What is Super 8? A little over a week ago, most people in the film business would have said an old-school film format or a mediocre hotel chain. With the last week, however, it has easily become one of the the most anticipated films of 2011. Perhaps that’s because there aren’t many 2011 films marketing just yet, but it’s mainly because the film’s teaser trailer – first released in front of prints of Iron Man 2 – is positively intriguing. Check it out below:

So what can we tell you about the film? Not much, to tell the truth. The project is still shrouded in mystery.

What we do know is that it’ll be director J. J. Abrams follow up to last year’s successful Star Trek reboot, being released under Steven Spielberg’s studio Paramount Pictures. As the trailer suggests, it’ll be an alien-related film concerning the infamous Area 51, being touted as a homage of sorts to Spielberg’s earlier films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We also know that filming hasn’t begun and isn’t likely to happen until the end of the year. The teaser trailer was independently directed by Abrams as just a taste of things to come and what’s in the trailer could, quite possibly, not at all be used in the final film. Super 8 is set for release  sometime in winter next year (that is, winter for us Southern Hemisphere folk).

Apart from these scarce details, however, and it’s all guess work.

Yet the complete lack of info surrounding the film is exactly why the internet is buzzing with anticipation. Everyone is dying to know the details, just as they were when the cryptic Cloverfield teaser trailer was slipped in with other previews before Transformers in 2007. Unlike Cloverfield — which went for many months without even a name attached, only a date – Abrams, who produced the handycam monster movie, was kind enough this time to give his latest mystery project a title.

So what’s in a name? Well, the title does give us some clues. It seems likely that ‘Super 8’ is a reference to the old film format, which therefore allows us to deduce a period in time when the film is set. The 8mm film format was first released in 1965, while Area 51 started popping up in secret government documents in 1967 (thanks Wikipedia!), so one can assume events will occur sometime after this time and before Super 8 was superseded by video cartridge cameras. Given Abrams history with Cloverfield and its cinéma verite style of filming, it also seems likely that the film will be shot from the perspective of someone wielding a Super 8 camera, capturing the carnage as the alien wreaks havoc on Earth.

Some astute fans have also found the words “scariest thing I ever saw” embedded in the trailer, thus leading them to the site www.scariestthingieversaw.com which features a virtual PD-11 computer that you can interact with. A countdown timer can be accessed through a series of keystrokes, presumably ending around noon on May 15th, 2010 (USA time). What happens then? Who knows.

I’m sure there will be more to report on Super 8 on the 15th and in the coming weeks as the film’s Alternate Reality Game takes flight, but for now, let’s just take joy in not knowing everything for once, eh?

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