Paranormal Activity

Paranormal Activity is a 2007 American found footage supernatural horror film produced, written, directed, photographed, and edited by Oren Peli. It centers on a young couple (Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat) who are haunted by a supernatural presence inside their home. They then set up a camera to document what is haunting them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranormal_Activity

Originally developed by Peli as an independent (indie) feature and given film festival screenings in 2007, the film was shot for $15,000. It was then acquired by DreamWorks Pictures, then a Paramount Pictures subsidiary, who modified the film, particularly with a new ending that cost an additional $200,000.

Attempting to focus on believability rather than action and gore, Peli chose to shoot the picture with a home video camera. In deciding on a more raw and stationary format (the camera was almost always sitting on a tripod or something else) and eliminating the need for a camera crew, a "higher degree of plausibility" was created for the audience as they were "more invested in the story and the characters". Peli says that the dialogue was "natural" because there was no real script. Instead, the actors were given outlines of the story and situations to improvise, a technique known as "retroscripting" also used in the making of The Blair Witch Project.

In casting the movie, Peli auditioned "a few hundred people" before finally meeting Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat

Featherston noted they were originally paid $500 for their work.[

Principal photography took place at a private residence in Rancho Peñasquitos, San Diego. The film was shot out of sequence due to Peli's self-imposed seven-day shooting schedule. Sloat, who controlled the camera for a good deal of the film, was a former cameraman at his university's TV station. "It was a very intense week," Peli said, stating that the film was shot day and night, edited at the same time, and had visual effects applied as the acting footage was being finalized

Multiple endings were conceived, but not all of them were shot, and the final publicly released ending added by the studio after rights to the film were obtained.

The film was screened at 2007's Screamfest Horror Film Festival, where it impressed Kirill Baru, an assistant at the Creative Artists Agency, to the extent that CAA soon signed on to represent Peli

the agency sent DVDs of the movie to as many people in the industry as they could

The DVD also impressed DreamWorks executives Adam Goodman, Stacey Snider, and finally Steven Spielberg, who cut a deal with Blum and Peli.

DreamWorks' plan was to remake the film with a bigger budget and with Peli directing, and only to include the original version as an extra when the DVD was eventually released.

Blum and Peli agreed, but stipulated a test screening of the original film before going ahead with the remake, believing it would be well received by a theatrical audience.

During the screening, people began walking out and Goodman thought the film was bombing, until he learned that the viewers were actually leaving because they were so frightened. He then realized a remake would be unwise and unnecessary

When the film was taken in by Paramount, several changes were made. Some scenes were cut, others added, and the original ending was scrapped, with two new endings being shot. The ending shown in theaters during the film's worldwide release is the only one of the three to feature visual effects, and it differs from the endings previously seen at the Screamfest and Burbank screenings

Initial trailers featured clips of audiences reacting to scenes in the film. In these trailers, a night-vision camera mounted in a movie theater showed a montage of movie-goers screaming and jumping after being scared.

On his website, director Oren Peli invited internet users to "demand" where the film went next by voting on Eventful. This was the first time a major motion picture studio used the service to virally market a film.

Paranormal Activity received positive reviews from critics. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an overall approval rating of 83% based on 211 reviews, with an average rating of 7.1/10.

Legacy

The monetary success of Paranormal Activity compared to its budget made it the most profitable film of all time, surpassing The Blair Witch Project (1999). The film's low budget and easy to replicate style directly led to found footage becoming a horror movie trend for years, with The Last Exorcism, Apollo 18, The Devil Inside, and the V/H/S series arriving in its wake.