John Krasinski describes test screening ‘A Quiet Place’ to making the ‘worst greatest comedy’ ever

“A Quiet Place.”
Paramount
Pictures

• John Krasinski explained to Business Insider why he decided
  to put on a motion-capture suit and play the movie’s creature in
  the final scene of “A Quiet Place.”
• He also talked about what it was like to show the footage of
  him in the suit to a test screening audience, as the creature VFX
  footage wasn’t ready to put in the movie yet.

One of the most emotionally draining parts of being a director is
showing your movie to an audience for the first time — especially
when it isn’t finished yet.

That’s what John Krasinski had to suffer through when he showed
“A Quiet Place” to a test audience. Like most test screenings,
the movie was not completely done, including the CGI that would
show the scary creature tormenting the family in the movie. That
meant in many of the shots featuring the sound-sensitive
creature, the test audience had to imagine what the actors on
screen were frightened by. They saw a crude animation of the
creature, or someone in a tight motion-capture suit.

Looking back, Krasinski said he thought most of the test
screening audience was into the movie despite the lack of major
computer-generated elements. That is, until Krasinski showed up
on the big screen in the motion-capture suit playing the monster
in the final scene.

“All of a sudden my giant foot with Vans on shows up, and we
slowly pan up my very colorful, very tight, revealing suit, and
end on me with a beard pretending to roar,” Krasinski told

Business Insider, admitting he thought the movie was doomed.
“The entire place exploded into laughter.”

John Krasinski played the creature in the final scene
of “A Quiet Place.”
Paramount

Krasinski said he thought to himself in that moment, “What have I
done! I’ve just made the worst greatest comedy.”

Thankfully for Krasinski, the test audience didn’t rush to their
phones after the screening and reveal what they had seen. Months
later, with finished creature graphics in place, the movie went
on to wow the audience at its world premiere at the SXSW Film
Festival. Then it became one of the biggest earners of the year
when it opened in theaters in April and went on to gross over $340 million at the
worldwide box office.

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But how did Krasinski end up in that motion-capture suit playing
the creature?

He said it all happened spontaneously on set while he was talking
to the movie’s visual effects supervisor, Scott Farrar, about how
the creature would move during the movie’s thrilling ending, in
which Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and her kids are trapped in the
basement of their house with one of the creatures.

John Krasinski on the set of “A Quiet
Place.”
Paramount

“Scott kept saying, ‘John, he’s low to the ground, so we’ve got
to make sure the camera knows he’s low to the grown for eye
line,’” Krasinski recalled. “And we were talking it through, and
I finally said, ‘Yeah, that’s not how I see it — I sort of see it
like this.’ And Scott goes, ‘Just put on the suit, man.’ And I
was like, ‘What?’ He was like, ‘Just put on the suit and do it.’
And I was like, ‘All right.’ So I went upstairs, put on the suit,
still had my Vans on.”

So the footage of Krasinski as the creature that the test
screening saw was transformed by the CGI wizards at Industrial
Light and Magic into the creepy thing we see in the finished
movie.

“I think there is even audio of me being like
[high-pitched] ‘Rooooaaaarrr!’” Krasinski said about
playing the creature.

Will we ever see this footage of Krasinski as the creature?

“With any luck, no,” Krasinski said without hesitation.