# Shaky-cam in Movies

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaky-cam-in-movies/463358>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [September 12, 2008, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaky-cam-in-movies/463358 "2008-09-12T23:17:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 15

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**Author:** ![Buran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@Buran](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buran)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2008, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shaky-cam-in-movies/463358/15 "2008-09-13T23:54:34Z")

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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.

> [@featherlou](#):
>
> 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.

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.

> [@When will Portland get another major league team?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-portland-get-another-major-league-team/463397/10):
>
> 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’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.”

Is this not the case?

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