Oren Peli

Oren Peli
Born	1970 (age 42–43) Ramat Gan, Israel
Occupation	Film director, producer, screenwriter
Years active	2007–present
Known for	Paranormal Activity

Oren Peli (Hebrew: אורן פלאי‎; born 1970) is an Israeli American film director, producer and screenwriter, best known as the director/creator of Paranormal Activity. He is also a video game programmer.

Biography

Oren Peli was born in Israel. When he reached the age of 19, he relocated to the United States. He was an intensive student of animation and graphic design. Peli is not only a film director but is also a screenwriter. In 2009, his film debut Paranormal Activity was released, with inspiration from The Blair Witch Project. Despite a $15,000 budget, he managed to turn the low budget horror film into a box-office hit.

Career

Oren Peli started out as a computer software programmer and his first movie was Paranormal Activity. He took a stab at directing, aware of how to utilize filmmaking technology and confident that he could direct a movie that dealt a lot with technology.

Peli moved into his first house all alone and without family nearby. Peli would hear creaks and knocks without having anyone around and it gave him the idea to make a movie about the weird noises you may hear in your home. Paranormal Activity came about with the idea that someone would have cameras running all over a house while the family slept to catch what was going on at night in the house.

After the success of Paranormal Activity, Peli began to play with the idea of doing similar low-budget horror films in order to capture audiences in a new and unique way.^{[citation needed]} Peli was stuck on the idea of doing films in an "old-style" way.^{[citation needed]} Peli and his production team approached director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell with their idea; it only took five months for Peli and his collective team to get the film rolling.^{[citation needed]} While Insidious was not shot in the characteristic Blair Witch-style, it incorporated some classic suspense elements from the earlier eras of horror films.^{[citation needed]} Peli was mostly present in the post-production of this film, having handed over full creative control to Wan and Whannell; his formula of low-budget meets classic horror once again hit box offices with a strong positive response from audiences.^{[citation needed]}

Peli produced and wrote the 2012 horror film, Chernobyl Diaries, based on the Chernobyl disaster and on his story The Diary Of Lawson Oxford. The film was released through Alcon Entertainment on May 25, 2012. The film followed "a group of friends who, while vacationing in Europe, find themselves stranded in the abandoned city of Prypiat, Ukraine only to discover that they are not alone."

Television

In 2012, The River premiered on ABC, a paranormal/action/horror television series about a group of people on a mission to find a missing TV explorer in the Amazon. Oren Peli co-created the show with Michael R. Perry who co-wrote Paranormal Activity 2.

Upcoming films

Peli is working on The Lords of Salem and Area 51. He is the screenwriter and director of Area 51, a story about three friends who want to discover the secrets of the fabled Area 51. The Lords of Salem, directed by Rob Zombie, is set in the town of Salem, MA as it is terrorized by a coven of witches. Another project of Oren Peli is Paranormal Activity 5, the fifth installment in the Paranormal Activity franchise.

Filmography

Year	Film	Director	Producer	Writer	Cinematographer	Editor
2007	Paranormal Activity	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
2010	Paranormal Activity 2	No	Yes	No	No	No
	Insidious	No	Yes	No	No	No
2011	Paranormal Activity 3	No	Yes	No	No	No
2012	The River	No	Yes	Yes	No	No
	Paranormal Activity 4	No	Yes	No	No	No
	Lords of Salem	No	Yes	No	No	No
	Chernobyl Diaries	No	Yes	Yes	No	No
2013	Area 51	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
	Paranormal Activity 5	No	Yes	No	No	No

External links

• Oren Peli at the Internet Movie Database
• Oren Peli at MobyGames
• Oren Peli at AllRovi