A Sneak Peak at Josh Trank’s Upcoming ‘Chronicle’

With the seemingly endless barrage of found-footage projects on the rise, ‘Chronicle’ director Josh Trank was on hand in Sydney recently to demonstrate what makes his film stand out from the rest of the crop. To do this, he was armed with almost twenty-five minutes of the nearly completed film, which releases in Australia on February 2nd.

The film follows three boys in high school who gain telekinetic abilities after they make a discovery in the middle of forest. As they explore the limits of their newfound power, they find the danger that lies in exploiting it for darker purposes.

In setting up each clip, Trank was keen to address many of the concerns one might have of walking into hand-held adventure – the most obvious being whether or not you would walk back out with a headache courtesy of an inept camera operator that appears to have had three too many double-espresso shots.

The first clip we were shown introduces us to one of our protagonists in ‘Andrew’ – a nebbish young high-schooler who when asked why he’s vigilantly filming a crowd at a rave party, responds ‘to film.’ Andrew becomes immediately likeable, if only for the fact that if you were ever to have a character in charge of carefully framing action as it unfolds, this is the guy you want holding the camera. As audience members, we are in very good hands.

Trank explained that as the film plays out, not only do Andrew’s camera skills improve, but that as the camera changes hands between our three leads – the filming style betrays something of each character. As we were shown in another clip, the use of the camera as a narrative device is explored further as the film progresses. Eventually we watch the characters operating it via their burgeoning telekinetic powers. Nice touch.

If you’ve seen Trank’s ‘Stabbing at Leia’s 22nd’ (aka COPS in a galaxy far, far away) – you will have already seen a hint of the director’s motivations in approaching ‘Chronicle’.

Trank spoke about attempting to frame events as realistically as possible in order to ground the character’s actions in a way that doesn’t test our suspension of disbelief. In many of the scenes shown where the boys are still in the infancy of their abilities, there’s a conscious effort to avoid the more visually fantastic displays of power. Reality, above all else, is the touchstone.

The surprising mix of both practical and computer generated effects is spearheaded by VFX Supervisor Simon Hanson (the bulk of the film was shot in South Africa), who has a proven track record of creating convincing the effects seen in Neill Blomkamp’s ‘District 9.’

Whilst the marketing may seem to indicate yet another film featuring douchebags with cameras, the footage we saw indicated that there was much more going on beneath the surface of these guys.

But make no mistake, based on these clips alone there is definitely a lot of fun to be had as our heroes get cheeky with their abilities. And as their abilities grow, so does the scope of the film. Without spoiling anything, the clips we saw from the tail-end of the film show that what starts out very intimately, escalates to the point where you’re wondering how long it’s going to be before you hear somebody screaming ‘Tetsuo!’ (or even ‘Magneto!’).

Maybe it isn’t fair to call ‘Chronicle’ a found footage film, since the director explained that there are no dates or expository sluglines preceding the film. Something we don’t think anybody will miss. Whatever you want to call Trank’s feature debut, it certainly shows a lot of promise.