449
just write a name
and people wrote different names,

358
00:17:13,866 --> 00:17:16,702
and Paranormal Activity just
seemed kind of, like, accurate,

359
00:17:16,827 --> 00:17:19,455
but dry. So we kind of just said,
"You know,

360
00:17:19,580 --> 00:17:21,517
that's the best name we have.
We'll just go with that."

361
00:17:21,541 --> 00:17:23,352
- We could use a little...
- Be careful. You're about to

362
00:17:23,376 --> 00:17:25,416
- run into the shower.
- Extracurricular with this.

363
00:17:25,503 --> 00:17:29,257
In the shots that were
taking place in the bedroom,

364
00:17:29,423 --> 00:17:34,136
usually I would be behind the camera
unless I was actually executing a stunt.

365
00:17:34,220 --> 00:17:37,140
Like if I was crawling on the floor
to move a door or something like that,

366
00:17:37,348 --> 00:17:38,534
then I would have to be there.

367
00:17:38,558 --> 00:17:41,644
But if it's all them,
then I'd usually be behind the camera

368
00:17:41,727 --> 00:17:43,664
or maybe just kind of hiding
in the corner of the room

369
00:17:43,688 --> 00:17:46,023
that I knew was outside the shot.

370
00:17:46,399 --> 00:17:49,068
The stuff that happens during the day,

371
00:17:49,360 --> 00:17:52,655
and I wanted them to have
full freedom with the camera,

372
00:17:52,738 --> 00:17:54,758
then usually I would, like,
go to hide in the bathroom

373
00:17:54,782 --> 00:17:55,992
or something like that.

374
00:17:56,075 --> 00:18:00,329
And I could hear much of what's going on.
If I need to also see what's going on,

375
00:18:00,413 --> 00:18:02,582
we could just immediately
review the footage,

376
00:18:02,665 --> 00:18:06,419
but Micah was such a great cameraman
that we never had problems with him.

377
00:18:06,586 --> 00:18:08,004
I am Dr. Yurhan.

378
00:18:09,922 --> 00:18:12,383
I did do enough camera work to know

379
00:18:12,466 --> 00:18:15,261
this is how framing works,
this is how zooming works.

380
00:18:15,344 --> 00:18:18,889
And then, when I got the camera
and we're shooting,

381
00:18:19,181 --> 00:18:21,100
and Oren was looking at the footage,

382
00:18:21,183 --> 00:18:24,937
he's like, "No, this
doesn't look hand held."

383
00:18:25,021 --> 00:18:28,149
He was great with a camera,
so great that I had to tell him,

384
00:18:28,232 --> 00:18:30,901
"Don't do as good of a job
because it looks too professional."

385
00:18:30,985 --> 00:18:32,379
And I had him close the viewfinder.

386
00:18:32,403 --> 00:18:34,780
I told him, "Just aim it in
the general direction of Katie."

387
00:18:34,864 --> 00:18:37,325
Don't focus so much on
making the shot look good.

388
00:18:37,408 --> 00:18:38,701
And then of course, later on,

389
00:18:38,784 --> 00:18:40,596
as he's editing these
hundreds of hours of footage,

390
00:18:40,620 --> 00:18:42,060
he's like,
"Thank God that you didn't

391
00:18:42,121 --> 00:18:44,332
shake the camera more,
people would have been so sick."

392
00:18:44,415 --> 00:18:45,791
- Carbon image.
- Watch your face.

393
00:18:46,959 --> 00:18:48,628
- That's beautiful.
- Yeah!

394
00:18:48,753 --> 00:18:49,920
Look at this.

395
00:18:50,004 --> 00:18:51,422
Now watch this be our best burn.

396
00:18:51,839 --> 00:18:53,900
While I was trying to research
how to do visual effects,

397
00:18:53,924 --> 00:18:57,845
what I figured out is that
if the camera is steady,

398
00:18:57,928 --> 00:18:59,680
if it's basically
fixed on a tripod,

399
00:19:00,056 --> 00:19:04,185
it's pretty easy to have a blank plate,
which is basically just the bedroom.

400
00:19:04,310 --> 00:19:06,646
And then I can just mask things out.

401
00:19:07,104 --> 00:19:08,481
So I can split the screen.

402
00:19:08,606 --> 00:19:12,151
And if I'm here walking to
the door and pushing the door

403
00:19:12,318 --> 00:19:13,736
and I put a mask here,

404
00:19:14,070 --> 00:19:15,905
I can just replace myself
with the background

405
00:19:16,030 --> 00:19:17,110
that was in the other shot.

406
00:19:17,281 --> 00:19:19,241
So that's the basis for most of the shots.

407
00:19:19,450 --> 00:19:23,162
So for example, for the footprints,
I simply put all the footprints there.

408
00:19:23,329 --> 00:19:26,224
And then with masking, I said, "Okay,
now I'm just going fo reveal this one."

409
00:19:26,248 --> 00:19:28,208
"I'm going to reveal this
one, and then this one."

410
00:19:28,292 --> 00:19:32,672
One of the trickier ones
was getting a Katie dragged out of bed.

411
00:19:36,592 --> 00:19:37,635
That involved a lot of us.

412
00:19:37,718 --> 00:19:39,637
We had to figure out,
first of all, the angle.

413
00:19:39,762 --> 00:19:41,597
How are we going fo actually drag her?

414
00:19:41,764 --> 00:19:45,017
So what we did is,
I got a bungee ankle harness

415
00:19:45,351 --> 00:19:46,602
and tied it to her leg.

416
00:19:46,936 --> 00:19:50,064
And we had my girlfriend
pulling her out of bed

417
00:19:50,231 --> 00:19:51,273
fowards the room.

418
00:19:51,565 --> 00:19:53,526
And then we had
a simple pulley system

419
00:19:53,859 --> 00:19:57,321
where my friend Amir
was pulling her into the hallway

420
00:19:57,446 --> 00:19:58,507
and the pulley would, kind of,

421
00:19:58,531 --> 00:20:00,258
get her exactly the right way
through the doorway.

422
00:20:00,282 --> 00:20:02,118
And my girlfriend
would close the door,

423
00:20:02,743 --> 00:20:04,370
so that by the time
Micah opens the door,

424
00:20:04,537 --> 00:20:07,289
my friend Amir can keep pulling her
straight into the hallway.

425
00:20:07,665 --> 00:20:12,128
- Micah! Micah! Micah!
- Katie!

426
00:20:12,211 --> 00:20:14,731
And Katie was like, "You know what?
Just drag me down the stairs."

427
00:20:14,755 --> 00:20:16,650
"Fuck it, drag me
down the stairs, I don't care!"

428
00:20:16,674 --> 00:20:19,277
And Oren's like, "I don't think
my insurance is going to cover it."

429
00:20:19,301 --> 00:20:21,363
And I was like, "But it will be
so good in the movie!"

430
00:20:21,387 --> 00:20:23,597
And he's like, "No."
Which was the right call.

431
00:20:23,681 --> 00:20:25,161
Okay, do you want to say, "Take one"?

432
00:20:25,266 --> 00:20:28,185
- Two.
- Take 207?

433
00:20:28,310 --> 00:20:30,604
Then after we were done
with the first shoot

434
00:20:30,688 --> 00:20:33,524
and I put everything together,
we all met and we said,

435
00:20:33,649 --> 00:20:36,609
"You know, we're missing some parts here.
These parts don't work too well."

436
00:20:36,861 --> 00:20:39,321
And we had a lot of rounds
of reshoots after that

437
00:20:39,655 --> 00:20:41,407
to keep patching the story.

438
00:20:41,615 --> 00:20:44,452
It was the hardest work environment

439
00:20:44,702 --> 00:20:47,121
that I had ever been in,
but in a very positive way,

440
00:20:47,204 --> 00:20:49,832
because I think it enabled us

441
00:20:49,957 --> 00:20:53,586
to get a level of investment and buy-in,

442
00:20:53,669 --> 00:20:57,131
that was not possible in,
sort of, a union setting.

443
00:20:57,840 --> 00:20:59,842
So I tried sending it to some producers

444
00:20:59,925 --> 00:21:03,763
and to some festivals
and got rejected by all of them.

445
00:21:04,221 --> 00:21:06,307
I'm like, "What do we do next?"

446
00:21:06,390 --> 00:21:10,895
And then we had an opportunity
to submit the movie to Screamfest.

447
00:21:14,774 --> 00:21:18,986
So that was our premier screening event.
And it went really well.

448
00:21:19,069 --> 00:21:21,614
First time we saw Paranormal Activity,
it was in 2007.

449
00:21:21,697 --> 00:21:23,449
It was just sent as a regular submission.

450
00:21:24,700 --> 00:21:26,952
We decided to accept it
because it was very different.

451
00:21:27,036 --> 00:21:30,122
The chemistry between Micah
and Katie was off the chart,

452
00:21:30,206 --> 00:21:31,624
it was kind of very believable.

453
00:21:32,625 --> 00:21:34,043
Sounds pretty good.

454
00:21:34,168 --> 00:21:36,337
So after we watched the screener,

455
00:21:36,712 --> 00:21:40,049
I gave it to a friend of mine
who was working at CAA,

456
00:21:40,132 --> 00:21:43,719
Karill Baru, who was a
young exec over at CAA.

457
00:21:43,803 --> 00:21:46,597
And I gave it to him and he took it in
and showed his boss.

458
00:21:46,680 --> 00:21:50,267
And then, obviously, that was like a month
before we even screened it.

459
00:21:50,351 --> 00:21:51,894
They kind of sat on it for a bit.

460
00:21:52,311 --> 00:21:55,439
I gave it to Luke Thompson
in LA Weekly.

461
00:21:55,731 --> 00:21:57,584
My review was that it was
the must-see of the film

462
00:21:57,608 --> 00:21:59,669
and I'm pretty sure it was
on my Best of The Year list.

463
00:21:59,693 --> 00:22:02,780
And then I gave it to
Steve Barton at Dread Central.

464
00:22:02,863 --> 00:22:06,116
I put on the movie,
and my initial reaction was,

465
00:22:06,408 --> 00:22:08,619
"Fuck, it's another one of these."

466
00:22:09,829 --> 00:22:12,957
And then something
really strange happened.

467
00:22:14,208 --> 00:22:17,086
The characters started
becoming really relatable.

468
00:22:17,169 --> 00:22:22,883
The acting was way better than I'd seen
in this type of movie in quite some time.

469
00:22:22,967 --> 00:22:26,762
We had a, you know,
great reaction from the audience

470
00:22:26,846 --> 00:22:30,391
and I got in touch with a lot
of distributors and press.

471
00:22:30,474 --> 00:22:33,727
We got some great reviews
and we won a couple of awards.

472
00:22:33,811 --> 00:22:34,895
Katie won an award.

473
00:22:34,979 --> 00:22:38,482
I saw it with an audience,
and also the first time

474
00:22:38,566 --> 00:22:41,068
I'd ever seen myself
on a movie screen, you Know.

475
00:22:41,610 --> 00:22:46,615
I remember just thinking, like,
"Oh my gosh, these people are excited."

476
00:22:47,199 --> 00:22:49,910
These people are, like,
really scared and watching.

477
00:22:49,994 --> 00:22:54,415
And, like, it was just sort of
mind-blowing to me.

478
00:22:55,916 --> 00:22:58,127
Micah! Come on! Come on!

479
00:22:58,502 --> 00:23:03,048
After the Screamfest screening,
things started happening pretty quickly.

480
00:23:03,132 --> 00:23:08,512
A day after the awards ceremony,
I got a call from an agent at CAA.

481
00:23:08,762 --> 00:23:11,432
And I met him a few days
later and he was saying,

482
00:23:11,515 --> 00:23:15,853
"Hey, do you want to sign with us?"
I'm like, "Yes, sure. Don't twist my arm."

483
00:23:16,103 --> 00:23:18,314
That was good. I mean...

484
00:23:19,857 --> 00:23:24,236
My agent sent the film
to a producer named Steven Schneider,

485
00:23:24,320 --> 00:23:26,947
who was like a horror guy
and he really loved the film.

486
00:23:27,197 --> 00:23:29,742
I think I sent two emails.

487
00:23:31,702 --> 00:23:35,789
One to an executive at Paramount,

488
00:23:35,956 --> 00:23:40,753
who I was close to and still am,
her name's Ashley Brucks.

489
00:23:40,836 --> 00:23:42,755
And he said,
"Hey, I think I have something

490
00:23:42,838 --> 00:23:46,383
you might like,
but I'm not going to send it to you."

491
00:23:46,884 --> 00:23:50,179
Because at that time, like,
everyone was just, like, passing out DVDs

492
00:23:50,471 --> 00:23:51,722
and you just pop it in.

493
00:23:52,181 --> 00:23:54,683
And he's like,
"You have to experience it."

494
00:23:54,850 --> 00:24:00,147
And another email to the producer

495
00:24:01,023 --> 00:24:04,276
whom I was working for
and with at the time

496
00:24:05,569 --> 00:24:09,323
sort of apprenticing in some ways,
I suppose, under Jason Blum.

497
00:24:09,531 --> 00:24:11,158
Steven saw it and loved it and said,

498
00:24:11,283 --> 00:24:13,094
"You gotta see this movie,
you gotta see this movie."

499
00:24:13,118 --> 00:24:14,118
And I saw it,

500
00:24:14,161 --> 00:24:17,206
and I definitely thought
there was something special about it.

501
00:24:17,414 --> 00:24:19,500
We got a few offers from places like IFC

502
00:24:19,625 --> 00:24:21,961
and Anchor Bay to go
directly to DVD, which would...

503
00:24:22,378 --> 00:24:23,545
They were nice offers,

504
00:24:23,796 --> 00:24:26,256
but I always believed in
the potential of the film,

505
00:24:26,465 --> 00:24:28,425
to do well theatrically.

506
00:24:28,592 --> 00:24:30,469
I said, "Oren, I'm gonna
make a deal with you,

507
00:24:30,552 --> 00:24:31,947
I'll make a deal with you right now."

508
00:24:31,971 --> 00:24:34,011
I said, "Let me come on
as a producer of the movie."

509
00:24:34,056 --> 00:24:35,700
"And we're going to
sell the movie for sure."

510
00:24:35,724 --> 00:24:37,077
"It's gonna be one of the stories."

511
00:24:37,101 --> 00:24:40,187
And we went about the three-year odyssey

512
00:24:40,312 --> 00:24:43,774
of getting Paranormal Activity
from that stage into a movie theater.

513
00:24:44,024 --> 00:24:46,026
Jason and I in particular
started strategizing.

514
00:24:46,110 --> 00:24:50,739
We started screening the movie for people.
We would invite people over to my house.

515
00:24:50,906 --> 00:24:54,118
He had, sort of, like, kind of,
a screening room set up.

516
00:24:54,201 --> 00:24:57,871
And I think there were, like,
maybe four or five of us there.

517
00:24:57,955 --> 00:25:02,668
Steven Schneider was there,
Jason, and maybe a couple of other people.

518
00:25:03,002 --> 00:25:08,090
And I sat and watched it
one night, and it was super fun.

519
00:25:08,173 --> 00:25:10,926
And she loved the film,
she became, kind of, obsessed with it.

520
00:25:11,176 --> 00:25:13,429
She showed it to her boss, Adam Goodman.

521
00:25:13,595 --> 00:25:16,515
The first time I heard about the movie,
it was probably in a staff meeting

522
00:25:16,932 --> 00:25:19,184
at Dream Works,
which I was running at the time,

523
00:25:19,476 --> 00:25:22,938
and Ashley Brucks had brought it up
at the table.

524
00:25:23,355 --> 00:25:25,107
And she made mention of the fact

525
00:25:25,315 --> 00:25:28,652
that there was this film,
and it was found footage.

526
00:25:29,194 --> 00:25:31,572
And at the time, you know,
outside of Blair Witch,

527
00:25:31,697 --> 00:25:36,201
there really wasn't any other example
of found footage ever working

528
00:25:36,326 --> 00:25:38,537
or necessarily being theatrical.

529
00:25:38,954 --> 00:25:42,291
I don't know how many times
I asked him to watch the movie.

530
00:25:42,374 --> 00:25:43,500
It was multiple.

531
00:25:43,667 --> 00:25:49,214
I think I watched it at my house
on a DVD in my laptop.

532
00:25:49,298 --> 00:25:52,217
And he told her like,
"I don't get it, not for me."

533
00:25:52,301 --> 00:25:55,113
And she kept bugging him, she's like,
"No, you have to watch it the right way."

534
00:25:55,137 --> 00:25:56,698
"Watch the whole thing,
not on the laptop."

535
00:25:56,722 --> 00:26:00,768
The first time I really watched it
from beginning to end,

536
00:26:00,893 --> 00:26:02,728
we did a screening at Amblin

537
00:26:03,062 --> 00:26:05,481
and we had brought a bunch
of other people info It,

538
00:26:05,939 --> 00:26:08,817
and it really got under
my skin in that moment.

539
00:26:08,901 --> 00:26:11,570
Like, it was an entirely
different experience

540
00:26:11,653 --> 00:26:14,865
than sitting at home
on my couch with the lights on

541
00:26:15,074 --> 00:26:17,177
and trying to just get through
my homework for the night.

542
00:26:17,201 --> 00:26:18,619
And then we worked on the movie.

543
00:26:18,744 --> 00:26:22,998
And Oren, every time
we would screen the movie,

544
00:26:23,123 --> 00:26:26,668
Oren would like go back
to his house and futz with it.

545
00:26:26,835 --> 00:26:30,631
He'd like shoot with Micah for ten minutes
or shoot with Katie and he'd futz with it,

546
00:26:30,714 --> 00:26:32,174
futz with it. Futz with it.

547
00:26:32,257 --> 00:26:35,344
And, so, I always said he did 50 cuts
of the movie after I was involved.

548
00:26:35,427 --> 00:26:36,970
He probably did another 50 before.

549
00:26:37,054 --> 00:26:39,181
And it would just get better
and better and better.

550
00:26:39,765 --> 00:26:43,393
We really were at the time
planning on just acquiring it

551
00:26:43,477 --> 00:26:45,395
to remake it.

552
00:26:45,479 --> 00:26:50,859
And they are offering us a deal
where I'm going to reshoot the movie.

553
00:26:50,943 --> 00:26:56,657
I will direct a reshoot of the film,
but with a proper budget and real actors

554
00:26:56,740 --> 00:26:58,117
and make sure that it looks nice,

555
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:01,829
not like a crappy found-footage film,
and do it right.

556
00:27:01,912 --> 00:27:04,081
And I'm like, "No, it's not
supposed to look right,

557
00:27:04,164 --> 00:27:06,375
and it's not supposed
to have real actors."

558
00:27:06,458 --> 00:27:09,086
"It works because
of the lo-fi nature of it,

559
00:27:09,169 --> 00:27:10,838
because of the authenticity,

560
00:27:10,921 --> 00:27:12,774
and because of the performances
of Katie and Micah

561
00:27:12,798 --> 00:27:14,341
who are not known actors."

562
00:27:14,424 --> 00:27:18,345
The whole point is it's two people
who are everyday people in a house.

563
00:27:18,470 --> 00:27:20,013
So if you see some actors

564
00:27:20,264 --> 00:27:22,683
you're immediately
disconnected from the reality.

565
00:27:23,142 --> 00:27:24,577
I started thinking about it and I said,

566
00:27:24,601 --> 00:27:28,188
"Okay, I'll do it under
the following conditions."

567
00:27:28,272 --> 00:27:31,108
"One is that we will do
everything we can to sabotage it.

568
00:27:31,191 --> 00:27:33,235
So we can release the original version."

569
00:27:34,862 --> 00:27:37,447
"If we do make it, then the original..."

570
00:27:37,531 --> 00:27:39,992
"Original Paranormal Activity,
the one that existed,

571
00:27:40,075 --> 00:27:43,370
will be on the DVD as an extra
of the remake one."

572
00:27:43,829 --> 00:27:46,039
"And it has to be okay
with Katie and Micah,"

573
00:27:46,123 --> 00:27:48,333
because I felt
it was like such a betrayal

574
00:27:48,417 --> 00:27:50,752
to have them be part of the movie

575
00:27:50,836 --> 00:27:52,754
and now, it's like,
"Okay, thank you, guys."

576
00:27:52,838 --> 00:27:55,632
"Now I'm gonna do the 'real'
version for Dream Works."

577
00:27:55,716 --> 00:27:57,092
"Thanks for the hard work."

578
00:27:57,176 --> 00:27:59,803
So the only way I could do it was say

579
00:27:59,887 --> 00:28:02,389
that we're going to make a deal
and it's in that deal,

580
00:28:02,472 --> 00:28:05,350
contingent on selling you
the rights to remake the film,

581
00:28:05,434 --> 00:28:08,729
you must screen the film
in a test screening setting

582
00:28:08,812 --> 00:28:10,314
for 400 people,

583
00:28:10,397 --> 00:28:12,983
we chose Burbank, and you must attend!

584
00:28:13,066 --> 00:28:14,902
It was one of the most

585
00:28:16,236 --> 00:28:18,614
unusual screenings I'd ever been to

586
00:28:18,697 --> 00:28:21,366
because the audience
was leaving in droves.

587
00:28:21,992 --> 00:28:27,247
And it was just one theater going, exiting
after another theater going, exiting.

588
00:28:27,331 --> 00:28:30,000
And I just kept looking
at Ashley and I'm like.

589
00:28:30,459 --> 00:28:31,710
I felt terrible for her.

590
00:28:31,793 --> 00:28:34,087
I was like,
"This is such a horrible result."

591
00:28:34,171 --> 00:28:36,840
She was excited about the movie,
I kept looking at Jason,

592
00:28:36,924 --> 00:28:39,301
I was like, "See I told you."

593
00:28:39,384 --> 00:28:41,136
And I got up to go to the bathroom,

594
00:28:41,220 --> 00:28:43,820
and I said to one of the security guards
as I was exiting, I said,

595
00:28:43,847 --> 00:28:45,607
"What did everyone say
when they're leaving?"

596
00:28:46,183 --> 00:28:47,952
And the security guard
looked at me and he said,

597
00:28:47,976 --> 00:28:49,561
"They're saying it's too scary."

598
00:28:49,645 --> 00:28:51,730
And right then
and there in the lobby,

599
00:28:51,813 --> 00:28:54,358
after the test screening,
the Dream Works people

600
00:28:54,441 --> 00:28:57,045
are saying, "Yeah, you know what?
Let's just forget about the remake."

601
00:28:57,069 --> 00:28:59,404
"Let's figure out a way
to release this one."

602
00:28:59,488 --> 00:29:01,299
And it's why, it was still
one of the best nights

603
00:29:01,323 --> 00:29:04,326
in my career. It's like,
such vindication, right?

604
00:29:04,409 --> 00:29:06,203
The remake is gone.

605
00:29:06,286 --> 00:29:08,705
Just one more thing,
we need to get to the approval

606
00:29:08,789 --> 00:29:10,791
of one more person. Steven Spielberg.

607
00:29:10,874 --> 00:29:13,168
Spielberg heard the test screening
of this movie

608
00:29:13,252 --> 00:29:15,921
that his company had bought
the remake rights to went great.

609
00:29:16,004 --> 00:29:17,214
He watched the movie.

610
00:29:17,297 --> 00:29:19,341
I guess there was a door
that has never locked

611
00:29:19,967 --> 00:29:23,178
in the entire time he had lived
in whatever this house was.

612
00:29:23,262 --> 00:29:25,764
The door locked from the inside.

613
00:29:25,847 --> 00:29:28,809
Like, he was the only one
in the room and he couldn't...

614
00:29:28,892 --> 00:29:31,186
He had to call a locksmith
and open his door,

615
00:29:31,270 --> 00:29:32,312
which is freaky.

616
00:29:32,396 --> 00:29:35,148
He came back to my office
the next day

617
00:29:35,232 --> 00:29:38,568
and he handed me the movie
in a garbage bag.

618
00:29:38,652 --> 00:29:40,570
Because he didn't want
the DVD in his house

619
00:29:40,654 --> 00:29:42,072
and he didn't want to touch it.

620
00:29:42,155 --> 00:29:44,133
And he thought it was so scary,
which was great theater.

621
00:29:44,157 --> 00:29:46,827
And he said not only is it so scary,

622
00:29:46,910 --> 00:29:49,871
he said, but there may be
something seriously,

623
00:29:50,372 --> 00:29:53,625
you know, kind of, like,
seriously off with this movie here.

624
00:29:53,709 --> 00:29:56,044
So that was one of those
surreal moments in my life

625
00:29:56,128 --> 00:29:58,588
that I'm like, processing,
like, if I heard

626
00:29:58,672 --> 00:30:00,712
that Steven Spielberg
watched my movie and hated it,

627
00:30:00,757 --> 00:30:02,884
I'm like, "Oh my God,
Steven Spielberg knows I exist!"

628
00:30:02,968 --> 00:30:04,386
You know?
And he actually loved it,

629
00:30:04,469 --> 00:30:06,096
that was an amazing moment.

630
00:30:06,179 --> 00:30:08,557
Getting that kind of reaction
from Steven was,

631
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:09,909
you know, that changed everything.

632
00:30:09,933 --> 00:30:13,270
I mean, we started to lean
into this in an incredible way.

633
00:30:13,353 --> 00:30:16,356
He changed the ending
because we had

634
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:18,209
I mean, we got the ending
that was at Screamfest.

635
00:30:18,233 --> 00:30:22,112
That was a cool way of ending the film.

636
00:30:22,195 --> 00:30:27,576
In the original version, the cops come in,
Katie, I believe, is holding a knife,

637
00:30:27,659 --> 00:30:31,413
they shoot her,
and I believe Micah dies as well.

638
00:30:31,496 --> 00:30:33,915
So I think everybody dies.
It's kind of a grim ending.

639
00:30:33,999 --> 00:30:36,460
Well, that was Steven Spielberg's idea.

640
00:30:36,543 --> 00:30:40,547
He was like, "This is great, reshoot it,
don't kill the girl."

641
00:30:41,048 --> 00:30:44,259
And thank you, Steven Spielberg, for that.

642
00:30:44,343 --> 00:30:45,635
But at the time,

643
00:30:45,719 --> 00:30:49,681
Dream Works was going through
a separation from Paramount.

644
00:30:50,140 --> 00:30:51,892
What was clear was that Dream Works

645
00:30:51,975 --> 00:30:54,102
was going fo be, kind of,
going off on its own,

646
00:30:54,186 --> 00:30:57,647
and Paramount,
which had acquired Dream Works,

647
00:30:57,731 --> 00:30:59,983
was going to be keeping all of its assets.

648
00:31:00,067 --> 00:31:05,197
I had heard that Adam, that Paramount,
some, you know, forces that be,

649
00:31:05,280 --> 00:31:07,407
wanted Adam to come over
and run Paramount.

650
00:31:07,491 --> 00:31:13,246
Initially Steven said, "Go to Paramount,
oversee all of the Dream Works slate",

651
00:31:13,330 --> 00:31:17,542
you know, into Paramount's system,
but then come back home to Dream Works.

652
00:31:17,626 --> 00:31:20,212
He said, "Look, I think
Paramount might want you."

653
00:31:20,295 --> 00:31:22,381
"I think you maybe should
take the leap of faith."

654
00:31:22,464 --> 00:31:24,525
"I know it's... We don't know
what's going to happen."

655
00:31:24,549 --> 00:31:27,344
No one knew what was going
to happen at Paramount at the time.

656
00:31:27,427 --> 00:31:29,596
They were going through a lot of changes.

657
00:31:29,679 --> 00:31:32,140
So eventually, I think
I knew I was leaving Paramount.

658
00:31:32,224 --> 00:31:33,701
I wasn't going to be there for very long

659
00:31:33,725 --> 00:31:35,578
because I was supposed to
be going back to Dream Works,

660
00:31:35,602 --> 00:31:37,362
and at that point I sort
of felt bulletproof.

661
00:31:37,729 --> 00:31:40,524
And I walked into my colleague's office

662
00:31:40,607 --> 00:31:42,526
and I'm like,
"We've got to figure this out."

663
00:31:42,609 --> 00:31:47,739
And so we kind of
created this "Demand It" campaign.

664
00:31:51,284 --> 00:31:53,870
Paramount came out
with this "Demand It" campaign

665
00:31:53,954 --> 00:31:56,039
where you would kind of,
have to be like,

666
00:31:56,123 --> 00:31:58,750
"I want this movie, I'm gonna go
see it in this theater,

667
00:31:58,834 --> 00:32:00,043
in this town."

668
00:32:00,127 --> 00:32:03,380
Their whole gimmick was demand
that your city gets this movie.

669
00:32:03,463 --> 00:32:05,298
This movie is getting
a ton of festival buzz,

670
00:32:05,715 --> 00:32:07,384
you have to demand
it comes to your town.

671
00:32:10,011 --> 00:32:12,889
I remember seeing the marketing
for Paranormal Activity

672
00:32:12,973 --> 00:32:14,933
and thinking just how genius it was.

673
00:32:17,060 --> 00:32:20,063
And it put the cameras on, like,
in night vision,

674
00:32:20,147 --> 00:32:21,565
on the kids in the theater

675
00:32:22,941 --> 00:32:24,025
getting their reaction,

676
00:32:25,193 --> 00:32:27,279
getting a quick blurb
from them in the aftermath.

677
00:32:27,362 --> 00:32:28,362
Fantastic.

678
00:32:28,405 --> 00:32:29,465
I'd see it again, definitely.

679
00:32:29,489 --> 00:32:32,409
And I think that it's like,
it's the kind of movie that maybe

680
00:32:32,492 --> 00:32:34,119
it was done out of necessity,

681
00:32:34,202 --> 00:32:37,539
'cause it's kind of, you know,
it's a raw looking movie.

682
00:32:37,622 --> 00:32:39,916
It's a movie
that's shot on a Handycam,

683
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:43,170
so if you just were to cut,
kind of, a traditional trailer,

684
00:32:43,253 --> 00:32:46,756
I think the audiences hadn't
seen a found-footage movie

685
00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:48,360
that was mainstream since Blair Witch.

686
00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:55,307
It's not the house, it's me.

687
00:32:55,390 --> 00:32:58,143
You cannot. I'm in control.

688
00:32:58,226 --> 00:32:59,269
You're not in control.

689
00:33:06,651 --> 00:33:10,655
Paranormal Activity has had
abnormal activity at the box office.

690
00:33:10,739 --> 00:33:14,743
Sure has. That's because the little movie
that started as a low-budget cult thriller

691
00:33:14,826 --> 00:33:16,077
with hardly any marketing,

692
00:33:16,161 --> 00:33:18,997
took home the number one spot
at the box office last weekend.

693
00:33:19,080 --> 00:33:22,125
And it was just enormous. It was huge.

694
00:33:22,542 --> 00:33:26,046
And they put it out against
Saw VI, and they won.

695
00:33:26,129 --> 00:33:28,173
I was blown away by it.
I mean, it was like

696
00:33:29,966 --> 00:33:31,051
you know, it was perfect.

697
00:33:31,134 --> 00:33:34,095
I got up and I moved down
a few rows and I went,

698
00:33:34,179 --> 00:33:36,473
"God damn it. Damn this guy!"

699
00:33:36,973 --> 00:33:38,058
It was so terrifying,

700
00:33:38,141 --> 00:33:39,911
and I thought,
"I'm not gonna leave the theater."

701
00:33:39,935 --> 00:33:43,188
So I went by the theater
and when I drove up,

702
00:33:43,271 --> 00:33:44,624
I thought I was in the wrong place

703
00:33:44,648 --> 00:33:47,651
because there was a line, like,
down the street for this.

704
00:33:47,734 --> 00:33:49,152
And I kept looking around,

705
00:33:49,236 --> 00:33:51,655
I'm like, "Is this a line for the movie?"

706
00:33:51,738 --> 00:33:53,382
I kept asking them,
"What are you in line for?"

707
00:33:53,406 --> 00:33:54,884
"What are you in line for?" And they said,

708
00:33:54,908 --> 00:33:57,536
"Paranormal Activity, Paranormal Activity,
Paranormal Activity!"

709
00:33:57,619 --> 00:34:01,081
I worked at City Walk and it was playing
at the theater

710
00:34:01,164 --> 00:34:03,416
right there in City Walk,
and across from City Walk

711
00:34:03,500 --> 00:34:04,751
was Buca di Beppo,

712
00:34:04,834 --> 00:34:06,994
and I'd be like, "Hey, guys,
welcome to Buca di Beppo."

713
00:34:07,212 --> 00:34:09,548
"My name's Katie. So we have..."

714
00:34:09,631 --> 00:34:11,508
And I'd do the whole spiel,
and they'd be like,

715
00:34:11,591 --> 00:34:13,468
"Do you... Are you that..."

716
00:34:13,552 --> 00:34:16,304
And I'm like, "Yeah, I am.
Yeah, yeah, yeah."

717
00:34:16,388 --> 00:34:18,682
"I've only got a few more days."
This whole thing.

718
00:34:19,057 --> 00:34:20,809
"Did you like the movie?
I'm so glad!"

719
00:34:21,142 --> 00:34:23,103
"Can I get you a glass of wine
to start off with?"

720
00:34:23,186 --> 00:34:24,938
Struggling actors like everybody else

721
00:34:25,021 --> 00:34:26,832
- out in Los Angeles, 150 people are...
- Not anymore.

722
00:34:26,856 --> 00:34:30,318
It was a movie shot
in a kid's house on a camcorder

723
00:34:30,402 --> 00:34:33,822
and no one would have believed
that this little videotaped film

724
00:34:33,905 --> 00:34:36,658
could actually really change
a lot of people's lives

725
00:34:36,741 --> 00:34:38,243
in the process of it.

726
00:35:05,854 --> 00:35:09,566
Paramount, as soon as they saw the success
of Paranormal 1, they immediately said,

727
00:35:09,733 --> 00:35:12,444
"You know, we got to do sequels."
And they wanted me to direct it.

728
00:35:12,611 --> 00:35:15,030
And I'm like, "I'm done, I'm retiring."

729
00:35:15,113 --> 00:35:17,991
You know, after you win the lottery,
you don't go back to the factory.

730
00:35:18,116 --> 00:35:21,202
So the second movie
really was a disaster.

731
00:35:21,328 --> 00:35:23,306
How can you make a sequel
to a found-footage movie,

732
00:35:23,330 --> 00:35:24,490
like, you found more footage?

733
00:35:24,539 --> 00:35:27,751
It inherently doesn't
make any sense, right?

734
00:35:27,876 --> 00:35:30,545
And I remember having this,
sort of, discussion with Oren

735
00:35:30,670 --> 00:35:33,131
where we had to, like,
prove how many sequels

736
00:35:33,214 --> 00:35:37,135
actually were better than the original,
which there aren't many.

737
00:35:37,218 --> 00:35:39,387
Jason Blum, who is an old friend,

738
00:35:39,679 --> 00:35:42,265
came to me and asked me
if I wanted to direct

739
00:35:43,141 --> 00:35:47,062
a Paranormal Activity 2.
There was at that point no idea.

740
00:35:47,145 --> 00:35:49,022
They immediately,
kind of, started the process

741
00:35:49,105 --> 00:35:51,066
of figuring out a story
for the second one.

742
00:35:51,191 --> 00:35:54,861
And I said, "No, no, I don't understand."

743
00:35:54,944 --> 00:35:56,780
"I like that form,
but I don't understand it."

744
00:35:56,863 --> 00:35:58,674
And then I was like,
"But here's what you should do."

745
00:35:58,698 --> 00:36:01,368
"See, it should be
a sequel and a prequel,

746
00:36:01,451 --> 00:36:03,211
and we should stretch
backwards and forwards,

747
00:36:03,286 --> 00:36:04,972
and there should be this
whole mythology thing."

748
00:36:04,996 --> 00:36:06,790
Which I was a little skeptical about

749
00:36:06,873 --> 00:36:08,913
until they come up with
the concept of Paranormal 2,

750
00:36:09,000 --> 00:36:14,297
which was making it sort of a prequel,
but also kind of runs in parallel.

751
00:36:14,547 --> 00:36:17,425
And I thought the concept was
actually kind of pretty smart.

752
00:36:17,634 --> 00:36:20,762
And so there was a lot of brainstorming,
a ton of brainstorming creatively.

753
00:36:21,304 --> 00:36:25,892
As I recall, then there
were long conversations

754
00:36:26,017 --> 00:36:29,270
about who to direct it
when it became apparent

755
00:36:29,396 --> 00:36:30,438
that Oren wasn't going to.

756
00:36:30,563 --> 00:36:33,608
At one point,
this was Steven and my's idea,

757
00:36:33,733 --> 00:36:35,568
and it was the stupidest
idea in the world,

758
00:36:35,694 --> 00:36:40,782
thank God Adam shot us down,
was to give 100,000 dollars

759
00:36:40,907 --> 00:36:42,992
to ten directors,
let them make ten versions

760
00:36:43,076 --> 00:36:44,119
of Paranormal Activity 2,

761
00:36:44,202 --> 00:36:45,954
pick the best one and
call that the sequel.

762
00:36:46,121 --> 00:36:48,281
That was one of our ideas,
which was a really bad idea.

763
00:36:48,456 --> 00:36:50,417
There was like
a five-question questionnaire

764
00:36:50,542 --> 00:36:51,876
that they sent out to directors.

765
00:36:53,294 --> 00:36:55,630
Basically sort of saying,
"Why did this movie work?"

766
00:36:55,880 --> 00:36:58,800
"What made you think it worked
and what would be the right way

767
00:36:58,925 --> 00:37:00,301
to go forward with the franchise?"

768
00:37:00,468 --> 00:37:01,970
Kip's not just a good writer,

769
00:37:02,053 --> 00:37:04,139
he's a good director,
he's a good storyteller.

770
00:37:04,347 --> 00:37:07,767
And so we all sat around
and continued to make up

771
00:37:07,934 --> 00:37:09,811
what might be the conceit of the movie.

772
00:37:09,978 --> 00:37:11,414
They kind of asked, "What's your plan?"

773
00:37:11,438 --> 00:37:13,374
There's a release date,
you know, five months from now."

774
00:37:13,398 --> 00:37:15,501
"How do we do this?
Or how do you think we should do this?"

775
00:37:15,525 --> 00:37:19,237
And my answer was that we should
start shooting immediately

776
00:37:19,362 --> 00:37:21,990
and shoot a really bad version
of it, like, that day,

777
00:37:22,115 --> 00:37:23,759
you know, or as soon as we possibly could,

778
00:37:23,783 --> 00:37:26,064
and then shoot another one
and another one and another one

779
00:37:26,161 --> 00:37:28,222
until we ran out of time.
That we would just keep shooting,

780
00:37:28,246 --> 00:37:30,457
that we'd get three houses,
one for the set,

781
00:37:30,540 --> 00:37:32,542
one for production
and one for cast.

782
00:37:33,918 --> 00:37:36,129
And that we would shoot
until we ran out of time.

783
00:37:36,254 --> 00:37:38,339
Trying to find the movie

784
00:37:38,673 --> 00:37:41,217
and trying to be able to
take Paramount Pictures

785
00:37:41,468 --> 00:37:44,679
and the apparatus that comes
with a movie of that scale

786
00:37:45,013 --> 00:37:48,057
and trying to find the sort
of bare-minimum approach,

787
00:37:48,516 --> 00:37:50,935
and reverse a hundred years of film making

788
00:37:51,102 --> 00:37:55,148
into now trying to essentially
tap into all of what you know.

789
00:37:55,273 --> 00:37:56,633
It was like making a student film.

790
00:37:56,691 --> 00:37:58,252
- You see that thing in the corner...
- Yeah.

791
00:37:58,276 --> 00:37:59,652
Looks like a motion detector?

792
00:37:59,736 --> 00:38:00,862
That's a camera.

793
00:38:01,738 --> 00:38:03,573
We're watching you!

794
00:38:03,948 --> 00:38:05,909
Casting was one
of the really, really big deals.

795
00:38:06,117 --> 00:38:09,287
And there was again,
a lot of voices in that process.

796
00:38:09,412 --> 00:38:10,288
So they said,

797
00:38:10,371 --> 00:38:13,875
"Can you come up to the house
and help cut some of the casting footage?"

798
00:38:14,042 --> 00:38:15,394
I said, "Okay, do I have the job?"

799
00:38:15,418 --> 00:38:18,213
They said,
"No, but can you come out and cut?"

800
00:38:18,505 --> 00:38:22,926
I said, "Okay, do you have a system?
"No.' Okay, cool."

801
00:38:23,051 --> 00:38:25,553
I had Final Cut on my laptop.

802
00:38:25,762 --> 00:38:29,516
Greg was as much of a creative partner
as absolutely anybody on the film,

803
00:38:29,641 --> 00:38:32,519
and I was with him
every minute I wasn't on set.

804
00:38:32,727 --> 00:38:36,007
"The Friday before the production meeting,
they called and said, You have the job."

805
00:38:36,064 --> 00:38:38,000
And I'm like, "Is it 100 percent?
Do I have the job?"

806
00:38:38,024 --> 00:38:39,424
They said, "Yeah, you got the job."

807
00:38:39,484 --> 00:38:41,653
When we were looking for people in L.A.

808
00:38:41,861 --> 00:38:46,866
who... were unrecognizable
or not broadly recognizable...

809
00:38:48,117 --> 00:38:51,830
If you're in L.A. and you're pretty good,
you've probably done something.

810
00:38:51,955 --> 00:38:53,795
You know what I mean?
You've done a few things.

811
00:38:55,792 --> 00:38:59,170
So, Akiva encouraged us to go beyond L.A.

812
00:38:59,712 --> 00:39:01,297
Don't look at me, look at the screen.

813
00:39:01,589 --> 00:39:04,592
I played Daniel Rey
in Paranormal Activity 2.

814
00:39:04,801 --> 00:39:07,720
I played Ali Rey, she's 16.

815
00:39:07,804 --> 00:39:09,931
She's the daughter
of Daniel Rey and Kristi,

816
00:39:10,223 --> 00:39:12,433
who is Katie's sister.

817
00:39:12,642 --> 00:39:15,812
Kristi seems to be somebody
who wanted to be an artist,

818
00:39:15,979 --> 00:39:17,772
or an actor and they kind of gave up,

819
00:39:17,897 --> 00:39:21,067
and is being a stay-at-home mom now
to a teenager

820
00:39:21,442 --> 00:39:22,610
and a brand-new baby.

821
00:39:22,735 --> 00:39:24,487
Guess who was in labor for a day?

822
00:39:25,738 --> 00:39:28,408
And a dog, an amazing dog.
The star of the movie, really.

823
00:39:31,911 --> 00:39:35,206
It essentially introduced the whole idea
that the demon was pursuing this child.

824
00:39:35,748 --> 00:39:38,251
And that they did this evil thing
to transfer it to Katie.

825
00:39:38,334 --> 00:39:41,880
They essentially were the cause
of Katie having her experiences.

826
00:39:41,963 --> 00:39:43,649
When they said
there was going to be a sequel,

827
00:39:43,673 --> 00:39:46,426
I was like, "Wow! Another one?"

828
00:39:46,509 --> 00:39:47,802
"What is happening?"

829
00:39:47,886 --> 00:39:50,597
We had had the idea of using them

830
00:39:50,680 --> 00:39:53,516
and sort of letting Micah
be in the footage early on

831
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:56,603
and letting people be
completely befuddled.

832
00:39:56,978 --> 00:39:58,980
And then being able to reveal

833
00:39:59,063 --> 00:40:02,275
that this was actually a prequel,
not a sequel.

834
00:40:02,358 --> 00:40:05,361
Having continuity of actors,

835
00:40:05,445 --> 00:40:09,073
especially since there were
very few of us in the first film,

836
00:40:09,157 --> 00:40:11,576
it lends a legitimacy to the sequels.

837
00:40:11,826 --> 00:40:15,121
This was such a well-crafted idea,
the first one.

838
00:40:15,246 --> 00:40:18,124
And you wanted to honor that,
kind of, spark of genius,

839
00:40:18,207 --> 00:40:20,960
that thing that the three
of them had created.

840
00:40:21,127 --> 00:40:23,546
Okay, we have to have
lightning strike twice,

841
00:40:23,630 --> 00:40:28,343
but how you do that now with a studio
and with also many more eyes.

842
00:40:28,426 --> 00:40:30,106
I didn't feel
a ton of pressure personally,

843
00:40:30,136 --> 00:40:31,888
but I was well aware of the fact that

844
00:40:33,181 --> 00:40:35,058
they were expecting
this thing to continue,

845
00:40:35,141 --> 00:40:36,493
you know, like Paramount was on board

846
00:40:36,517 --> 00:40:40,438
and they really wanted it
to replicate the success.

847
00:40:40,563 --> 00:40:42,666
Once we had the cast,
then we had everything we needed

848
00:40:42,690 --> 00:40:44,150
to go make the movie,

849
00:40:44,275 --> 00:40:47,236
but until we had them,
you know, weeks were passing.

850
00:40:47,570 --> 00:40:50,949
October's coming,
and it was pretty panicky for a while.

851
00:40:51,074 --> 00:40:54,619
We reached out a lot of writers
and heard different takes.

852
00:40:54,702 --> 00:40:57,205
They invited me
and a handful of other writers

853
00:40:57,872 --> 00:41:00,625
to come and watch
the footage that they had,

854
00:41:00,708 --> 00:41:01,834
which was really only

855
00:41:01,918 --> 00:41:06,130
I think they had something
like 15 minutes assembled.

856
00:41:06,214 --> 00:41:07,382
And then they had like a.

857
00:41:08,341 --> 00:41:09,621
I don't even know if it was a...

858
00:41:09,676 --> 00:41:12,595
It wasn't even really an outline.
It was just like a two-page document

859
00:41:12,679 --> 00:41:14,323
that was sort of like, "Here's our story."

860
00:41:14,347 --> 00:41:16,933
And I remember looking
at Chris the entire time,

861
00:41:17,016 --> 00:41:19,769
he was just sitting there with this, like,
shitty look on his face

862
00:41:19,852 --> 00:41:21,938
the entire time as we were
talking about this movie.

863
00:41:22,105 --> 00:41:24,816
I'm a very passionate person

864
00:41:24,899 --> 00:41:27,402
when it comes to film making
and specifically to horror,

865
00:41:27,568 --> 00:41:29,046
and so I remember just sort of like

866
00:41:29,070 --> 00:41:30,798
I think I had my arms
folded and I was, like,

867
00:41:30,822 --> 00:41:32,633
shaking my head the whole time
through this meeting.

868
00:41:32,657 --> 00:41:36,661
I was just looking at him,
like, "What is this guy's problem?"

869
00:41:36,744 --> 00:41:40,081
"Why is he giving us
so much grief about this?"

870
00:41:40,164 --> 00:41:41,642
While everybody else
in the room was like,

871
00:41:41,666 --> 00:41:42,959
"Yeah, this is great!"

872
00:41:43,209 --> 00:41:45,294
And the head of the studio,
Adam Goodman,

873
00:41:45,420 --> 00:41:47,314
he looked at me and he said,
"Chris, what's wrong?"

874
00:41:47,338 --> 00:41:48,899
And I was like,
"You guys are in trouble."

875
00:41:48,923 --> 00:41:50,925
I think that was the first thing
I said to him.

876
00:41:51,009 --> 00:41:52,885
He's like, "What needs to happen is... ".

877
00:41:53,177 --> 00:41:55,179
And then he proceeded
to pitch the sequence

878
00:41:55,346 --> 00:41:57,348
where Kristi gets
dragged out of the nursery

879
00:41:57,890 --> 00:41:59,475
and down info the basement.

880
00:42:01,310 --> 00:42:04,147
All I remember is,
like, we were all like...

881
00:42:05,398 --> 00:42:07,275
"What other ideas do you have?"

882
00:42:07,358 --> 00:42:08,526
And then after that

883
00:42:09,610 --> 00:42:13,531
they asked me to come on board
and start writing more.

884
00:42:13,614 --> 00:42:17,035
And then as I got sort of more
involved with the process,

885
00:42:17,118 --> 00:42:21,289
it sort of became clear to all of us,
that they just needed a script.

886
00:42:21,372 --> 00:42:24,459
They couldn't just wing it anymore.

887
00:42:25,251 --> 00:42:27,128
Oren authored the first movie,

888
00:42:27,211 --> 00:42:29,630
Chris Landon,
and to a slightly lesser degree,

889
00:42:29,714 --> 00:42:31,841
but a very important amount,
and Greg Plotkin,

890
00:42:31,924 --> 00:42:33,593
authored all the sequels.

891
00:42:33,676 --> 00:42:38,347
The vision of the movies
belong to those two guys.

892
00:42:38,431 --> 00:42:41,642
The release date was getting
closer and closer and closer.

893
00:42:41,726 --> 00:42:45,146
And eventually I called
our head of post-production

894
00:42:45,229 --> 00:42:48,357
and I said, "I feel like we're... ".

895
00:42:48,441 --> 00:42:49,752
"This is gonna need to be a movie

896
00:42:49,776 --> 00:42:53,154
that we're sort of making
and posting at the same time."

897
00:42:53,237 --> 00:42:57,241
Greg Plotkin was moved from editorial,

898
00:42:57,325 --> 00:43:00,161
which was like way across
the lot on Paramount,

899
00:43:00,536 --> 00:43:03,206
to down the hall from, yes,

900
00:43:03,289 --> 00:43:05,708
our president of production
and my office.

901
00:43:05,792 --> 00:43:07,603
The difference between
found footage and a narrative

902
00:43:07,627 --> 00:43:10,254
is that you really have to pay attention
to every single frame.

903
00:43:10,379 --> 00:43:11,857
There's going to be something different,

904
00:43:11,881 --> 00:43:14,151
especially if it's hand held
and it's an actor holding the camera,

905
00:43:14,175 --> 00:43:16,820
camera's gonna move in a different way.
You get some sort of different image.

906
00:43:16,844 --> 00:43:19,605
It could be different story.
It could be something different entirely.

907
00:43:19,764 --> 00:43:23,768
So the challenge was,
and the fun thing was,

908
00:43:23,893 --> 00:43:26,354
I got to rewrite,
which you always do in post anyway,

909
00:43:26,479 --> 00:43:29,333
but I got to kind of rewrite the story
or write the story, because I would take

910
00:43:29,357 --> 00:43:30,608
a little bit from this story,

911
00:43:30,691 --> 00:43:32,503
a little bit from that story
a little bit from this,

912
00:43:32,527 --> 00:43:33,962
and then sort of
cobble it together to create

913
00:43:33,986 --> 00:43:35,666
what I thought was the stronger narrative.

914
00:43:39,951 --> 00:43:43,121
We'd shoot for a handful of weeks,
look at the footage,

915
00:43:43,287 --> 00:43:47,041
see what worked and rework the story,

916
00:43:47,125 --> 00:43:49,293
maybe jump in and shoot
for a couple of days.

917
00:43:49,502 --> 00:43:52,231
I would be writing something
and then they would be shooting something.

918
00:43:52,255 --> 00:43:55,883
And then I would, hot off the press,
like, run downstairs and like be like,

919
00:43:56,008 --> 00:43:57,568
"Here's the scene you're gonna do now!"

920
00:43:57,635 --> 00:44:02,515
And it was incredibly challenging,
especially for the actors.

921
00:44:02,640 --> 00:44:05,476
The process that we shot,
that we used in the first film,

922
00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:08,104
just wasn't there in the union setting,

923
00:44:08,646 --> 00:44:11,315
you know, like, we're getting
this scene to work

924
00:44:11,566 --> 00:44:13,776
and then someone's like,
"Lunch!" And everyone leaves.

925
00:44:13,860 --> 00:44:17,155
That doesn't allow for what
we did in the first film

926
00:44:17,280 --> 00:44:18,440
to come into the second film.

927
00:44:18,531 --> 00:44:23,244
Because of how we were shooting,
things could change pretty quickly

928
00:44:23,452 --> 00:44:25,580
and you could get
something that was amazing.

929
00:44:25,705 --> 00:44:28,291
We'd be shooting out by the pool
and someone would have an idea,

930
00:44:28,457 --> 00:44:32,044
"What if, you know,
we use that pool cleaner

931
00:44:32,128 --> 00:44:34,589
and the pool cleaner,
like, crawled out?"

932
00:44:34,714 --> 00:44:38,843
Instead of like waiting a week to do that
and prep it and try to shoot it,

933
00:44:38,926 --> 00:44:40,678
you could do it in a matter of minutes.

934
00:44:41,095 --> 00:44:42,597
There's a sequence where the dad

935
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:44,765
is playing with the controller
for the pool cleaner,

936
00:44:45,308 --> 00:44:48,269
and then the pool cleaner
ends up jumping out of the pool.

937
00:44:48,352 --> 00:44:50,563
We must have tried six different ways

938
00:44:50,646 --> 00:44:53,149
to mechanically get the thing
out of the pool,

939
00:44:53,232 --> 00:44:54,710
to digitally get the thing
out of the pool.

940
00:44:54,734 --> 00:44:55,776
None of them looked right.

941
00:44:55,860 --> 00:44:57,045
And they were talking about like,

942
00:44:57,069 --> 00:44:58,630
"How are we gonna tie strings
to the vacuum?"

943
00:44:58,654 --> 00:45:00,465
I said, "We're not gonna
tie strings to the vacuum."

944
00:45:00,489 --> 00:45:01,967
"I'm gonna go in,
I'm gonna hold my breath,

945
00:45:01,991 --> 00:45:03,594
you're gonna shoot it,
and I'm gonna throw it

946
00:45:03,618 --> 00:45:04,619
out of the pool."

947
00:45:05,912 --> 00:45:06,913
Yeah!

948
00:45:06,996 --> 00:45:11,584
The big scenes in the movie
were experiments, were things that

949
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:14,712
that people had
doubts would work,

950
00:45:14,795 --> 00:45:17,840
or that shouldn't be in the film,
like the whole part

951
00:45:18,174 --> 00:45:21,111
of the security camera guy who comes over.
That was a real security camera guy,

952
00:45:21,135 --> 00:45:22,905
because there was a lot
of push back of the idea

953
00:45:22,929 --> 00:45:25,723
that this family would
ever install security cameras.

954
00:45:26,098 --> 00:45:29,268
So we invited a real guy over
and asked him to take us around the house

955
00:45:29,352 --> 00:45:30,787
and tell us where the cameras would go.

956
00:45:30,811 --> 00:45:33,064
And we filmed him doing it
and he ended up in the movie

957
00:45:33,147 --> 00:45:36,776
and by showing that to the studio
and showing that guy talking about it,

958
00:45:36,859 --> 00:45:40,863
they became believers
that this is something a person might do.

959
00:45:40,947 --> 00:45:43,282
We wanted to add a few big scares,

960
00:45:43,366 --> 00:45:45,006
and I think what we did, we had a meeting

961
00:45:45,076 --> 00:45:47,828
with some of the stunt teams
and the practical effects team,

962
00:45:47,912 --> 00:45:49,538
and we just ask them,
"What can we do?"

963
00:45:49,622 --> 00:45:50,957
"What can we do that looks big?"

964
00:45:51,040 --> 00:45:52,434
And one of the ideas was, you know,

965
00:45:52,458 --> 00:45:55,836
we can, like, blow open
some cabinets and cabinet doors.

966
00:45:55,920 --> 00:45:57,213
And he said, "Okay."

967
00:45:57,296 --> 00:45:59,066
And then, you know,
"Just this cupboard right here

968
00:45:59,090 --> 00:46:03,219
is gonna blow open, this one right here."
I was like, "Okay, great."

969
00:46:03,469 --> 00:46:07,515
So what you see on camera
is the reality of me not knowing

970
00:46:07,640 --> 00:46:09,558
that all the cupboards
were gonna blow open.

971
00:46:09,642 --> 00:46:11,352
And that is actually the first take.

972
00:46:15,815 --> 00:46:18,734
We actually, probably,
didn't tell her well enough

973
00:46:18,859 --> 00:46:20,111
how big it's going to be.

974
00:46:20,194 --> 00:46:24,407
The scene I think
where I'm watching TV

975
00:46:24,907 --> 00:46:27,952
and there's the demonic shadow
that sort of comes over me

976
00:46:28,035 --> 00:46:29,120
and I wake up.

977
00:46:30,246 --> 00:46:32,832
This happened often because, you know,

978
00:46:32,915 --> 00:46:35,584
we're working late hours
and I'm tired and I'd say,

979
00:46:35,668 --> 00:46:36,794
"Can I take a nap?"

980
00:46:36,877 --> 00:46:38,671
"Yeah, sure.
You can take a nap."

981
00:46:38,754 --> 00:46:40,840
"Just know, like,
we're gonna go into this scene."

982
00:46:40,923 --> 00:46:42,008
"Okay, cool."

983
00:46:42,091 --> 00:46:44,135
And then they'd put
some guy behind a wall

984
00:46:44,218 --> 00:46:45,594
that just goes bang!

985
00:46:45,678 --> 00:46:47,972
And, like, that's a real reaction?

986
00:46:49,098 --> 00:46:50,808
Place to go for affordable prices

987
00:46:50,891 --> 00:46:52,768
on the best quality
all-wood kitchen cabinets.

988
00:46:53,311 --> 00:46:57,440
Paramount had a lot more confidence in it
than they originally did in Paranormal 1.

989
00:46:57,523 --> 00:47:01,694
And they knew it was going to go wide,
so it was a totally different approach.

990
00:47:01,777 --> 00:47:05,698
They had the marketing budget
to go wide from the first place.

991
00:47:05,781 --> 00:47:07,742
And they went,
you know, really big with It,

992
00:47:07,825 --> 00:47:11,662
but still wanted to maintain a sense of...
It's sort of like it's a big movie,

993
00:47:11,746 --> 00:47:13,956
but it still has, kind of, small origins.

994
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:15,958
So they wanted to make sure
that they're always

995
00:47:16,042 --> 00:47:17,978
in touch with the fans and they
make the fans feel like,

996
00:47:18,002 --> 00:47:19,045
you know, it's their film.

997
00:47:19,128 --> 00:47:23,007
So it was a pretty clever
way to both go big,

998
00:47:23,090 --> 00:47:25,926
but make it not feel like
a big Hollywood movie.

999
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:39,291
I was very skeptical
on how they'd do a sequel,

1000
00:47:39,315 --> 00:47:40,816
obviously
because of Blair Witch.

1001
00:47:40,900 --> 00:47:43,569
The Blair Witch sequel
was an interesting mess,

1002
00:47:43,652 --> 00:47:44,987
I think, to put it mildly.

1003
00:47:45,071 --> 00:47:48,449
Two had this great idea of,
"Well, let's just go back a few weeks

1004
00:47:49,075 --> 00:47:52,787
to when this stuff was almost
just about to start."

1005
00:47:52,870 --> 00:47:54,872
And people were very,
very scared.

1006
00:47:55,289 --> 00:47:57,917
And that's when I knew
that we had succeeded.

1007
00:47:58,042 --> 00:48:01,253
We all started feeling,
like, "Maybe it could be okay",

1008
00:48:01,337 --> 00:48:02,647
maybe it wouldn't be embarrassing,”

1009
00:48:02,671 --> 00:48:05,341
but I don't think we expected
it to be as successful as it was.

1010
00:48:05,424 --> 00:48:09,303
When Paranormal 2 opened,
it set the record for,

1011
00:48:09,387 --> 00:48:12,390
biggest weekend opening
for a horror movie.

1012
00:48:12,473 --> 00:48:15,726
Honestly, a week before,
if we'd screened our previous rough cut?

1013
00:48:15,810 --> 00:48:16,811
We weren't there.

1014
00:48:47,091 --> 00:48:49,552
It's very hard to keep mythology working

1015
00:48:49,635 --> 00:48:51,303
with found footage. It's very...

1016
00:48:51,387 --> 00:48:55,057
A found-footage movie
is much harder to do

1017
00:48:55,141 --> 00:48:57,226
than a not found...
No one understands that,

1018
00:48:57,309 --> 00:48:59,353
because you have to always...

1019
00:48:59,437 --> 00:49:01,397
You don't have to justify
where you put the camera

1020
00:49:01,480 --> 00:49:02,833
when you're shooting a normal movie,

1021
00:49:02,857 --> 00:49:04,984
the camera can be
wherever you want because...

1022
00:49:05,067 --> 00:49:07,820
You have to always
justify where the camera is.

1023
00:49:07,903 --> 00:49:09,655
You have to justify
why the camera's on,

1024
00:49:09,738 --> 00:49:10,781
why it's recording.

1025
00:49:10,865 --> 00:49:12,908
And mostly what you want
fo see in horror movies

1026
00:49:12,992 --> 00:49:14,201
is situations in jeopardy.

1027
00:49:14,285 --> 00:49:17,580
Most of the time when you're in jeopardy,
no one's holding a fucking camera.

1028
00:49:17,663 --> 00:49:19,665
Like, you know, that's an endless problem.

1029
00:49:20,082 --> 00:49:23,878
Katie referenced her childhood
quite a bit in the first film.

1030
00:49:23,961 --> 00:49:25,522
And then it really sort of
became a thing

1031
00:49:25,546 --> 00:49:27,673
in the second film
between Katie and Kristi.

1032
00:49:27,923 --> 00:49:29,985
And so I think we were all kind
of fascinated with the idea

1033
00:49:30,009 --> 00:49:31,969
of like, "What was that
childhood experience like

1034
00:49:32,052 --> 00:49:33,179
and what really happened?"

1035
00:49:33,262 --> 00:49:36,348
We all thought that
the idea of having a prequel

1036
00:49:36,432 --> 00:49:39,351
happening in the '80s,
focusing on Katie and Kristi

1037
00:49:39,435 --> 00:49:41,604
when they were little girls
was a winner.

1038
00:49:41,687 --> 00:49:44,982
We felt very confident
about the concept from the very beginning.

1039
00:49:45,065 --> 00:49:46,942
And it was also fun to think like,
"Oh, wow,"

1040
00:49:47,735 --> 00:49:51,447
we, like, did this little movie
and now this young actress.

1041
00:49:51,530 --> 00:49:53,199
Is playing a younger version of this role

1042
00:49:53,282 --> 00:49:56,452
that we originated in a house
in San Diego years ago.”

1043
00:49:56,827 --> 00:50:01,749
I was finally able to really step in
and take ownership of the story.

1044
00:50:03,209 --> 00:50:06,378
Instead of inheriting somebody else's idea

1045
00:50:06,462 --> 00:50:08,547
and then sort of running with it,
this one was mine.

1046
00:50:08,631 --> 00:50:11,133
What I realized was how important it was
for the franchise

1047
00:50:11,217 --> 00:50:14,720
to be true to the vocabulary
of 1 and now 2.

1048
00:50:16,388 --> 00:50:18,724
Doing that again wasn't
something I wanted to do.

1049
00:50:18,807 --> 00:50:20,518
We had to go out
looking for new directors

1050
00:50:20,601 --> 00:50:22,394
and we were talking to everyone.

1051
00:50:22,478 --> 00:50:24,581
And we were interviewing everyone.
Because the second movie

1052
00:50:24,605 --> 00:50:27,650
was both well-received
and was a financial success,

1053
00:50:28,108 --> 00:50:30,528
the level of directors
that were interested in it

1054
00:50:30,945 --> 00:50:31,987
had really changed.

1055
00:50:32,112 --> 00:50:35,950
We happened upon Henry and Rel,
and really liked their stuff,

1056
00:50:36,033 --> 00:50:38,619
and though, maybe on the surface

1057
00:50:39,078 --> 00:50:41,580
they didn't scream, like,
horror movie directors,

1058
00:50:41,789 --> 00:50:43,666
it doesn't really matter for this.

1059
00:50:43,749 --> 00:50:45,834
Yeah, before this,
we weren't even big horror nuts.

1060
00:50:46,085 --> 00:50:47,085
Horror nuts.

1061
00:50:48,796 --> 00:50:51,006
I mean they were young, they were fun,

1062
00:50:51,090 --> 00:50:53,842
they were charming,
they were really talented.

1063
00:50:54,009 --> 00:50:58,180
They had... this funny edge.

1064
00:50:58,305 --> 00:50:59,848
It kind of came out of the blue

1065
00:51:00,474 --> 00:51:03,227
because everyone thought
Catfish was a found-footage...

1066
00:51:03,477 --> 00:51:04,645
Which it kind of is.

1067
00:51:04,770 --> 00:51:06,355
If you find it.

1068
00:51:06,522 --> 00:51:09,358
I mean, we found it in the camera
after we shot it.

1069
00:51:09,525 --> 00:51:13,237
The directors who made this
are very talented

1070
00:51:13,487 --> 00:51:15,781
and they did an incredible
job at found footage

1071
00:51:15,864 --> 00:51:19,868
of making a story that seemed,
you know, totally credible,

1072
00:51:19,952 --> 00:51:24,498
but it was obviously cast and it was,
you know, it was all make-believe.

1073
00:51:24,582 --> 00:51:29,253
So, we must've flown out to L.A.
within 48 hours...

1074
00:51:29,336 --> 00:51:31,297
- Yeah.
- To sit down in front of,

1075
00:51:31,380 --> 00:51:34,675
it would seem like a
Kafka-esque, endless...

1076
00:51:34,758 --> 00:51:36,093
Most intimidating meeting.

1077
00:51:36,176 --> 00:51:37,976
I think I said to them
in the meeting, I said,

1078
00:51:38,053 --> 00:51:42,891
"Look, I think you guys are great,
but you have to just tell me,

1079
00:51:42,975 --> 00:51:45,436
like, Catfish was bullshit."

1080
00:51:45,519 --> 00:51:48,856
"If you tell me right
now that Caffishis fake,

1081
00:51:48,939 --> 00:51:50,065
you got the job."

1082
00:51:50,149 --> 00:51:51,942
They stuck to their guns, they're like,

1083
00:51:52,026 --> 00:51:55,195
"The movie's 100 percent real,
there's nothing to it."

1084
00:51:55,696 --> 00:51:57,948
So, I remember going back to my office

1085
00:51:58,032 --> 00:52:00,534
and talking to Jason
and Ashley and saying like,

1086
00:52:00,618 --> 00:52:02,661
"I really like these guys.
I think they're great,

1087
00:52:02,745 --> 00:52:04,097
but I think they're full of shit."

1088
00:52:04,121 --> 00:52:06,582
- And we didn't get the job.
- Yeah.

1089
00:52:06,665 --> 00:52:09,209
Ultimately, cooler minds prevailed.

1090
00:52:09,293 --> 00:52:11,462
Ashley, Jason probably
beat me up and said,

1091
00:52:11,545 --> 00:52:12,897
"They're our guys, they're our guys."

1092
00:52:12,921 --> 00:52:14,882
And Jason called and was like,

1093
00:52:15,466 --> 00:52:18,469
"Can you be on a flight 6:00 a.m.,
tomorrow morning

1094
00:52:19,928 --> 00:52:21,972
to direct Paranormal Activity 37".

1095
00:52:22,056 --> 00:52:25,267
And I was like, "Yeah, sure.
How long are we going for?"

1096
00:52:25,351 --> 00:52:26,268
"Six months."

1097
00:52:26,352 --> 00:52:27,712
Only been here for a few months,

1098
00:52:28,103 --> 00:52:31,523
but thank you for
welcoming me into your family.

1099
00:52:31,607 --> 00:52:35,110
So, I played Dennis,
I think his last name is Smith.

1100
00:52:35,778 --> 00:52:40,199
He is Julie's boyfriend.
He's a wedding videographer.

1101
00:52:40,783 --> 00:52:44,995
And he has this feeling

1102
00:52:45,079 --> 00:52:48,791
that there might be some
creepy stuff going on around the house.

1103
00:52:48,957 --> 00:52:51,168
So he sets up cameras to capture it.

1104
00:52:51,377 --> 00:52:55,172
We went to a house
and had Chris Smith...

1105
00:52:55,547 --> 00:52:57,758
It was important,
could he operate the camera?

1106
00:52:57,841 --> 00:52:59,343
And did he sound authentic behind it?

1107
00:52:59,677 --> 00:53:01,970
It was more important when,
if he was the filmmaker,

1108
00:53:02,054 --> 00:53:04,181
he was auditioning
and following her around the house.

1109
00:53:04,556 --> 00:53:05,724
It's time.

1110
00:53:05,808 --> 00:53:07,810
- Don't film this.
- Why not?

1111
00:53:09,061 --> 00:53:10,062
It's illegal.

1112
00:53:10,145 --> 00:53:11,480
Well, I played Julie.

1113
00:53:12,898 --> 00:53:15,567
Julie is a mom. She has two girls.

1114
00:53:15,651 --> 00:53:18,278
And she is with Dennis,
who's her boyfriend,

1115
00:53:18,362 --> 00:53:23,409
who has become part of the family,
he's a father figure to the girls.

1116
00:53:23,492 --> 00:53:25,452
Yeah, the cast was incredible.

1117
00:53:25,536 --> 00:53:29,039
And the girls, I think, most of all.

1118
00:53:29,415 --> 00:53:31,291
I watched some of the tapes on the camera

1119
00:53:31,375 --> 00:53:34,336
and I saw you talking to somebody
late last night.

1120
00:53:34,878 --> 00:53:38,549
If you saw me talking to somebody,
it would be Toby.

1121
00:53:38,716 --> 00:53:42,636
I thought that Toby was
a clever way to, sort of, like

1122
00:53:43,929 --> 00:53:46,682
deal with the subject
of an imaginary friend.

1123
00:53:46,890 --> 00:53:49,852
Toby was my neighbor's chocolate lab

1124
00:53:51,103 --> 00:53:52,663
that they walked by my house every day.

1125
00:53:52,688 --> 00:53:55,524
And this was truly the cutest dog
I've ever seen in my life.

1126
00:53:55,899 --> 00:53:57,794
And so that's why I named him
Toby, because I thought,

1127
00:53:57,818 --> 00:53:59,737
"Well, if this lab is
the cutest thing ever,

1128
00:53:59,862 --> 00:54:01,864
like, Toby should be
the cutest thing ever

1129
00:54:01,947 --> 00:54:03,532
to this child. She should trust him."

1130
00:54:03,699 --> 00:54:06,493
The witches, a lot of us were
very skeptical about it.

1131
00:54:06,660 --> 00:54:09,848
And we thought maybe it's a little goofy,
but it seemed to have worked pretty well.

1132
00:54:09,872 --> 00:54:12,207
I was genuinely terrified by the idea

1133
00:54:12,291 --> 00:54:15,919
of a coven of witches
and the terrible things

1134
00:54:16,003 --> 00:54:18,088
that they were willing
fo do to get their way.

1135
00:54:23,260 --> 00:54:25,554
Post-production was
exactly the same on PAS.

1136
00:54:25,637 --> 00:54:29,266
I think we had a little
bit of a better idea

1137
00:54:29,349 --> 00:54:31,286
of how everyone worked,
we have a better shorthand.

1138
00:54:31,310 --> 00:54:35,731
But it was constantly shoot, cut,
you know, write, at the same time.

1139
00:54:35,814 --> 00:54:39,318
We'd shoot for like, a week or something
and stop for two weeks.

1140
00:54:39,568 --> 00:54:43,030
And then we'd sit in the editing room
and cut it together and we'd be like,

1141
00:54:43,155 --> 00:54:44,615
"Okay, here's a first act."

1142
00:54:45,032 --> 00:54:47,201
And then we'd go back
in the story session,

1143
00:54:47,826 --> 00:54:51,413
throw out everything that we shot,
except for maybe one scene

1144
00:54:51,497 --> 00:54:53,999
and rewrite the whole thing
around that one scene

1145
00:54:54,082 --> 00:54:55,667
that we liked and do it again.

1146
00:54:56,210 --> 00:54:58,545
I would get new pages on the day.

1147
00:54:58,629 --> 00:55:00,214
"Here's the new scene we're shooting."

1148
00:55:00,589 --> 00:55:02,692
"We're not shooting what we were
talking about yesterday,

1149
00:55:02,716 --> 00:55:04,402
we're shooting something
completely different."

1150
00:55:04,426 --> 00:55:08,138
As an actor, you want to stay present,
but you are of course insecure.

1151
00:55:08,263 --> 00:55:09,657
Like, well, what if I need to prepare

1152
00:55:09,681 --> 00:55:11,659
for what we're doing today
and I don't have enough time?

1153
00:55:11,683 --> 00:55:14,186
But we just kinda
had to throw ourselves in.

1154
00:55:14,269 --> 00:55:16,480
And that's what was so great
about having Chris too,

1155
00:55:16,605 --> 00:55:19,608
because he was so lighthearted and funny
and I felt so comfortable with him.

1156
00:55:22,361 --> 00:55:26,198
The oscillating fan was definitely
one of the coolest parts of the movie.

1157
00:55:26,323 --> 00:55:28,951
It just created so much
suspense in the movie.

1158
00:55:29,201 --> 00:55:31,161
It was such a smart, smart idea.

1159
00:55:31,411 --> 00:55:35,374
These films deal with space, with framing

1160
00:55:35,457 --> 00:55:37,626
and sort of how you can
manipulate the audience

1161
00:55:37,709 --> 00:55:41,588
and create suspense
by showing them things,

1162
00:55:41,713 --> 00:55:43,131
but also not showing them stuff.

1163
00:55:43,757 --> 00:55:45,551
My initial idea was that Dennis

1164
00:55:45,634 --> 00:55:48,345
was gonna build his own,
sort of, custom rig

1165
00:55:48,554 --> 00:55:51,265
that would oscillate
the camera back and forth.

1166
00:55:51,431 --> 00:55:54,226
And I just knew that like,
we're gonna start to see something

1167
00:55:54,309 --> 00:55:55,644
and then we're going fo lose it.

1168
00:55:55,769 --> 00:55:59,064
And then when we come back,
like, "Is it there? Is it gone?"

1169
00:55:59,231 --> 00:56:01,650
And it just, it created
SO many opportunities

1170
00:56:01,775 --> 00:56:03,777
fo scare the crap out of people.

1171
00:56:08,991 --> 00:56:11,118
I loved it. Again, I love not cutting.

1172
00:56:11,243 --> 00:56:13,120
I love just sitting in
the moment and so forth.

1173
00:56:13,245 --> 00:56:15,682
And Henry and Rel were really smart
about how they staged stuff.

1174
00:56:15,706 --> 00:56:18,041
It was six months from the time

1175
00:56:18,250 --> 00:56:21,837
that the wheels of our airplane
from New York landed in L.A.,

1176
00:56:22,337 --> 00:56:24,006
to the movie being in theaters.

1177
00:56:28,719 --> 00:56:30,971
Whatever it was, it thrived on fear.

1178
00:56:33,432 --> 00:56:36,435
I was so pleasantly surprised
with the actual outcome.

1179
00:56:36,518 --> 00:56:41,899
I thought the movie was great.
I thought it was super fun and scary.

1180
00:56:42,024 --> 00:56:44,735
I became a horror fan
working on the movie.

1181
00:56:44,860 --> 00:56:45,861
Yeah, me too.

1182
00:56:45,986 --> 00:56:50,407
I mean, I was, you know,
casual horror fan.

1183
00:56:50,532 --> 00:56:52,159
Like before that, I loved The Shining.

1184
00:56:52,409 --> 00:56:54,012
- I've seen the classics.
- Rosemary's Baby.

1185
00:56:54,036 --> 00:56:56,371
Three is when it really got into,
like, the witchcraft

1186
00:56:56,455 --> 00:56:58,749
and Toby and all that
sort of stuff that really,

1187
00:56:59,333 --> 00:57:02,169
you know,
opened up the mythology in ways

1188
00:57:02,294 --> 00:57:04,671
that are barely even hinted at
in the first film.

1189
00:57:04,796 --> 00:57:10,260
I think the format certainly helps
to still maintain this amount of,

1190
00:57:10,344 --> 00:57:11,803
you don't have all the information,

1191
00:57:11,887 --> 00:57:13,597
even though you're getting bits
and pieces,

1192
00:57:13,764 --> 00:57:16,224
you're not literally cutting to the scene.

1193
00:57:16,391 --> 00:57:18,226
You're always limited by this viewpoint.

1194
00:57:18,393 --> 00:57:22,230
So as much as you know,
you still don't really know everything.

1195
00:57:22,397 --> 00:57:25,067
The ending is then you're
going into the witch's house.

1196
00:57:25,150 --> 00:57:27,945
And you know, it's not just
gonna be something invisible

1197
00:57:28,028 --> 00:57:31,573
that comes out, you know there's
tangible people involved.

1198
00:57:31,657 --> 00:57:33,176
And of course, you're going
to want to go see Four

1199
00:57:33,200 --> 00:57:36,745
because it comes right at the end,
and they don't fully explain it.

1200
00:57:36,828 --> 00:57:38,246
It's not funny.

1201
00:58:11,738 --> 00:58:15,075
After the success of Paranormal 3,
I don't think that anyone said, you know,

1202
00:58:15,158 --> 00:58:16,576
"We should stop milking the cow."

1203
00:58:16,660 --> 00:58:19,371
One was massive. Two was less so.

1204
00:58:19,454 --> 00:58:22,332
Three ended up being bigger
when they didn't expect it,

1205
00:58:22,416 --> 00:58:25,669
so we were like,
"We've earned some room to maneuver."

1206
00:58:25,752 --> 00:58:28,880
They were really put through the ringer
on the third movie, Henry and Rel,

1207
00:58:28,964 --> 00:58:31,383
like they really, you know,
Adam tortured them

1208
00:58:31,466 --> 00:58:33,969
and Akiva tortured them.
And they were just tortured.

1209
00:58:34,386 --> 00:58:37,347
We had fun with those guys
from the beginning of end.

1210
00:58:37,431 --> 00:58:38,974
We were always giving them grief.

1211
00:58:39,057 --> 00:58:41,518
They were really playful.
They had great ideas.

1212
00:58:41,601 --> 00:58:44,664
But they made this movie that was great
and it was the biggest most successful,

1213
00:58:44,688 --> 00:58:46,064
I think, of all the movies,

1214
00:58:46,273 --> 00:58:48,316
and so they, kind of,
reluctantly came back

1215
00:58:48,400 --> 00:58:49,680
for the fourth movie thinking,

1216
00:58:49,901 --> 00:58:51,903
and now we're gonna have
the keys to the castle

1217
00:58:52,154 --> 00:58:53,613
and we're just going to...

1218
00:58:53,697 --> 00:58:55,907
- Four is gonna be, like, insane.
- Right.

1219
00:58:55,991 --> 00:59:00,120
And they just got hammered all over again,
they were just, right in the same thing.

1220
00:59:00,537 --> 00:59:02,122
- Opposite.
- Opposite happened.

1221
00:59:02,247 --> 00:59:07,794
And that combination, where the first time
they kind of had the will to fight back.

1222
00:59:07,878 --> 00:59:10,297
The second time,
I think they were so mad

1223
00:59:10,630 --> 00:59:13,759
that they were being treated so badly
that the movie really suffered.

1224
00:59:13,842 --> 00:59:15,635
I thought the worst movie
that we did was...

1225
00:59:15,719 --> 00:59:18,430
The fourth and the sixth movie
were the two worst ones.

1226
00:59:18,847 --> 00:59:21,492
I remember the first thing we did.
We went in there and we were like,

1227
00:59:21,516 --> 00:59:23,578
"So, guys,
it's time to get out of the house, right?"

1228
00:59:23,602 --> 00:59:24,644
Yeah. No more house.

1229
00:59:24,728 --> 00:59:27,314
There's three movies in the house,
like, enough with the house.

1230
00:59:27,439 --> 00:59:30,650
Right? Let's get on the road.
We pitched like a road movie.

1231
00:59:30,817 --> 00:59:34,529
Right or wrong,
I always felt like part of what created

1232
00:59:34,821 --> 00:59:39,451
the magic of the film was that we were
in these contained spaces.

1233
00:59:39,534 --> 00:59:42,579
It was always what you
didn't see that scared you

1234
00:59:42,662 --> 00:59:43,663
more than anything.

1235
00:59:44,873 --> 00:59:47,125
We got excited about it
as we get about everything,

1236
00:59:47,209 --> 00:59:50,587
but I still do always feel like
it shouldn't have been in a house.

1237
00:59:50,754 --> 00:59:52,089
I think that with Paranormal 4,

1238
00:59:52,214 --> 00:59:55,217
that may be when we started
to lose our way.

1239
00:59:55,467 --> 00:59:58,136
And even though Paranormal 3 did so well

1240
00:59:58,261 --> 00:59:59,596
it was hard to top.

1241
01:00:00,055 --> 01:00:03,350
You know, what had been
done in all these films,

1242
01:00:03,433 --> 01:00:05,393
it was hard to, kind of,
change the rhythm of it.

1243
01:00:05,519 --> 01:00:06,770
And so I think at that point,

1244
01:00:06,853 --> 01:00:09,231
there was a fear of,
"Uh-oh, have we peaked?"

1245
01:00:11,650 --> 01:00:15,278
Paranormal 4 takes place after the events
of Paranormal 7and 2,

1246
01:00:15,403 --> 01:00:20,617
and it has to do with following Hunter,
the baby from Paranormal 2,

1247
01:00:20,951 --> 01:00:24,913
and seeing what became
of him as he realizes,

1248
01:00:25,163 --> 01:00:26,206
and his family realizes,

1249
01:00:26,456 --> 01:00:31,211
he may be the spawn of the witch coven,
demon, whatever it is.

1250
01:00:31,336 --> 01:00:34,881
We started to think that
we were becoming experts in,

1251
01:00:34,965 --> 01:00:36,925
you know, in how these
films were playing.

1252
01:00:37,008 --> 01:00:39,636
The stuff that Micah
and Katie say in the first one,

1253
01:00:39,719 --> 01:00:42,597
Just offhand,
because I don't think Oren had this plan,

1254
01:00:42,764 --> 01:00:45,642
seven movies down the line
became like the anchors.

1255
01:00:45,725 --> 01:00:47,727
They were like Talmudic anchors

1256
01:00:47,811 --> 01:00:49,980
that we would look back
to as the Holy scripture.

1257
01:00:50,105 --> 01:00:51,148
- Yeah.
- Like...

1258
01:00:51,231 --> 01:00:53,400
"Oren, what did you mean
when you said, 'The fire?"

1259
01:00:53,483 --> 01:00:56,653
He's like, "I didn't mean anything.
She's just said it."

1260
01:00:56,736 --> 01:01:01,449
And so certain things became,
like, rules of the franchise,

1261
01:01:01,533 --> 01:01:04,578
that maybe in retrospect,
we should've lightened up on

1262
01:01:04,661 --> 01:01:08,123
because the film probably had
even more flexibility to it.

1263
01:01:14,838 --> 01:01:17,174
And then after that,
it's sort of like anything goes?

1264
01:01:17,424 --> 01:01:19,009
And you start auditioning,

1265
01:01:19,092 --> 01:01:21,845
and just, like, open the cast
and you see who you like.

1266
01:01:21,928 --> 01:01:23,555
And I think we really fell for Kathryn.

1267
01:01:23,680 --> 01:01:26,933
She had that improv quality,
but she looks like a movie star?

1268
01:01:27,142 --> 01:01:29,811
They gave you, like,
a paragraph, a synopsis.

1269
01:01:29,936 --> 01:01:34,691
They're like, "So your brother is dead.
He died in a car accident."

1270
01:01:34,774 --> 01:01:37,027
"You guys fell off a bridge
and your car was in the water

1271
01:01:37,152 --> 01:01:39,613
and you came out
of the water and... Go."

1272
01:01:39,821 --> 01:01:40,947
You're fucked.

1273
01:01:42,699 --> 01:01:44,951
I could hear everybody.
I heard everybody go,

1274
01:01:45,076 --> 01:01:46,578
"Oh my God, my brother died!"

1275
01:01:47,078 --> 01:01:50,999
And they started crying and I'm like,
"Well, I'm not gonna do any of that."

1276
01:01:51,166 --> 01:01:53,710
- When are your parents leaving?
- I don't know, soon?

1277
01:01:53,960 --> 01:01:55,629
I wanna get this party started!

1278
01:01:56,171 --> 01:01:57,857
The thing was just
that there was no script,

1279
01:01:57,881 --> 01:02:01,426
so it wasn't like I knew
what I was getting into,

1280
01:02:01,509 --> 01:02:03,845
all I knew was what I had seen before.

1281
01:02:03,929 --> 01:02:05,096
The boys were great.

1282
01:02:05,222 --> 01:02:07,682
Yeah! Yeah!

1283
01:02:07,891 --> 01:02:09,768
- The boys were wild boys.
- Right.

1284
01:02:12,062 --> 01:02:13,313
Shit!

1285
01:02:16,816 --> 01:02:19,402
So I played Wyatt/Hunter.

1286
01:02:19,486 --> 01:02:22,405
- Yeah? How old are you?
- Six?

1287
01:02:22,489 --> 01:02:26,159
I played Robbie in the film,
the creepy kid across the street.

1288
01:02:27,369 --> 01:02:28,495
Wow! Dude!

1289
01:02:28,745 --> 01:02:32,249
We also thought
that the fans really appreciated

1290
01:02:32,332 --> 01:02:33,833
and wanted to see Katie.

1291
01:02:34,084 --> 01:02:38,004
And were always sort of, like, waiting,
like, "When's Katie's gonna show up?"

1292
01:02:38,088 --> 01:02:40,632
So I think we were trying to,
sort of, balance that as well.

1293
01:02:42,592 --> 01:02:43,861
- Katie's the Terminator.
- Yeah!

1294
01:02:43,885 --> 01:02:45,720
Like, you have to bring her back.

1295
01:02:45,845 --> 01:02:49,933
Katie is, like... lovely,
and sweet, and charming.

1296
01:02:50,058 --> 01:02:51,601
And so, you meet her and you're like,

1297
01:02:51,726 --> 01:02:54,187
"Wow, this is tough to make
her Michael Myers now."

1298
01:02:54,354 --> 01:02:55,522
She knows how to do it,

1299
01:02:55,605 --> 01:02:57,565
she can do this demon walk
better than anyone.

1300
01:02:57,649 --> 01:03:01,486
She teaches people on set how to do it.
She can do, like, dead eyes really well.

1301
01:03:01,611 --> 01:03:04,990
You throw the contacts in, and you just,
you bring her in like a closer.

1302
01:03:05,156 --> 01:03:07,534
Like, "Katie, you've got, like, one batter

1303
01:03:07,617 --> 01:03:10,453
and we win the world series,"
and she's like, "Got it."

1304
01:03:10,620 --> 01:03:12,747
"You want me to do the demon walk?
All right."

1305
01:03:12,914 --> 01:03:15,333
"Katie, we just need a demon walk
down this long hallway

1306
01:03:15,417 --> 01:03:17,544
on night vision
and tear through that door."

1307
01:03:20,755 --> 01:03:24,384
Henry and Rel are super mega-positrons,
they're the most positive people.

1308
01:03:24,467 --> 01:03:27,012
I was always in a good mood.
It felt like my birthday every day.

1309
01:03:27,095 --> 01:03:29,431
They were the most, like,
fun down-to-earth people

1310
01:03:29,514 --> 01:03:30,849
I've ever met.

1311
01:03:30,932 --> 01:03:33,935
They just wanted me to have a lof of fun
and be comfortable with everything.

1312
01:03:34,019 --> 01:03:35,353
Their chemistry together,

1313
01:03:35,437 --> 01:03:37,498
and I don't know if it's because
they were friends forever

1314
01:03:37,522 --> 01:03:39,316
and this is what they did together,

1315
01:03:39,441 --> 01:03:43,987
was so great that I always
felt very comfortable on set.

1316
01:03:44,070 --> 01:03:47,699
We're on the hunt. We need the gear.
Know what I'm saying?

1317
01:03:47,866 --> 01:03:53,204
We filmed for four months
because the script was changed a lot.

1318
01:03:53,330 --> 01:03:54,765
They give you a scene and there's like,

1319
01:03:54,789 --> 01:03:57,542
six or seven lines
and you're supposed to hit that,

1320
01:03:57,667 --> 01:03:59,020
but they don't ever really say cut.

1321
01:03:59,044 --> 01:04:01,671
So then you just, kind of,
start having conversations.

1322
01:04:01,921 --> 01:04:04,883
It's this huge studio film
and yet for some reason you have freedom?

1323
01:04:04,966 --> 01:04:07,153
That was really cool because
it gave me a lot of freedom

1324
01:04:07,177 --> 01:04:09,596
to determine that I knew
who my character was

1325
01:04:09,679 --> 01:04:11,157
and that I could do whatever I wanted.

1326
01:04:11,181 --> 01:04:12,807
Okay. Here we go.

1327
01:04:17,103 --> 01:04:18,855
We were like, "Shit,
we gotta top the fan,"

1328
01:04:18,938 --> 01:04:20,398
which was really hard to do.

1329
01:04:20,482 --> 01:04:24,235
So we pitched the Xbox Kinect.
We brought one into the studio,

1330
01:04:24,319 --> 01:04:26,529
where, like, it throws out
these 3D tracking dots.

1331
01:04:27,072 --> 01:04:28,907
It's a field of green. It's super cool.

1332
01:04:29,366 --> 01:04:32,243
You can see Toby emerge
in the shape of the green.

1333
01:04:32,327 --> 01:04:36,414
Like that should be the hook
of the whole film.

1334
01:04:37,123 --> 01:04:40,460
- No, no, no, no. Turn the lights back off!
- Okay. Why?

1335
01:04:40,543 --> 01:04:43,046
Just do it! What the fuck?

1336
01:04:43,296 --> 01:04:46,341
We were gonna reveal Toby,
but in 3D tracking marks.

1337
01:04:46,424 --> 01:04:49,094
Lights on. That was awesome.

1338
01:04:49,969 --> 01:04:52,847
And it just got shaved
and shaved, and shaved

1339
01:04:52,931 --> 01:04:54,557
until it's just this tiny moment.

1340
01:04:56,393 --> 01:04:57,852
What was that?

1341
01:04:57,936 --> 01:05:00,814
Paranormal 4 ends with the reveal
of the coven in the backyard.

1342
01:05:00,897 --> 01:05:02,065
- That was awesome.
- Yeah.

1343
01:05:02,148 --> 01:05:03,274
Wyatt!

1344
01:05:09,364 --> 01:05:12,325
I don't know that Alex really was...
That that was her demise.

1345
01:05:12,409 --> 01:05:15,954
I think that it's left to be like,
"Well, did she become a witch?"

1346
01:05:16,037 --> 01:05:18,373
"What'd they do to her?
Did they sacrifice her?"

1347
01:05:18,456 --> 01:05:19,999
"Did she kill them all? I don't know."

1348
01:05:20,083 --> 01:05:22,669
There was Paramount's ending
and our ending

1349
01:05:23,253 --> 01:05:25,255
and they were really similar.

1350
01:05:25,672 --> 01:05:28,716
They were like, maybe it was
like an extra 15 seconds

1351
01:05:28,800 --> 01:05:30,802
- or something on our ending, right?
- That's it?

1352
01:05:30,885 --> 01:05:35,014
It was like... I don't think it was a...
They were not radically different endings.

1353
01:05:35,098 --> 01:05:38,643
- One more story beat.
- And we couldn't come to an agreement.

1354
01:05:38,893 --> 01:05:40,371
And so they say, "You know what, guys?"

1355
01:05:40,395 --> 01:05:42,081
"This is what we do
in this kind of situation,

1356
01:05:42,105 --> 01:05:45,442
we screen both versions
and whoever gets the highest score,

1357
01:05:45,525 --> 01:05:46,725
that's the ending we go with."

1358
01:05:46,776 --> 01:05:48,856
And we were like,
"That's totally fair. Fair enough."

1359
01:05:49,112 --> 01:05:52,407
So we get to the...
They screened the Paramount ending first

1360
01:05:52,490 --> 01:05:54,492
and we get to the screening,
it's on the lot.

1361
01:05:54,576 --> 01:05:57,662
And there's, like,
burrito trucks and, like, food,

1362
01:05:57,745 --> 01:06:00,665
you know, dessert trucks
and ice cream and everything.

1363
01:06:00,748 --> 01:06:02,750
It was, like, everybody is having a party.

1364
01:06:02,834 --> 01:06:05,128
- And they're like...
- Pumping CBD into the air.

1365
01:06:05,211 --> 01:06:07,898
And they're, like, the audience
gets into the theater and they're like,

1366
01:06:07,922 --> 01:06:10,341
"You're about to see the new
Paranormal Activity movie!"

1367
01:06:10,425 --> 01:06:13,052
And everyone goes "Yay!" And flips out.

1368
01:06:13,136 --> 01:06:15,472
And we were like,
"Okay, this is really good."

1369
01:06:15,555 --> 01:06:17,140
So they show the studio ending.

1370
01:06:17,223 --> 01:06:19,034
Then a couple of days later,
they do our ending.

1371
01:06:19,058 --> 01:06:21,227
No food trucks, people like,

1372
01:06:21,311 --> 01:06:24,689
- glumly file into the theater...
- They'd been making them wait.

1373
01:06:24,772 --> 01:06:26,483
And the guy goes,

1374
01:06:26,566 --> 01:06:28,776
"You're about to see the new
Paranormal Activity movie!"

1375
01:06:28,860 --> 01:06:32,405
And everybody boos. I'm not kidding.

1376
01:06:32,780 --> 01:06:36,242
They're like, "Boo!"
And then the next day,

1377
01:06:36,367 --> 01:06:37,595
we had this meeting with marketing.

1378
01:06:37,619 --> 01:06:40,288
They're like, "Guys, we have
this pie chart right here

1379
01:06:40,413 --> 01:06:41,956
that says your ending sucks."

1380
01:06:46,377 --> 01:06:48,022
I don't know what it is,
but I've just been

1381
01:06:48,046 --> 01:06:49,231
hearing noises a lot of noises.

1382
01:06:49,255 --> 01:06:51,215
And, like, all this weird stuff
has been happening

1383
01:06:51,257 --> 01:06:52,577
since the new neighbors moved in.

1384
01:07:02,101 --> 01:07:05,396
Even though I think that the movie itself,

1385
01:07:05,480 --> 01:07:07,482
the cast, and I think
everyone did a great job.

1386
01:07:07,565 --> 01:07:08,725
I think it was executed well,

1387
01:07:08,775 --> 01:07:11,694
I think the story was a little bit
too all over the place.

1388
01:07:11,778 --> 01:07:12,904
Well, I watched it.

1389
01:07:13,279 --> 01:07:15,490
And I slept with my mother
for a couple of weeks

1390
01:07:15,573 --> 01:07:16,908
because I was terrified!

1391
01:07:17,325 --> 01:07:19,536
My dad saw it with me for the first time

1392
01:07:19,619 --> 01:07:23,039
and he was the loudest person.
Like, he's old!

1393
01:07:23,122 --> 01:07:26,292
And he was in a scary movie,
like, he was gonna have a heart attack!

1394
01:07:26,376 --> 01:07:32,131
Paranormal 4 was the first film
in the franchise

1395
01:07:32,215 --> 01:07:34,801
that was actually a direct
sequel to the original.

1396
01:07:34,884 --> 01:07:38,096
So now we were not sure anything
of where it was going to go.

1397
01:07:38,179 --> 01:07:41,224
Was it totally successful? Probably not.

1398
01:07:41,349 --> 01:07:45,937
But it was a really tall order
to try and do that, because now,

1399
01:07:46,271 --> 01:07:51,442
being that the first three films
were so well received and so embraced,

1400
01:07:52,026 --> 01:07:54,487
now you're venturing
info unknown territory.

1401
01:07:54,571 --> 01:07:59,075
It was very polarizing. It's probably
the most polarizing of all of the sequels

1402
01:07:59,158 --> 01:08:00,910
because it's such a different movie.

1403
01:08:00,994 --> 01:08:04,831
There was quite a bit of camera use.
Did we get a little bit carried away?

1404
01:08:04,914 --> 01:08:06,874
I'm not sure, I never
felt like it went too far,

1405
01:08:06,958 --> 01:08:10,003
but I think there was
definitely an interesting trend

1406
01:08:10,086 --> 01:08:13,840
to, kind of, make the look
of the film more interesting.

1407
01:08:13,923 --> 01:08:16,342
So it's not just like always
a hand held video camera.

1408
01:08:17,468 --> 01:08:18,803
What?

1409
01:08:52,337 --> 01:08:54,714
I think when Four didn't perform as well,

1410
01:08:54,797 --> 01:08:58,676
both financially and critically,
a lot of people started thinking

1411
01:08:58,885 --> 01:09:00,637
like we really need to change things up.

1412
01:09:00,803 --> 01:09:06,517
We tested the movies constantly.
So when we were in production,

1413
01:09:06,726 --> 01:09:09,646
we were always putting the movies up
in front of an audience.

1414
01:09:09,812 --> 01:09:12,065
The movies were
always performing pretty well

1415
01:09:12,148 --> 01:09:14,692
in the Hispanic community
and in Latin countries.

1416
01:09:14,984 --> 01:09:16,920
So we said, "Let's start to,
kind of, lean on that."

1417
01:09:16,944 --> 01:09:18,863
And of course who is
the first person you call,

1418
01:09:18,946 --> 01:09:23,159
when you have half of a bad idea?
It's Chris Landon.

1419
01:09:23,284 --> 01:09:25,536
Well, Chris had been an incredible asset

1420
01:09:25,662 --> 01:09:28,748
throughout the whole entire...
Since the second Paranormal.

1421
01:09:28,873 --> 01:09:31,584
And he had been a director,

1422
01:09:32,043 --> 01:09:33,729
he had directed something
and he really wanted

1423
01:09:33,753 --> 01:09:35,505
another chance at a studio.

1424
01:09:35,588 --> 01:09:37,757
And there was a good
working relationship with us.

1425
01:09:38,132 --> 01:09:39,967
And we really believed in him.

1426
01:09:40,093 --> 01:09:41,973
At that point,
Chris probably knew the franchise

1427
01:09:42,053 --> 01:09:43,096
better than most people.

1428
01:09:43,262 --> 01:09:46,599
He had been so essential
in helping craft the mythology

1429
01:09:46,724 --> 01:09:48,434
and working on story and characters.

1430
01:09:48,601 --> 01:09:51,479
I felt like I could, kind of,
just try some different stuff,

1431
01:09:51,562 --> 01:09:53,564
and just have fun with it.

1432
01:09:53,648 --> 01:09:57,026
It really was the first time
that we ever greenlit one of the films,

1433
01:09:57,110 --> 01:09:58,921
knowing what the beginning,
middle and end was.

1434
01:09:58,945 --> 01:10:00,697
- Who?
- Oscar!

1435
01:10:00,947 --> 01:10:02,323
- Who?
- Oscar!

1436
01:10:03,116 --> 01:10:04,325
Oh my God!

1437
01:10:04,575 --> 01:10:07,245
That film follows a couple of young kids

1438
01:10:07,453 --> 01:10:10,707
who realize that someone
that lives in their apartment

1439
01:10:10,873 --> 01:10:15,002
is somehow involved
in bad witches and demons

1440
01:10:15,086 --> 01:10:17,526
and stuff like that,
and they ended up getting involved in it.

1441
01:10:17,714 --> 01:10:20,049
We ended up throwing a really wide net.

1442
01:10:20,299 --> 01:10:23,094
They all came from
very different backgrounds

1443
01:10:23,177 --> 01:10:25,096
in different worlds, but the lead, Andrew,

1444
01:10:25,179 --> 01:10:29,600
he was really a guy who was, like,
dancing on Hollywood Boulevard.

1445
01:10:29,684 --> 01:10:31,620
Before that, I, you know,
and it still to this day,

1446
01:10:31,644 --> 01:10:33,354
I was just a street performer.

1447
01:10:33,438 --> 01:10:36,278
I break dance in the street of Hollywood
with a group of my guy friends.

1448
01:10:36,315 --> 01:10:38,335
There was something about him
that I found watchable

1449
01:10:38,359 --> 01:10:39,485
and incredibly likable.

1450
01:10:39,569 --> 01:10:41,839
I never really thought about
being an actor or anything like that.

1451
01:10:41,863 --> 01:10:45,992
But my mom, she's an acting manager.
So she's always pushing that on me.

1452
01:10:46,159 --> 01:10:47,702
Like, "You have, you know, a good look

1453
01:10:47,785 --> 01:10:49,680
and you're used to, like,
smiling in front of people,

1454
01:10:49,704 --> 01:10:50,788
you should give it a shot."

1455
01:10:50,872 --> 01:10:55,251
And the same went for Jorge,
who is incredibly funny.

1456
01:10:55,668 --> 01:10:56,836
Shit!

1457
01:10:59,255 --> 01:11:01,507
I play Hector...

1458
01:11:01,591 --> 01:11:04,510
Damn it, I forgot my last name in it!
I should know this.

1459
01:11:04,594 --> 01:11:08,514
And then Gabrielle, who just
was smart and interesting.

1460
01:11:08,598 --> 01:11:12,310
I played Marisol,
and I was Hector's cousin.

1461
01:11:12,393 --> 01:11:15,146
We did sort of like, a chemistry read
of the three of them together.

1462
01:11:15,229 --> 01:11:17,040
And then that's when
the directors and everybody

1463
01:11:17,064 --> 01:11:18,459
were like, "Yep, these are our guys."

1464
01:11:18,483 --> 01:11:19,984
There was no second-guessing.

1465
01:11:20,151 --> 01:11:24,864
It was, like, these three people feel like
close, close friends to me.

1466
01:11:25,072 --> 01:11:28,534
And that for me, if that didn't succeed,
then the movie would never succeed.

1467
01:11:28,618 --> 01:11:32,205
There was that blend of,
be serious about your role,

1468
01:11:32,330 --> 01:11:34,832
but be happy that you're
working with each other

1469
01:11:34,916 --> 01:11:39,796
and the kids were, they were wonderful.
I still have all their phone numbers.

1470
01:11:40,379 --> 01:11:42,006
I'm going to start bothering them.

1471
01:11:42,173 --> 01:11:44,383
Get off of me, man! Stop it! Stop!

1472
01:11:46,177 --> 01:11:48,095
I had a lot of fun with that
in The Marked Ones,

1473
01:11:48,179 --> 01:11:50,282
sort of playing this idea
that Jesse suddenly feels like

1474
01:11:50,306 --> 01:11:52,892
he has supernatural abilities

1475
01:11:52,975 --> 01:11:54,811
and that they'd been
imbued by something else.

1476
01:11:54,977 --> 01:11:56,457
And he starts transitioning and he

1477
01:11:57,605 --> 01:12:00,233
starts getting these superpowers,
I guess, you would say.

1478
01:12:00,316 --> 01:12:03,045
And he has fun with that at the beginning
with his best friend, Hector,

1479
01:12:03,069 --> 01:12:07,114
and it goes bad shortly after that.
And I become the bad guy.

1480
01:12:11,828 --> 01:12:12,828
Fuck!

1481
01:12:12,870 --> 01:12:17,333
Marked Ones was by far the easiest
of all the films for me to work on.

1482
01:12:17,917 --> 01:12:20,336
Again, Chris and I had to
shorthand from Paranormal 2

1483
01:12:20,545 --> 01:12:22,731
I mean, from, from Burning Palms
then from Paranormal 2 on.

1484
01:12:22,755 --> 01:12:24,507
If there's one sort of, common denominator

1485
01:12:24,590 --> 01:12:27,552
I've really tried to bring,
not only to this franchise

1486
01:12:27,635 --> 01:12:29,929
but I think everything
that I do, is humor.

1487
01:12:30,805 --> 01:12:32,807
I like these movies to be funny.

1488
01:12:33,266 --> 01:12:34,266
Go!

1489
01:12:34,934 --> 01:12:38,521
Grandmothers in and of themselves
are funny.

1490
01:12:43,734 --> 01:12:47,530
Because they've already lived their lives
and they've raised their children,

1491
01:12:47,655 --> 01:12:52,493
they've seen everything,
and they have that comedic side.

1492
01:12:52,702 --> 01:12:57,498
Chris was able to keep in the fear factor,
but still make it funny.

1493
01:12:57,707 --> 01:13:01,335
The biggest challenge on The Marked Ones

1494
01:13:02,461 --> 01:13:04,463
was ending the movie.

1495
01:13:05,214 --> 01:13:06,299
On possession?

1496
01:13:07,925 --> 01:13:09,302
It's not gonna work, Marisol.

1497
01:13:10,303 --> 01:13:12,680
I had a very different ending
that I started with.

1498
01:13:15,391 --> 01:13:17,935
Get out! Go, Marisol! Hold his head!

1499
01:13:18,436 --> 01:13:21,076
We shot some in a church actually
that never made it into the film.

1500
01:13:22,648 --> 01:13:23,648
Fuck.

1501
01:13:27,778 --> 01:13:29,363
What the fuck was that?

1502
01:13:29,447 --> 01:13:32,033
And basically this demon just
starts coming towards like...

1503
01:13:35,536 --> 01:13:36,537
Go! Move!

1504
01:13:37,121 --> 01:13:38,873
And he, like, has a shotgun,

1505
01:13:39,582 --> 01:13:42,460
and he's like,
"Run! Run, Motherfucker, run!"

1506
01:13:49,550 --> 01:13:50,593
Jessel.

1507
01:13:50,676 --> 01:13:54,597
They actually shot some scenes
where you could see the demon.

1508
01:13:54,680 --> 01:13:56,140
I think it's cool. It's okay...

1509
01:13:58,017 --> 01:13:59,143
Fuck!

1510
01:14:00,269 --> 01:14:03,981
And when we were in the edit together,
looking at where I had started,

1511
01:14:04,065 --> 01:14:10,071
it suddenly felt like a different movie.
It just didn't feel like it belonged.

1512
01:14:10,154 --> 01:14:12,406
And if was something that
everybody felt in their gut.

1513
01:14:12,490 --> 01:14:13,950
And I didn't even try to defend it.

1514
01:14:14,033 --> 01:14:16,619
We thought it would be nice to sort of,

1515
01:14:16,702 --> 01:14:21,332
and kind of fun,
to tie it into the original movie.

1516
01:14:21,582 --> 01:14:23,022
Chris Landon called me and was like,

1517
01:14:23,167 --> 01:14:25,002
"Hey, we've been trying
to figure this out,

1518
01:14:25,127 --> 01:14:28,172
we really need you.
Can you come for a day,

1519
01:14:28,547 --> 01:14:30,383
and be part of the team
and shoot the scene?"

1520
01:14:30,466 --> 01:14:35,930
I thought it was really fun, actually,
the way that they played with the genre

1521
01:14:36,055 --> 01:14:37,255
and played with the franchise.

1522
01:14:37,598 --> 01:14:39,684
I also think that Oren's house,

1523
01:14:39,767 --> 01:14:42,269
Katie and Micah's house
from the first movie,

1524
01:14:42,770 --> 01:14:46,232
it was so iconic,
that going back there felt like a fun,

1525
01:14:46,399 --> 01:14:48,317
clever pop at the end of the movie,

1526
01:14:48,526 --> 01:14:52,363
and a good way to tie
this spin-off to the other,

1527
01:14:52,530 --> 01:14:54,573
you know,
to the other movies in the franchise.

1528
01:14:54,782 --> 01:14:56,784
That was when I, sort of,
came up with this,

1529
01:14:57,076 --> 01:15:01,872
just completely bat shit crazy idea
of going back to Lois' house,

1530
01:15:02,456 --> 01:15:04,083
that this house was sort of the nexus

1531
01:15:04,166 --> 01:15:08,004
of the coven's activity in that
they would take Jesse there.

1532
01:15:08,170 --> 01:15:10,381
And that our, that his friends
would have to rescue him

1533
01:15:10,464 --> 01:15:11,858
and that in the process of doing so,

1534
01:15:11,882 --> 01:15:13,922
they would discover a portal
that actually took them

1535
01:15:14,719 --> 01:15:16,470
to different places in the franchise.

1536
01:15:16,554 --> 01:15:18,973
Micah! Micah!

1537
01:15:22,143 --> 01:15:23,853
What's the matter! Where are you?

1538
01:15:26,063 --> 01:15:27,565
What the fuck!

1539
01:15:28,399 --> 01:15:30,901
There was an operating logic
behind it in the sense that,

1540
01:15:30,985 --> 01:15:32,028
like, the coven,

1541
01:15:33,029 --> 01:15:36,073
because they're witches, you know,
they have powers.

1542
01:15:36,157 --> 01:15:38,784
Like they have the ability
that they can conjure demons

1543
01:15:38,868 --> 01:15:42,204
and they can put demons in people,
and they can do all kinds of stuff.

1544
01:15:42,288 --> 01:15:45,791
So why can't they,
sort of, create doorways

1545
01:15:45,875 --> 01:15:47,293
into other places and other times?

1546
01:15:47,543 --> 01:15:49,837
It also gives me, as an actor,

1547
01:15:49,920 --> 01:15:53,716
just a sense of sort of
resolution of continuity

1548
01:15:53,799 --> 01:15:57,678
to know, definitively, how she kills me.

1549
01:15:57,762 --> 01:15:59,388
And I have to, like, wonder in my head

1550
01:15:59,472 --> 01:16:01,599
all these different ways
of Katie slaughtering me.

1551
01:16:01,682 --> 01:16:02,683
Jesse.

1552
01:16:03,059 --> 01:16:04,060
What's wrong with him?

1553
01:16:04,143 --> 01:16:05,263
I feel like I'm losing time.

1554
01:16:06,312 --> 01:16:07,688
What the hell's happening to me?

1555
01:16:13,611 --> 01:16:16,072
I don't think 7he Marked Ones
made as much money

1556
01:16:16,405 --> 01:16:20,701
for two reasons. One, fatigue.
And two, it wasn't marketed

1557
01:16:20,826 --> 01:16:23,996
as part of the Paranormal canon.
It was marketed as a spin-off.

1558
01:16:24,121 --> 01:16:28,042
I think it was the story
and also found footage.

1559
01:16:28,167 --> 01:16:31,087
I think people were not
into found footage anymore.

1560
01:16:31,170 --> 01:16:32,963
Which is a shame because it's super fun.

1561
01:16:33,130 --> 01:16:35,450
It's smart, it's creative,
it's inventive, it's everything.

1562
01:16:35,508 --> 01:16:38,969
And it actually kind of,
answers more questions in some ways

1563
01:16:39,053 --> 01:16:40,262
than all the other films do.

1564
01:16:40,387 --> 01:16:44,475
I think that movie was quite good
and it underperformed because people left.

1565
01:16:44,558 --> 01:16:46,769
Paranormal Activity 4
with a bad taste in their mouth.

1566
01:16:46,852 --> 01:16:49,939
It really over-performed internationally,

1567
01:16:50,022 --> 01:16:52,733
but it was being comped to
all the other Paranormals.

1568
01:16:53,150 --> 01:16:56,278
And so it continued to give
the sense that the franchise

1569
01:16:56,362 --> 01:16:57,613
was on a decline,

1570
01:16:57,696 --> 01:16:59,573
when, in a weird way,
what we were trying to do

1571
01:16:59,657 --> 01:17:00,908
was expand the franchise.

1572
01:17:00,991 --> 01:17:03,136
It didn't follow a lot of
themes of Paranormal Activity,

1573
01:17:03,160 --> 01:17:04,912
and they sort of spun the series off,

1574
01:17:04,995 --> 01:17:07,540
and I credit them
for taking that challenge

1575
01:17:07,623 --> 01:17:08,809
and jumping in that direction.

1576
01:17:08,833 --> 01:17:11,085
You know, the series started using toys.

1577
01:17:11,669 --> 01:17:14,088
Teddy Ruxpin, I think,
was the big one in 3,

1578
01:17:14,213 --> 01:17:16,465
and then the Kinect in 4,
this one had Simon,

1579
01:17:16,549 --> 01:17:17,675
we've all played Simon.

1580
01:17:18,050 --> 01:17:20,344
What if your Simon games
started answering,

1581
01:17:20,427 --> 01:17:22,827
you know, the red button for no
and the green button for yes.

1582
01:17:24,181 --> 01:17:26,100
Shit! Shit.

1583
01:17:26,183 --> 01:17:28,561
In addition to being
one of the better later entries,

1584
01:17:29,019 --> 01:17:32,523
it... really paid off.

1585
01:17:32,606 --> 01:17:35,651
It's more essential than some
of the other sequels, I think.

1586
01:17:35,734 --> 01:17:37,069
It's ready for you.

1587
01:18:13,439 --> 01:18:16,108
You know, Chris,
although not involved directly,

1588
01:18:16,233 --> 01:18:19,195
or initially, he kind of
created a blueprint

1589
01:18:19,403 --> 01:18:21,405
for where we could go with the franchise.

1590
01:18:21,488 --> 01:18:23,991
So the conversations had been
happening for a while

1591
01:18:24,074 --> 01:18:26,619
as to how The Marked Ones
fit into to the canon

1592
01:18:26,702 --> 01:18:28,537
and how we could progress.

1593
01:18:28,662 --> 01:18:31,081
Greg wanted to direct
something himself as well.

1594
01:18:31,207 --> 01:18:33,959
Like he felt like he was ready
and it was his turn.

1595
01:18:34,835 --> 01:18:39,590
But then he was given a story

1596
01:18:39,715 --> 01:18:41,967
and an idea that was just impossible.

1597
01:18:42,134 --> 01:18:43,928
At the end of the day,
they wanted to do 3D,

1598
01:18:44,011 --> 01:18:45,054
they wanted to go big.

1599
01:18:45,137 --> 01:18:49,099
They wanted to make it very visual,
to do all these time travel games

1600
01:18:49,183 --> 01:18:50,392
and stuff like that.

1601
01:18:50,517 --> 01:18:52,144
Just to make sure that we can say,

1602
01:18:52,311 --> 01:18:54,980
"We're not like the other films,
this is something very new,

1603
01:18:55,189 --> 01:18:57,524
for the first time
you're gonna see the activity."

1604
01:18:57,942 --> 01:19:00,236
There were a lot more, low budget,

1605
01:19:00,653 --> 01:19:03,822
found-footage type movies
that came after Paranormal,

1606
01:19:04,031 --> 01:19:06,033
and we were just worried
that the marketplace

1607
01:19:06,116 --> 01:19:07,451
also was saturated.

1608
01:19:07,618 --> 01:19:09,058
What happened on 7he Ghost Dimension

1609
01:19:09,161 --> 01:19:12,581
was 3D was something that
we were talking a lot about

1610
01:19:12,790 --> 01:19:14,291
at the studio.

1611
01:19:14,375 --> 01:19:16,794
I kept saying like, "No,
that's a really dumb idea."

1612
01:19:16,877 --> 01:19:19,797
"Please, please don't do 3D,
that'll ruin the franchise."

1613
01:19:19,880 --> 01:19:24,551
The idea of making a 3D Paranormal movie
had come up prior to the third film.

1614
01:19:25,344 --> 01:19:30,975
And when that idea started to float up,
I kind of came in with a fucking bat

1615
01:19:31,141 --> 01:19:32,393
and was like beating it down.

1616
01:19:32,559 --> 01:19:35,980
We needed some hook
to be able to grab the audience

1617
01:19:36,146 --> 01:19:39,650
and say there's, like,
a new reason to come see this thing.

1618
01:19:43,028 --> 01:19:45,614
A family moves into a house.
They find a batch of tapes

1619
01:19:45,864 --> 01:19:48,784
and they find a camera
that has special abilities,

1620
01:19:48,867 --> 01:19:50,995
to actually be able to see beyond

1621
01:19:51,287 --> 01:19:54,707
what the naked eye can show.
And in watching those tapes,

1622
01:19:54,873 --> 01:19:59,420
they find a connection to Katie
and Kristi, and little Leila,

1623
01:19:59,545 --> 01:20:03,257
their daughter, is special to the coven
and that at the end,

1624
01:20:03,841 --> 01:20:07,261
Toby is going to, sort of,
be born finally.

1625
01:20:07,469 --> 01:20:12,850
I played Ryan Fleege,
sort of, the father...

1626
01:20:12,975 --> 01:20:15,060
Well, essentially I find this camera

1627
01:20:15,269 --> 01:20:17,855
in our basement
while I'm cleaning it out.

1628
01:20:18,022 --> 01:20:19,815
I played Emily Fleege,

1629
01:20:19,898 --> 01:20:25,112
and she was the mom, wife
of the Fleege family.

1630
01:20:25,321 --> 01:20:26,447
Leila, who's Toby?

1631
01:20:28,449 --> 01:20:29,450
Leila?

1632
01:20:30,117 --> 01:20:33,871
Finding the Leila part
was really difficult,

1633
01:20:34,246 --> 01:20:36,749
but when Ivy came in again,

1634
01:20:36,832 --> 01:20:39,501
it was super late, like days
before we started shooting,

1635
01:20:39,585 --> 01:20:42,046
but she just had this
kind of magic quality.

1636
01:20:42,171 --> 01:20:43,172
She was awesome.

1637
01:20:43,547 --> 01:20:49,303
Greg was nice and he was sweet
and he was, again, very playful.

1638
01:20:52,890 --> 01:20:53,766
Fuck!

1639
01:20:53,849 --> 01:20:56,769
We had ILM come on and said,
"What would you do to these scenes?"

1640
01:20:56,852 --> 01:20:59,855
And it just empowered them to say,

1641
01:20:59,938 --> 01:21:01,833
"Oh my God, be fun if they did this,
this and this."

1642
01:21:01,857 --> 01:21:03,942
And then those got incorporated
in the film.

1643
01:21:04,109 --> 01:21:06,653
So, we do this extermination scene.

1644
01:21:07,112 --> 01:21:10,240
Father Todd comes over and he says,

1645
01:21:10,324 --> 01:21:14,536
"If we can put this holy water sheet,
trap him in this circle,

1646
01:21:14,620 --> 01:21:17,456
put the holy water sheet over him,
then we can exterminate him."

1647
01:21:17,623 --> 01:21:19,958
We kind of had the whole room rigged
with filament,

1648
01:21:20,084 --> 01:21:21,728
so I could just pull anything off
at any time.

1649
01:21:21,752 --> 01:21:23,271
I had someone behind the Christmas tree,

1650
01:21:23,295 --> 01:21:24,981
shaking the Christmas
tree and throwing stuff.

1651
01:21:25,005 --> 01:21:27,341
You have no idea what you're acting with.

1652
01:21:27,716 --> 01:21:30,427
You're just, sort of,
making it up as you go.

1653
01:21:30,552 --> 01:21:33,138
So that was kind of a trip to just,
sort of,

1654
01:21:33,263 --> 01:21:37,518
see X's on the floor and not even know

1655
01:21:37,643 --> 01:21:39,579
what the visual effect's gonna be
at the end of the day,

1656
01:21:39,603 --> 01:21:41,063
but you're reacting to it.

1657
01:21:41,146 --> 01:21:44,274
It was just kind of, like,
pretending someone was there.

1658
01:21:44,566 --> 01:21:47,569
It was chaos because
it was like in the middle of it,

1659
01:21:47,694 --> 01:21:50,656
it would be like,
whoever had the camera would,

1660
01:21:51,490 --> 01:21:54,094
someone would be telling them,
cause they're in video village, like,

1661
01:21:54,118 --> 01:21:56,370
"Pan down, pan up, look over here!"

1662
01:21:56,537 --> 01:21:58,914
"This person, say something!
This person, look here!"

1663
01:21:59,081 --> 01:22:01,375
"Toby's huge! Now he's not!
Now he's this!"

1664
01:22:01,500 --> 01:22:04,461
And then I guess
I pull somebody out of the...

1665
01:22:05,254 --> 01:22:09,550
Ivy's getting sucked into
the demon... vortex.

1666
01:22:11,176 --> 01:22:13,470
It wasn't scary,
it was actually pretty fun.

1667
01:22:13,637 --> 01:22:16,640
I think that,
I wouldn't say the worst part,

1668
01:22:16,932 --> 01:22:18,725
but a part
that I had some difficulty with,

1669
01:22:18,851 --> 01:22:20,811
was there was a really bright light.

1670
01:22:20,936 --> 01:22:22,855
And there was a lot of whips
and a lot of whips

1671
01:22:22,980 --> 01:22:24,541
and just trying to, kind of,
build it in post.

1672
01:22:24,565 --> 01:22:26,525
And we thought it might be
a fun opportunity

1673
01:22:26,692 --> 01:22:28,944
with the 3D to, kind of,
show the demon moving around

1674
01:22:29,069 --> 01:22:31,196
and so forth, but it was,
kind of, all hands on deck,

1675
01:22:31,280 --> 01:22:33,160
just like throw as much
shit in there as you can

1676
01:22:33,240 --> 01:22:35,534
and make it sound crazy and fun.

1677
01:22:37,244 --> 01:22:40,080
I think this camera can see things
you cannot see with the naked eye.

1678
01:22:40,914 --> 01:22:44,084
I've heard of spirit photography before,
I've just never seen it in person.

1679
01:22:48,797 --> 01:22:52,468
- Here I am. He'll do...
- What are you doing in here?

1680
01:22:54,261 --> 01:22:57,055
The big thing for us was
that we thought that the 3D,

1681
01:22:57,222 --> 01:23:02,811
that that Ghost Dimension aspect of it,
that we wouldn't market it as a 3D movie,

1682
01:23:03,103 --> 01:23:08,233
that we would give people the 3D glasses
to kind of see this new thing.

1683
01:23:08,567 --> 01:23:09,693
And it was very complicated.

1684
01:23:09,985 --> 01:23:12,279
I think a lot of people
were a little put-off

1685
01:23:12,362 --> 01:23:15,073
by the 3D and some
of the effects and so forth.

1686
01:23:16,033 --> 01:23:17,594
You know, obviously,
there was a lot of people

1687
01:23:17,618 --> 01:23:20,018
that loved it and thought
it answered questions and so forth.

1688
01:23:20,329 --> 01:23:21,649
But I think there was a lot of,

1689
01:23:21,747 --> 01:23:23,391
or a good amount of frustration
that it didn't

1690
01:23:23,415 --> 01:23:25,255
quite answer the questions
in the way you want.

1691
01:23:25,334 --> 01:23:30,714
Ghost Dimension isn't a terrible movie,
but it's not the way I think

1692
01:23:31,590 --> 01:23:34,760
it's not what I would want from a finale,
or a franchise finale.

1693
01:23:34,885 --> 01:23:38,722
The problem with the Ghost Dimension is
it kind of painted itself into a corner.

1694
01:23:40,182 --> 01:23:44,102
It was being portrayed
as the last of the franchise.

1695
01:23:44,228 --> 01:23:45,812
This was gonna be the end.

1696
01:23:46,688 --> 01:23:49,566
Come on, we've all watched
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

1697
01:23:50,317 --> 01:23:51,318
It's never the end.

1698
01:23:51,568 --> 01:23:53,946
The series started off
with a guy in his house

1699
01:23:54,029 --> 01:23:55,697
and his tripod, you know, and I'm like,

1700
01:23:56,031 --> 01:23:59,618
"Now we have ILM effects and 3D
and all this stuff," and it's just like,

1701
01:23:59,743 --> 01:24:03,247
it's really, kind of, gone away
from what made the first one really work.

1702
01:24:03,413 --> 01:24:05,249
I don't think I had
as much creative control

1703
01:24:05,332 --> 01:24:06,416
as I would've liked.

1704
01:24:06,542 --> 01:24:10,212
So there were a lot of creative decisions
that I just had no say in.

1705
01:24:12,548 --> 01:24:14,188
Would they have been better?
I don't know.

1706
01:24:14,216 --> 01:24:18,512
But it was definitely sometimes difficult
to try to go down a path

1707
01:24:18,637 --> 01:24:21,306
that I didn't necessarily think
was the healthiest for the film.

1708
01:24:21,431 --> 01:24:24,101
They actually released it
at about half the theaters

1709
01:24:24,184 --> 01:24:28,355
that they released
the other films of the franchise in.

1710
01:24:28,564 --> 01:24:31,692
And I can remember not
being able to find it at a theater.

1711
01:24:31,817 --> 01:24:34,945
Paranormal 6'is the only movie
in the franchise

1712
01:24:35,028 --> 01:24:36,154
I did not see in theaters.

1713
01:24:36,280 --> 01:24:38,600
It was just a weird thing.
I don't, to this day, quite know

1714
01:24:38,657 --> 01:24:39,700
all the politics involved.

1715
01:24:40,867 --> 01:24:42,578
- Oh my God!
- Father!

1716
01:24:44,288 --> 01:24:46,498
Here I am. He'll do.

1717
01:24:46,582 --> 01:24:49,334
Here I am. He'll do.

1718
01:24:59,428 --> 01:25:00,929
The decision was made by the studio

1719
01:25:01,013 --> 01:25:04,099
when they saw that, basically,
their revenues are declining,

1720
01:25:04,182 --> 01:25:06,602
it's not becoming as profitable,
and I said, "You know what?"

1721
01:25:06,685 --> 01:25:11,231
"We should just kinda quit
while we're not even ahead."

1722
01:25:11,315 --> 01:25:13,900
We were flat out of ideas. It was...

1723
01:25:14,735 --> 01:25:17,362
You know, the movie had
created so much success

1724
01:25:17,571 --> 01:25:19,698
for everyone involved with it,

1725
01:25:19,781 --> 01:25:23,035
that Jason, especially,
had had such a big,

1726
01:25:23,118 --> 01:25:26,705
booming business that was happening
that I also, was holding him back

1727
01:25:26,788 --> 01:25:31,418
from being able to launch his empire,
that he's since created.

1728
01:25:32,294 --> 01:25:35,881
And... you know, bands have to take a break

1729
01:25:35,964 --> 01:25:37,644
and get off the road
every once in a while.

1730
01:25:37,716 --> 01:25:39,968
We just said,
"You know, let's just quit for now

1731
01:25:40,552 --> 01:25:43,722
and take a long break
from Paranormal Activity."

1732
01:25:45,599 --> 01:25:48,477
Those movies were
probably the most fun part

1733
01:25:48,560 --> 01:25:51,438
of my job and running all of Paramount.

1734
01:25:51,605 --> 01:25:53,445
My personal relationship
to Paranormal Activity

1735
01:25:53,523 --> 01:25:57,277
is it gave me my business model
and I built a huge business off it.

1736
01:25:57,444 --> 01:26:01,531
I went from knocking on the door to now,
being in the room and being able direct

1737
01:26:01,907 --> 01:26:03,867
and sort of,
fulfill all of my creative dreams,

1738
01:26:04,326 --> 01:26:07,245
so I couldn't be more
thankful to the franchise.

1739
01:26:07,329 --> 01:26:11,541
Those movies were, kind of,
our studio film school in a way.

1740
01:26:11,708 --> 01:26:12,935
- And, like...
- It was a crash course.

1741
01:26:12,959 --> 01:26:16,546
It was a crash course, and, like,
we learned from Akiva and from Chris,

1742
01:26:16,630 --> 01:26:18,110
and these guys who are just the best.

1743
01:26:18,173 --> 01:26:19,984
One of the cool things
about making these movies,

1744
01:26:20,008 --> 01:26:22,070
and one of the humbling things
about making these movies,

1745
01:26:22,094 --> 01:26:26,390
is that it truly was a...
it was a group effort.

1746
01:26:27,349 --> 01:26:29,393
Yeah, I can't describe it.

1747
01:26:29,476 --> 01:26:34,648
It's been an emotional roller coaster,

1748
01:26:34,731 --> 01:26:36,900
but also I loved
working on these movies.

1749
01:26:37,025 --> 01:26:38,193
I loved working hard.

1750
01:26:38,276 --> 01:26:43,573
I learned the most I ever have in terms of
being behind the camera

1751
01:26:43,657 --> 01:26:45,177
and the physical production of it all.

1752
01:26:45,242 --> 01:26:47,994
I wouldn't trade it
for anything in the world.

1753
01:26:48,245 --> 01:26:51,123
I think the Paranormal Activity
films appear to be real.

1754
01:26:52,958 --> 01:26:58,547
I think that we believe that next door,
down the block, in our house

1755
01:26:59,506 --> 01:27:04,928
there are stories,
and not all of them are good stories.

1756
01:27:05,178 --> 01:27:07,806
Maybe deep down,
you know that it's not real,

1757
01:27:07,931 --> 01:27:09,266
but it feels real.

1758
01:27:09,433 --> 01:27:12,853
And it's easier for you to, kind of,
get more attached

1759
01:27:12,936 --> 01:27:14,396
and invested in the characters.

1760
01:27:14,521 --> 01:27:20,652
What that guy did with not a lot of money
and two actors in his own house

1761
01:27:20,819 --> 01:27:23,822
changed the horror industry,
changed the genre.

1762
01:27:23,947 --> 01:27:26,616
There's, like, a specialness
that I get to share it,

1763
01:27:26,742 --> 01:27:28,994
not only with Oren and Katie,

1764
01:27:29,077 --> 01:27:31,580
but with all the fans
and we're doing it together.

1765
01:27:31,663 --> 01:27:34,541
We were in the moment and we were
focused on making the best movie

1766
01:27:34,624 --> 01:27:38,295
we knew how to make because it was fun,
and because we cared about it.

1767
01:27:38,462 --> 01:27:40,213
I mean, the whole thing is very surreal.

1768
01:27:40,380 --> 01:27:43,842
I mean, I'm mostly really proud
of the success of the first one.

1769
01:27:43,967 --> 01:27:48,722
I think the other sequels
had a lot more people involved,

1770
01:27:49,139 --> 01:27:51,391
but, yeah, anything and everything

1771
01:27:51,516 --> 01:27:53,327
that happened around
the success of the franchise

1772
01:27:53,351 --> 01:27:55,187
has been, kind of, mind-boggling to me.

1773
01:27:55,312 --> 01:27:57,564
And I'm just happy to go along
on the ride.

1774
01:27:57,731 --> 01:28:03,945
I think Oren's conceit of a couple,
"I see ghosts, I don't see ghosts,

1775
01:28:04,029 --> 01:28:06,174
I'm gonna get a camera to you
to prove that there're ghosts,"

1776
01:28:06,198 --> 01:28:09,785
there's absolutely no better,
and there never has been a better,

1777
01:28:09,868 --> 01:28:12,621
and I'd be surprised if there
ever will be a better setup

1778
01:28:12,704 --> 01:28:14,456
for a found-footage movie.
It was brilliant.

1779
01:28:14,623 --> 01:28:17,000
You know, it was extraordinary.

1780
01:29:01,211 --> 01:29:02,295
What's up, everybody?

1781
01:29:02,379 --> 01:29:04,065
We're here on set
shooting the next installment

1782
01:29:04,089 --> 01:29:05,215
of Paranormal Activity.

1783
01:29:05,298 --> 01:29:07,676
Hi, my name is Emily Bader
and I'm playing Margot.

1784
01:29:08,176 --> 01:29:10,887
Yo, you're killing my interview!

1785
01:29:10,971 --> 01:29:13,181
Hi, everybody. I'm Dan Lippert
and I play Dale.

1786
01:29:13,557 --> 01:29:15,517
This is my time now, okay?

1787
01:29:15,725 --> 01:29:18,770
Hey, I'm Will Eubank,
the director of Paranormal Activity 7.

1788
01:29:19,187 --> 01:29:20,772
And this mic is ridiculous.

1789
01:29:20,856 --> 01:29:23,483
We're filming the new
Paranormal Activity 7

1790
01:29:23,567 --> 01:29:24,860
in Buffalo, New York.

1791
01:29:24,943 --> 01:29:26,420
It's always fun shooting scary movies

1792
01:29:26,444 --> 01:29:28,446
where you just feel
like there's adrenaline

1793
01:29:28,530 --> 01:29:31,491
around every corner and scares,
and little rushes, and whatnot.

1794
01:29:31,575 --> 01:29:34,160
But I think when the cast
and crew come together

1795
01:29:34,286 --> 01:29:36,454
and they work in, like,
that kind of environment,

1796
01:29:36,913 --> 01:29:38,498
it's just a hell of a lot of fun.

1797
01:29:38,582 --> 01:29:41,084
It's been, like,
a weird little summer camp.

1798
01:29:41,167 --> 01:29:42,377
It was five weeks on a farm.

1799
01:29:42,460 --> 01:29:45,922
Like, we are our support system
because we're really out here alone.

1800
01:29:46,047 --> 01:29:48,234
You kind of, either got to love
each other or hate each other.

1801
01:29:48,258 --> 01:29:49,652
I think we came out with some love.

1802
01:29:49,676 --> 01:29:52,220
We have to be, like, super-together.

1803
01:29:52,345 --> 01:29:56,099
And like, scary, crazy nights.
Everybody, kind of, has to buckle in.

1804
01:29:56,266 --> 01:29:57,851
So, yeah. Oh my fucking God!

1805
01:29:58,143 --> 01:30:00,395
Paranormal Activity
films have always represented,

1806
01:30:00,520 --> 01:30:06,735
like, this crazy level of just true fear,
but fear that feels like

1807
01:30:06,818 --> 01:30:08,570
something that could sort of
happen to you.

1808
01:30:08,778 --> 01:30:11,531
The new direction
that Will Eubank is taking the movie.

1809
01:30:11,615 --> 01:30:17,579
He's really, added a lot of new,
exciting visual elements to the film.

1810
01:30:17,704 --> 01:30:22,125
I'm really excited to see the reaction
of people

1811
01:30:22,292 --> 01:30:24,628
to the cinematography
of this particular piece.

1812
01:30:24,711 --> 01:30:26,171
The other Paranormals,

1813
01:30:26,254 --> 01:30:29,674
you know, you kind of are
secluded to one environment.

1814
01:30:29,925 --> 01:30:32,469
I'm super excited for fans
to get to see, sort of,

1815
01:30:32,594 --> 01:30:34,554
an expansion of the world
in a lot of ways.

1816
01:30:34,721 --> 01:30:37,474
In this one,
we get out of one environment,

1817
01:30:37,557 --> 01:30:38,725
we're in many environments.

1818
01:30:38,808 --> 01:30:40,727
There's not a lot I can
tell you about this PA,

1819
01:30:40,852 --> 01:30:46,024
but the things I can tell you
is there are going to be some new scares

1820
01:30:46,107 --> 01:30:50,654
and some really wild,
dark things going on.

1821
01:30:50,820 --> 01:30:56,242
We hang out, and as you can see,
like a lot of laundry and just good vibes.

1822
01:30:56,409 --> 01:30:58,620
Yeah. People die!

1823
01:30:58,787 --> 01:31:01,623
Brace yourself and get ready for a ride.

1824
01:31:01,748 --> 01:31:04,751
And I know you haven't been scared
since the last Paranormal movie,

1825
01:31:04,834 --> 01:31:07,337
so we're excited to do it now.

1826
01:31:07,504 --> 01:31:09,424
And we hope you guys
really love what comes next.

1827
01:31:09,464 --> 01:31:11,925
Stay tuned for the next chapter
of Paranormal Activity.

1828
01:31:12,008 --> 01:31:13,259
It's about to get poppin'.

1829
01:31:27,065 --> 01:31:28,316
What scares you?

1830
01:31:31,611 --> 01:31:33,947
That's an interesting one.

1831
01:31:35,991 --> 01:31:37,701
Katie is frightening.

1832
01:31:43,331 --> 01:31:44,499
School pickup?

1833
01:31:46,543 --> 01:31:47,585
It's a madhouse.

1834
01:31:51,840 --> 01:31:52,841
Spiders.

1835
01:31:53,550 --> 01:31:54,676
Studio executives.

1836
01:31:55,427 --> 01:31:57,178
Lasers in my eye.

1837
01:32:01,224 --> 01:32:03,768
Candyman was always
the scariest one for me.

1838
01:32:03,852 --> 01:32:05,145
Tony Todd was really

1839
01:32:06,312 --> 01:32:08,064
like the big bad when I was growing up.

1840
01:32:12,569 --> 01:32:16,698
I mean, real life is so scary right now,
and I could go into all that...

1841
01:32:16,781 --> 01:32:19,576
Like, Nazis are scary
and they've made a comeback.

1842
01:32:23,872 --> 01:32:25,915
MapQuest. Yeah.

1843
01:32:27,042 --> 01:32:28,376
Scared me this morning.

1844
01:32:33,048 --> 01:32:35,717
There's a fear that maybe
still lives in me,

1845
01:32:35,800 --> 01:32:38,762
which is that
I've sold my soul to the devil

1846
01:32:38,845 --> 01:32:40,263
at some point and forgot about it.

1847
01:32:48,396 --> 01:32:52,150
I do a lot of hiking, and... so, bears,

1848
01:32:52,233 --> 01:32:54,402
and, you know, scary creatures,

1849
01:32:54,486 --> 01:32:57,989
mountain lions, coyotes,
even raccoons can be feisty.

1850
01:32:58,573 --> 01:33:01,159
My chandelier was moving two days ago.

1851
01:33:02,410 --> 01:33:04,079
I was like, "No!"

1852
01:33:04,704 --> 01:33:06,331
I was like, "You hit that, right, Mom?

1853
01:33:06,414 --> 01:33:08,917
Like, that was you, you hit it?"
She's like, "Uh-huh."

1854
01:33:09,000 --> 01:33:11,086
'Cause I'm like so freaked out
by that stuff now.

1855
01:33:11,169 --> 01:33:16,174
I believe in ghosts,
so, if something moves that shouldn't.

1856
01:33:17,467 --> 01:33:19,469
I can find that pretty disconcerting.

1857
01:33:19,552 --> 01:33:20,637
I'm very jumpy.

1858
01:33:20,720 --> 01:33:22,931
And so all of my friends
and my family make fun of me

1859
01:33:23,014 --> 01:33:25,850
because I make these movies,

1860
01:33:25,934 --> 01:33:29,354
but if you, like,
pop out of something,

1861
01:33:29,437 --> 01:33:33,691
I will scream and jump away.
You know, I'm very jumpy that way.

1862
01:33:33,775 --> 01:33:36,945
My dad took me to this ride where, like,

1863
01:33:37,028 --> 01:33:39,614
they were literally would
hit you with brooms,

1864
01:33:39,697 --> 01:33:42,283
the ends of, you know,
broomsticks, not sticks,

1865
01:33:42,367 --> 01:33:44,911
but the soft part of it.

1866
01:33:44,994 --> 01:33:46,788
And I was, like, four or five years old

1867
01:33:46,871 --> 01:33:48,557
and it terrorized me.
I don't know why my dad

1868
01:33:48,581 --> 01:33:49,581
took me to that.

1869
01:33:49,624 --> 01:33:50,792
What scares you guys?

1870
01:33:53,503 --> 01:33:55,797
- This interview.
- Oh man.

1871
01:33:55,880 --> 01:33:58,758
The sound that occurred
when you're watching.

1872
01:33:58,842 --> 01:34:00,510
Paranormal Activity, the first one.

1873
01:34:01,052 --> 01:34:02,804
That did it for me.

1874
01:34:03,346 --> 01:34:05,348
That got me to move up a couple rows.

1875
01:34:09,686 --> 01:34:10,687
That's it?

1876
01:34:10,770 --> 01:34:12,522
Cool! Thank you, guys.

1877
01:34:12,605 --> 01:34:14,023
Thank you so much.

1878
01:34:14,107 --> 01:34:16,027
- No problem, no problem.
- Yeah, this was great.