Word to a few people above. The second Bourne movie should be on the curriculum at all film schools for a class called Shaky Cam: Don’t Do This 101. It wouldn’t have bothered me so much if it hadn’t been such a good movie otherwise.
Yeah, I thought that too. Wish I knew if it was a good movie - it was unwatchable. Same for Bourne 3.
It’s not just the “shaky cam” effect that’s ruining fight scenes these days–it’s the quick-cut, too. You can’t tell what the hell is going on because the scenes are so heavily edited. Seriously, it’s like a cut every quarter-second or less during the intense action. I first noticed this trend with Gladiator. I went in looking forward to some kick-ass gladiator fights and all I got were seizure-inducing quick-cuts followed by a long shot of Russel Crowe standing over his opponent. I hope Crowe didn’t waste any time doing any real training for those fight scenes, because none of it made it into the movie. Total cop-out and it ruined the movie for me.
I had a hard time getting through Cloverfield because of the shaky cam.
I have a secret hope that somewhere there’s a ton of steady cam footage for Bourne 2 and one day they’ll re-cut that move into something watchable.
Bourne 3 the Shaky-cam was much more tolerable but the action was so silly at times that it didn’t matter. I had such high hopes for that series too. Instead there’s three very flawed movies all hovering around being great and all falling into mediocre for different reasons.
Yeah, as I said I have no idea where the Babylon A.D. - James Cameron connection came from. Problem was I’d taken my dad along with me to see it, I don’t see him often and I know he’s a fan of science-fiction/action films but doesn’t often get a chance to watch them. Still he seemed to like it!
Guess I’ll just have to pin my hopes on Avatar… 
100% agreed, this and shaky-cam has ruined far too many otherwise entertaining action films. They also ruined the light-sabre fight scenes in the later two Star Wars prequels, in the last I had no frigging idea what was going on.
Another problem I have with recent movies is as a result of the success of The Matrix. By that I mean film-makers including ludicrously over the top and physically impossible acts in the fight scenes. This worked fine in The Matrix because it was explicitly stated that physical rules in The Matrix can be bent or even broken, so it was acceptable to see the characters doing such impossible stunts. However film-makers seem to feel the need to outdo The Matrix and so include such stunts in what are supposed to be real-world stories where it does nothing but destroy suspension of disbelief. The first time this struck me was in a post-Matrix Chow Yun Fat film (sorry, can’t recall the title) in one particular fight scene in this his character leaps about six feet vertically into the air from a standing position then hangs motionless and turns 180 degrees left and right to kick his opponents before finally falling to the ground…I turned the film off at this point…
To be fair–especially if it was Chow Yun Fat movie–this kind of “fantasy stunt” predates* The Matrix* by quite a bit; it’s become an established enough style in Asian films to have gone way past cliche and achieved nearly the status of tradition. (Although there is a *Matrix *connection in that the fight choreographer who had raised this style to a sublime art starting in the 1970s, Yuen Woo Ping, choreographed the fights in The Matrix.)
My ignorance is only exceeded by my lack of knowledge. All along I thought quick-cut was included in shaky camera. Now that I know they’re different I feel I must say that I hate them both with equal ardor. Shaky camera makes me sick and quick-cut raises my blood pressure and lowers my life expectancy.
That’s fair enough but I have noticed it increased markedly after the release of The Matrix (in no way a fault of the film itself, I rewatched it recently and it stands up remarkably well…the sequels aren’t as bad as I remember either). I prefer films set in a real-world setting to at least have some connection to physical possibility.
The indestructible hero kind of looses a lot for me as well, see the latest Indy and Die Hard films.
I’m going to go against the grain here and say that I actually like the shaky cam look, echoing lissener on how technique can be misused or overdone. On TV shows like Firefly and Battlestar Galactica, it adds a sense of excitement. In some cases, if the action was shot/created at fixed camera locations, it would look more like a simulation or strategy game rather than a violent and chaotic dogfight.
Gotta disagree with you. Cloverfield was completely unwatchable for me. I left after 30 minutes because I was getting too motion sick.
J.
I came in here to post this - shaky-cam is pretty annoying but still has its uses. I mean, how else are we supposed to know how totally gritty the moment is.
The quick-cut technique, however, drives me absolutely insane. Not only does it imply that the actors are incompetent and inconsistent (ever seen those spoof-PSA clips from Reno 911? Yeah.) but completely destroys any rhythm or flow. The Bourne movies earned a solid rating of Suck from me primarily because of this shooting technique.
It also reinforces my belief that Matt Damon is a friggin’ pansy.
My biggest problem with the “shaky cam” is when it’s misused. Specifically, the shaking camera serves to make the audience consciously aware of the camera and the cameraman. This is fine when it’s “found” footage, like in Blair Witch or Cloverfield. But when the context doesn’t call for it–again, I’ll refer to the interrogation room scenes in *The Shield *as an example–then it makes you consciously aware of a cameraman who’s supposed to be invisible. This is what bugs me about overly precious camerawork in general: if it makes you aware of the cameraman, there should be a reason for it. This was, as I remember it, my biggest problem with Michal Mann’s The Insider. The camera kept peeking around corners, and through windows, so that I kept expecting to see a peeping tom or something.
Or his non-union French equivalent.
I am sick to death of ‘shaky cam’, ‘snap zoom’, ‘overexposed cam’ and ‘Saving Private Ryan cam’ (that weird effect seen in SPR and Gladiator and other films) that tries to make everything seem so much more ‘real’ and ‘in your face’.
The first bourne also had a lot of “let’s the second unit film the action scenes, if they can stop snorting speed for a minute” problems. Particularly the fight with the assassin at the apartment. You could see that those two actors had done their homework and used a good fight choreographer, or more to the point, you could sense it somehow, in the middle of the shaky cam, fast cuts and x-treeeeeme angles and unnecesary closeups they started using all of a sudden.
Which is a pity, because the three movies are excellently directed otherwise.
I think you’re referring to the strobe effect. At least, that was the most noticeable effect I saw in those two movies.
I can’t see any reason to use this for more than a couple of seconds in an entire movie and that would be to simulate a camera operator running as part of the script.
When I was a kid the news was peppered with really bad video that was visually nauseating. I couldn’t watch it.
So a big thumbs down to this technique.