I went to see Babylon A.D. recently under the understanding that it was directed by James Cameron. Having been bitterly disappointed that this wasn’t the case on seeing the name of the director at the start of the movie I nevertheless gave it a chance to prove its merits. I found it entertaining enough if extraordinarily silly and reminiscent of a second-rate ‘Children of Men’.
Anyway, finally getting to my point, once again an action-movie was ruined by the use of shaky-cam in every fight scene. Personally I find this filming technique basically unwatchable and utterly lacking in excitement or interest. I don’t find it entertaining to not be able to tell whats going on.
Personally this change in film-making is best epitomised for me by the movie Blade and its sequel, Blade has some of the best fight-scenes in cinema while Blade 2 is a jerky unwatchable mess.
I especially hate it when shaky-cam is used in normal scenes, I don’t know what the director thinks but when I’m talking to someone in real-life I’m not leaning back and forward and ducking and diving like a hyperactive drunk boxer.
I understand what the director is trying to do but I just think that in 99% of cases it doesn’t work. However I’m not against the technique on principle, in the otherwise shaky-cam destroyed Bourne Supremacy the car chase in the tunnel had me literally on the edge of my seat and very few movies have done that.
I truly don’t care for it. Films are all about the imagination anyway, and I know things don’t always LOOK smooth IRL, so I just take it as it comes. Too much jerking around gives me a headache.
That’s not to say I wouldn’t go see a film like that, but I’d have to be pretty sure it was worth it.
Like any other technique, it can be misused or badly done. When it’s a good choice for the subject, it’s a good choice. It works very well in *Cloverfield *and in *The Blair Witch Project. * It was way overused in NYPD Blue, and The Shield; there’s no other technique in either of those shows, and even like a meeting in the chief’s office has to be all docu-on-the-run. Stupid.
I hate it. If I’m going to pay $9 to go see a movie in a cinema, I expect to be able to actually see what’s going on. It’s a sure-fire way to ruin a movie, in my experience.
I had a long, involved dream last night that I was in the middle of Cloverfield. It wasn’t a movie, it was real life (in my dream).
And it wasn’t in shaky-cam. I realised that things don’t look that way to me when I’m moving around, my eyes and brain compensate for the movement. And yet I’ll bet most of the time this technique is used in the name of “greater realism”. (I know, in Cloverfield it was supposed to be a bunch of amateur video footage; most of the time that’s not the case).
I’m with the OP, I wish they would stop this already.
Roddy
I hate it. The problem I have with it is when it’s trying to emulate the motion of the human head in active motion (rather than when it’s just trying to feel “exciting”).
When a person is moving, even though their head is bobbing and shaking around a (little) bit, the horizon remains steady. The brains compensates for the motion by telling us that things remain flat and steady despite our field of view moving around.
Whereas in a shaky-cam situation, the horizon is what’s moving while the field of view is what’s static. This not only is wrong on every level of expected physics, it’s bloody annoying and potentially nauseating.
I also hate it when they try to be arty with their framing, but are really just obscuring all the characters with out of focus foreground objects.
I hate it. Hate it hate it thinking about writing protest letters to directors hate it. I liked “Hancock” but it was almost ruined for me by non-stop shakycam. (Well, that and 90% of the movie being shot in extreme close-up.) Battlestar Galactica is currently being ruined for me by overuse of shakycam. All our dvds from this dark period of movie and tv making are going to need a crack to retroactively fix all the shakycam so we can watch them in the future.
For comparison’s sake, I just re-watched the last three of four “Star Trek” movies - the camera work in these movies is absolutely exquisite - so steady and lovely, framing exactly what needs to be framed.
squeegee, I hate shakycam the most in scenes outside of action scenes. I can almost tolerate it in action scenes if used extremely judiciously.
They’ve toned it down a lot, but it was so bad on the first several episodes of Friday Night Lights that I stopped watching the series. I picked back up on it later after someone here said that they quit with so much of the spasmodic camera. I’ve complained about it here many times.
And if I may, I’d like to interject a somewhat related complaint — nose hair close-ups. Jeez, man, I never get up in somebody’s face like that in real life, where I can see their eyelash dandruff. I mean especially not some guy I’m just talking to. I think maybe some directors rely too much on film school novely techniques, rather than delivering the story in the best way.
Shaky Cam utterly ruined the last two “Bourne” (The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum) for me. The first Bourne was pretty good, and I looked forward to the sequels, but I couldn’t stand to watch them.
I find that I dislike it when I’m in the theater, but don’t mind it on DVD if it isn’t too bad.
I think Bourne 2 and 3 are far better than the first one and the shaky cam didn’t bother me at all. United 93 seemed better with the shaky cam. It just made it more realisitic.
By the way,** Buran**, always check the IMDB before heading out. Not only was Babylon A.D. not directed by James Cameron, but the actually director of the movie has disowned it, claiming he had no direct control over how it was made.
James Cameron’s next movie is Avatar, which comes out next December(unless it is delayed).
I really wonder if there is anyone in the world who honestly likes shakey cam. I agree, real life just doesn’t look that way, and even if it did, I wouldn’t want my movies to. If I want to pay $8.00 to puke, I’ll go to a carnival, buy a hot dog, and ride the tilt a whirl 6 times.
Kind of. I think the intention is cinéma vérité. ‘Ooh! Look! This is real!’ The filmmaker wants to impart a ‘documentary’ feel. Back in the day, cameras were large and noisy. They had to be supported on a tripod or some other support. Hand-held cameras were too noisy for recording sound, but were useful in documentary work where narration or sound effects were added later. As cameras got smaller, such cameras as the Arriflex 2 still sounded like a blender but could be put into heavy cast-metal ‘blimps’. They weighed a ton, but could be used for hand-held shots. In the early-'60s Eclair brought out the NPR ‘silent’ synchronous camera. (NB: A ‘silent’ camera is used when recording sound. A noisy camera is often called an ‘MOS camera’ – ‘Mit Out Sprechen’.) Beaulieu’s R16 sixteen-millimeter camera wasn’t exactly silent, but it did have a synch cord and could be used outdoors or in noisy areas. You see them from time to time in documentaries shot in Vietnam, for example. Commercial films are usually shot on 35mm. Documentaries also used 35mm, but very often used 16mm because the cameras were lighter and easier to carry around. Since mobility was often an issue and the subject matter often did not afford time for traditional setups, tripods were often not used and shots were taken by hand. So hand-held shots came to be associated with documentaries and ‘real life’. Generally the filmmaker tried to keep the camera steady, but movement was unavoidable.
On narrative/commercial/Hollywood films (trying to differentiate between films that are ‘made’ as opposed to documentaries) filmmakers sometimes wanted a ‘quick shot’ without too much time-consuming setup. Or else there was a reason a tripod would have been undesirable. (For example, the on-boat scenes in Jaws would have made the audience seasick if they were taken from a tripod. The cameraman was in effect a ‘SteadyiCam’.) And the shots worked. Soon filmmakers wanted to emulate them, intentionally going for the ‘documentary’ look.
This led to the exaggeration we see today. The filmmakers are making the movements very obvious, which takes away from the effect. Certainly there are cases where this works, such as when a certain ‘feel’ is needed; but IMO it’s mostly pretension. FWIW, I prefer to use a tripod.
The first example that comes to mind is The Oxbow Incident, where characters are obscured by fence railings and such. I don’t think anyone can deny that this ‘arty framing’ worked very well in that film. And it’s worked in many other ones as well. IMO the problem comes when the DP or director uses such framing for the purpose of being ‘artsy’ instead of for the purpose of imparting an additional dimension to the scene. They may delude themselves that they’re ‘creating an atmosphere’ or ‘pointing out a hidden aspect of the character’, but they’re really saying ‘Hey, look at the art on me!’ I agree that it sucks when it’s used inappropriately, but it has often been used to good effect.
I agree that they’re aiming for a semblance of cinema verité; I think what the directors who are guilty of overuse of this (“look at the art on me” indeed!) is that watching movies puts people in a particular mindset. We are willing participants in a massive fraud; we have made the conscious choice to believe what they put in front of us as though it is our reality for two hours. The directors who suck us in and have us on the edge of our seats for two hours are the masters of that; the ones who try to do it with cheap tricks are not.
I don’t think I’ve spoken to a single person who likes shaky-cam. I wonder where they’re getting all the test audiences from.
This brings me to another problem I have with many recent movies, the fact that the director seems to be unable/unwilling to truly create suspension of disbelief and instead seems to be saying to the audience, “Hey, you know this isn’t real and I know this isn’t real so lets just have a bit of fun with it OK?” and so puts in a lot of cheap references to popular culture, obvious homages/references to other films and media and my main annoyance, references to current politics promoting the directors own political agenda. These ‘nods to the audience’ have again helped to ruin my opinion of otherwise decent movies.
I’ve made it conscious policy to expose myself to an absolute minimum of pre-publicity before going to see a movie. I’ve found it massively increases my enjoyment of films to not have the basics of the plot/main scenes outlined in advance. Of course the problem with that is knowing what movies to go to see in the first place! Sometimes the misunderstanding which resulted in me seeing Babylon A.D. occurs.
I’m not sure what made me think Babylon A.D. was directed by James Cameron but I was left with the impression that perhaps he was slated as the original director only to pull out and have the movie directed by somebody else. This impression was strengthed by what I took to be a homage to Terminator as the last line of Babylon A.D. was, “There’s a storm coming.”
Me too. I thought the first Bourne was outstanding, and I couldn’t wait for Supremacy. I rented the DVD as soon as it became available, watched it for 10 minutes, got dizzy, got sick, got super pissed, and quit watching it.
I like the show too, but hate the damn shaky cam. I don’t understand why they insist on doing it. I like to know what’s going on in a fight scene. Hopefully it will be on it’s way out soon.
MOS again… There are soooo many legends about how filmmakers came to use “MOS”.
In German it might be mit ohne Sprechen or mit ohne Schall. (Ohne means without, but mit ohne is a colloquial form. Sprechen is speech, Schall sound, as in Schallplatte = record.) But in English, “MOS” might just as easily have meant “motor only sync” (ie: no sound sync needed) or “minus optical sound.”
According to The Camera Assistant’s Manual (page 3), MOS as ‘Mit out sound’ (or ‘Sprechen’) is the Hollywood legend of a German director who spoke with an accent. It goes on to say it actually stands for ‘Minus Optical Sound’.
There are soooo many legends about how filmmakers came to use “MOS”.