Hollywood Popular Artists

May 14th 2012, 16:19

"Chronicle" was one of the most pleasant surprises of the year when it debuted back in February, but with the Blu-ray and DVD hitting stores this week, we get to take time to look back at the world's most immature superheroes.

To celebrate the video release, we have an exclusive from the Blu-ray, a look at the test footage director Josh Trank shot in order to get the film made.

You can check out the clip above, and continue on after the jump for an interview with Trank.

As the movie cliché du jour, found footage certainly has its detractors, especially when used for cheap cash-ins like "The Devil Inside," but Trank saw the popularity of the format as a benefit when making "Chronicle."

"What was great about doing 'Chronicle' at this very moment in time and where we're at in movies and pop culture in both a combination of the evolution of reality television in the last ten years, as well as the iconic found footage movies that have been released in the last ten years," Trank said.

Trank sees found footage as lacking any hard-set rules, so that allowed him to write his own and play with expectations when making his film. "Audiences are essentially trained at this point to accept this vérité style film, in that we would be able to play off of certain conventions that have already been established but to which there are no pre-established rules, as far as how you're supposed to do it, because it's still an emerging aesthetic in a lot of ways," he said.

Be that as it may, there were certain aspects of found footage that Trank wanted to avoid when making "Chronicle."

"One thing that I knew right away, early on that we wouldn't need to because it's been done so many times before is to open up this movie on a pretext, some kind of slug at the beginning of the film that says a date and a time and when this footage was found and why it was put together, et cetera. No need to do that," Trank said. "Open up the movie with a studio logo. Cut to Andrew's room. He turns on his camera. That's something people are prepared to experience, and I've had this movie in my head for a very, very long time. I feel like the timing was perfect in that sense."

"Chronicle" hits Blu-ray and DVD on May 15.

What did you think of the test footage from "Chronicle"? Let us know in the comments below and on Twitter!

Media files:
chronicle.jpg (image/jpeg)