That’s just pathetic. One of the Rocky movies, maybe the one with Dolph Lundgren (sp?) had TONS of swish pans in the fight scenes. They used it to build tension and get the audience agitated because without it, I suspect the fight scenes were just awful.
It is a core complaint. Hand in hand does the snap-fire cuts. Watch “The View”. They cannot go 2 seconds without a cut. It is utterly maddening.
The antithesis of this trend is out there, but hard to find. Two scenes come to mind.
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The movie “Love, Actually” has a scene with Emma Thompson. She’s just found out her husband is cheating on her. The scene plays- aside from one abysmal cut in to a close-up- as a single locked-off shot. She just gets to ACT.
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The low budget feature “Smoke”. It has a scene at the end that likely runs an entire 400’ roll. ( 11 minutes in 16mm ). Two men sitting in the smoke shop, talking. At some point, the camera imperceptibly starts to zoom in a bit. Mostly, it is a lock-off.
People are completely unused to sitting and watching acting without cuts. Or, in the case of a documentary, watching a shot or scene cut slowly and simply with unintrusive shot composition. Look, I’m a Steadicam Operator. I’m all about movement- but with the power to move the frame comes, as Spiderman’s Uncle Ben said, great responsibility. One composes movement with great care.
Not wanton abandon.