Show Video designer outgrows o fear of dark o r ys ysa 0 a 3 00 0 0 OJ i i Los Angeles Times photo by Myung J. J Chun Chun Oren ni Peli dl Shot i. i the haunting thriller Paranormal Activity in a week using 6 a n camera John Horn Los Angeles Times As a teenager Oren Peli Pel was so frightened by The Thi Exorcist that for years ht he he couldn't watch any movie involving ghosts ever even Peli Pel 37 eventually eventually outgrew his phantom phanton phobia and now the San Sai Diego designer designee has crafted his own film file about things that go bum bump in the night Pelis Peli's Paranormal Activity which wa was to be shown Friday a athe t at atthe the Film Festival the paralle parallel festival to Sun Sundance dance that's gaining increasing attention represents the thi promised future of digital filmmaking a storyteller with no training and hardly any resources who craft crafts a movie that might attract as much buyer interest a as many movies at Sundance But Paranormal Activity is also the tale talc of how a project that thai could have been lost inthe inthe in ir the annual tsunami oi of of independent films caught enough peoples people's interest to tobe tobe tobe be noticed Born in Israel Peli started his own software company at age 16 I just wrote an animation program with a couple of friends no one knew knew we were doing it and then we found someone to go sell it he says That same model would be repeated on Paranormal Activity several years later Over the course of just justa a week with a crew that included his girlfriend his best friend and a makeup artist Peli shot the film in 2006 with a Sony camera The idea was simple A young couple believe their house is being visited at night by some spectral force A psychic is unable to deter the unfriendly intruder so Katie and Micah start videotaping videO themselves sleeping At first the camera records a few unexplained noises but before long doors start slamming shadows begin appearing and Katie and Micah begin begir freaking out is just their imaginations imagination working overtime I is is actually something ng much worse And even though the entire entire- movie unfold unfolds inside a small house th the the sense of impending doom doon feels much larger Like Cloverfield the film begins with a disclaimer suggesting that thai its it's an artifact from an early unexplained incident Comparisons to The Blair Witch Project especially since all of Paranormal Activity held hand-held was shot on a camera are inevitable Yet the film is also reminiscent of The Haunting The Amityville Horror and yes The Exorcist Almost any movie no matter how original is borrowing from some other movies Peli says There were a lot of scenes that we wanted to do but they felt too familiar But everything in the film is based on true accounts that people have experienced After completing filming Peli spent a year editing Paranormal creating its Web site and crafting a trailer He sent to sales agents and submitted the film to Los Angeles where it was received last fall with enthusiastic reviews from horror Web sites It easily could have vanished after that But the movie made its way to the Creative Artists Agency which submitted the film to producer Steven Schneider as a directing sample who then showed the film to producing partner Jason Blum that We Ve t together thought the movie was great and am rid rather than focus our energy on Orens Oren's next movie we decided to focus on selling this Blum says Paranormal Activity was and trimmed its it's 94 minutes long Now its it's looking for a theatrical homeI home I am often grossed out but almost never scared Blum says of the film And it worked on me later in the night when I was out by a dishwasher noise And the other thing I love about it is that its it's a low- low budget high-concept high idea What's one of your worst fears What may or of may not lot occur around you when youre you're sleeping |