Does jiggly camera cinematography bother anyone else? Elsewhere on the boards, another poster complains about NYPD Blue. I heard some in the Blair Witch audience got sick because of the technique. Phartizette can’t watch programs/movies with this either, and although I can put up with it, I think it’s awful silly.
Is it becoming more popular? [sub]I hope not.[/sub]
I hate it when it’s done purely to be “kewl” or “different.” It’s as though the director feels they have to do something to keep the audience’s interest.
In Blair Witch, on the other hand, it made sense. Okay, so it caused a lot of headaches, but at least it was logical.
ARMY OF DARKNESS did it and made it out to be quite humorous.
Under certain limited circumstances, fine. If there’s a good reason for it, lovely.
However, its started popping up on things like studio-based cookery programmes, and that is all wrong. If I’m watching the news, I don’t need to have the camera zipping around like a blue-arsed fly, and I’m quite happy looking at the presenter head on. We don’t need to inexplicably cut to the “up the nostrils” shot every now and then. Pisses me off to the point where I won’t watch shows known to indulge in this.
IMHO, Band of Brothers used the technique quite well.
I can’t remember who did this first but its original intent was to make the program look more “realistic” by emulating the jerky movements of a news minicam. I’m pretty sure it was a police show (NYPD Blue, maybe?) but I’ll see if I can dig up an actual cite.
This technique was really out of hand about 5 - 10 years ago. Watching one crime show – I forget which, maybe L&O – really milked it. Things got worse when commercials took it to a wild new level. Jiggle camera is one thing during a supposed drug-bust scene; it’s another when some old lady is sitting at her kitchen table telling you about her favorite brand of soup. One ad was laughably unwatchable – it was like rowing across a storm-tossed sea.
Thank goodness that phase is past. Now, IMHO, jiggle camera is used with reasonable restraint.
My favorite quote about this (and I’ve bored hedra to death with it) is from “The Tracy Ullman Show”. The skit has a documentary director talking with Tracy as the subject of his next project.
“I’m going to film in cinema verite”
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s French for ‘shaky camera’”
IMHO, jiggly camera syndrome (JCS) makes UC: Undercover unwatchable. The image is constantly wiggling around, and making slight changes in the zoom for no apparent reason. . . I’m not thinking “documentary,” I’m thinking “somebody taping his kid’s birthday party.” I don’t bother watching anymore.
This is a shame, because it means less Oded Fehr in Podkayne’s Life. 
JCS: Bad. More Oded: Good.
BTW, as epeepunk by way of Tracy Ullman noted, the term for this technique is cinema verité. I agree that you see it a lot less than you used to. Several years ago there was a series of nearly unwatchable bank commercials employing it which were spoofed by the Saturday Night Live series of “Change Bank” commercials.
–Cliffy
It’s spread to commercials as well. There one in eastern PA that advertises some school that has some bizarre camera angles and swooping, jiggly shots as if a cranked-up chimp was behind the camera.
It’s incredibly incompetent shooting, and features a bratty girl who shouts out “MY MOMMY’S SMART!!!”
The Kingdom and Dancer in the Dark, directed by Lars von Trier, use the effect to amazing results.
“Homicide: Life on the Street” used handheld cameras consistently throughout its run,* which started before “NYPD Blue.” Their technique was better – the cameras weren’t steady, but neither were they leaping around. In NYPD Blue, you often have irrelevant camera motion, especially in establishing shots. It’s more distracting that realistic.
It’s not exactly a new technique. Kubrick used it during the attack on Burpelson Airforce Base in “Dr. Strangelove” (OTOH, Kubrick used the Steadicam – a handheld camera that eliminates wobble, so everything seems smooth – in “The Shining”). I also think it was used in the Italian neorealist films of the 40s.
*When the Homicide actors guested on “Law and Order,” they found it strange to be appearing before cameras that weren’t handheld.
I don’t like jiggly camera shots at all. My friend actually threw up in Blair Witch Project and we both had to get up and walk around in the theatre during Saving Private Ryan (battle scene at the beginning of the movie made us both ill).
I heard that directors do it to make it seem more realistic and like you’re really there - as if someone shot a home movie that you’re watching, instead of a movie movie.
It’s hell on my eyes and head, though.
Tibs.
Thing is, it doesn’t make you feel like you’re there. When you’re actually moving around, however frantically, do you ever notice your mental “picture” jiggling around? Of course not! You brain is smart enough to compensate and give you a very steady image of the world. This is a good thing, or just walking around would be as nauseating, distracting, and skull-splitting as watching a show with JCS.
It can add a sense of urgency and grittiness if the camera movment is not too erratic, and if the technique is used in moderation. Steady-cam can be very cool, because it does give you the sense of being there through organic (heh, heh, I used an artsy word) movement without the amateur-video jiggles.
I can only recall one movie where it got so out-of-hand and seemed so out-of-place that I consciously thought “This is ridiculous”, and that was in the first reel or so of Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives