Seriously Mr and Mrs Director, its not big and not clever, just stop it OK?
Yes, I’ve just watched yet another potentially entertaining movie (Taken 2) ruined by the the production crew looking like they were filming it on a combination of drink and/or drugs.
I understand the theory behind it and occassionally it is effective and works well but 99.9% of the time all it does it make a scene completely incomprehensible and the movie as a whole unwatchable.
It seems to be a problem that particularly strikes sequels, the aforementioned Taken 2, The Bourne Series sequels*, Quantum of Solace.
Sorry, rant almost over. Does anyone, apart from directors who mistakenly believe they’re being edgy and cool, actually like shaky-cam and its related techniques (very fast cuts, instant close-in zooms, the camera ducking and weaving like a drunk boxer on even slow-paced scenes etc)
*though that one did have an example of effective use, I was literally on the edge of my seat in the tunnel car-chase scene.
I can understand the reason to use it for an enhanced “You are there” immersive experience–especially for action sequences–though I’ve only gotten close to getting genuinely ill once (all the bobbing and bobbing and bobbing of Open Water). But for me, unquestionably the worst offender was the first Hunger Games which used it gratuitously and pervasively; even when Katniss JLaw was just sitting meditatively on a mountainside, the camera kept weaving and bowing and doing all this absurd bullshit. The sequel was leagues better for abandoning this stupid conceit alone.
Agreed, some action scenes are definitely enhanced by shaky-cam when it’s done well, but a particular peeve of mine is when its used poorly in fight scenes. The fight scenes in Taken were the best part of the movie, in the sequel you really couldn’t tell what was happen, who was doing what to whom etc all you basically got was Liam Neeson looking mean and glowering surrounded by bad-guys then something happens and there’s Liam Neeson looking triumphant surrounded by dead and injured bad guys.
Used well in the right circumstances it can be awesome. Used badly it’s pretty annoying. Shaky cam can live… directors that use it extremely badly need throat punched.
Was Gladiator the first major film to use this? I think its the first one I noticed with it, anyways.
Anyhoo, I like it when its used well, and even when its overused I don’t really mind it per se, but I a lot of directors over use it because its a lot easier than actually choreographing a fight scene.
I would say Saving Private Ryan (two years earlier) was the major Hollywood motion picture to really popularize the style, though it pretty much limited it to the opening and closing battle sequences. Of course, using a handheld camera for dramatic effect has been around since the silent days, but never really caught on as its own conceit until more recently.
When used right it can be quite effective. I thought it was fantastic in Irreversible. The movies you mentioned? Not so much. Still, that’s on the directors not the technique. I like the technique I hate how some directors use it.
I disagree vehemently with this thread’s assertion- death is far too good for the likes of shaky-cam. The idea behind it, I’ve been told, is that it makes for a more immersive experience. It doesn’t. Strap a camera to your head and film yourself walking. Notice how the footage contains a lot more bouncing and jostling than it seems your eyes got? Your brain compensates for it while you’re in control. It doesn’t when you’re not. Use of this is not “immersive”, it’s not “realistic”, and its only legitimate use is to demonstrate tremendous visual instability; showing that, say, in a major earthquake, everything is shaking so badly you can’t visually keep track of anything. This means it has to be vanishingly brief.
When I sat down to watch the new Battlestar Galactica, I found I could only do it in short, two or three minute bursts because the constant camera bobbing made me nauseous. About an hour in, during what’s supposed to be an important but nonetheless calm conversation, I was overwhelmed and threw up. As I washed the vomit out of my beard, I wondered how exactly this was filmed without the camera crew doing the same; apparently it wasn’t. It was filmed normally, and then the shakiness was added in afterwards. That really says all you need to know- when you find yourself thinking “I’d like to use this camera technique, but I can’t find workers with both heavy DTs and epilepsy”, it’s time to come up with another idea.
Did you ever watch those you tube videos where someone is showing you how to do something? They are showing you stuff and moving things around in front of the camera and then say, “I’m going to need two hands for this part.” Then they set the camera down on something solid and you immediately feel like the rain stopped, the Sun came out and the birds started singing. All the tension drains out and you’re completely at peace simply because the guy stopped moving the camera around.
Don’t know if that’s an argument for or against. ETA but I definitely think the effect is not to make it feel immersive – it’s to make it feel tense. Great if that’s what you want.
Star Trek reboot has the opening scene where Kirk’s father rams his ship into the baddie’s so the crew can escape in lifepods. The whole sequence is CGI. THEY HAD TO PUT IN CGI SHAKEY-CAM! Worse yet, some techie had to create shakey-cam software for that scene. Please tell me I’m wrong, please.
It was also in WALL*E in a few places. I can’t forgive Pixar for that; they should know better.
The first Bourne movie is one of my favorite films. Great action scenes and solid acting. The next two movies were unwatchable. My wife got headaches, we couldn’t tell what was happening in the action scenes, and the acting was impossible to appreciate in 0.2 second flashes of the actors’ faces. Terrible, terrible movies.
I remember when I heard about the movie “Green Zone”. Hmmm. Action thriller. WMDs. Matt Damon. Sounds good. Directed by Paul Greengrass. Nope! I’ll do Facetime with my toddler instead.
Can’t stand it either, anywhere, except maybe in older movies before the invention of the Stedi-Cam. And, I don’t it applies in ‘running scenes’ to make it feel like you’re there. When I’m running my vision isn’t all shaky, I can see just fine.
The other think I can’t stand is when they strap the camera to the actor and point it at him/her. Maybe it’s because I get dizzy easily, but I’ve never cared for it. I think the first time I remember seeing that is in 1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins and I remember always hating that part of the video.
I hear ya. The first time I really noticed it was at the beginning of a movie called “Last Exit”. I say “the beginning of” because I had to turn it off about 10 minutes in because I literally felt nauseus.
All of the examples in this thread so far seem to be about using “shaky cam” as an occasional technique in otherwise conventionally filmed movies, but what about all those “found footage” movies? After Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield that style really seems to have exploded, especially with the horror/Sci-fi ‘B’ movies I occasionally watch on Netflix.
I understand that, done well, it adds a feeling of immersion in the action, but watch too many of them and you start to realize the ‘Fourth Wall’ is there for a reason. It’s gotten to the point that if I see a movie is “found footage” style in the description I’ll automatically move on, even if it has decent ratings.
I hate that one too, probably worse than the shaky-cam. I always refer to it as the “Jonah-Hill-cam” because I remember seeing it used in trailers for “Get Him To The Greek”. Which may be a big reason why I never bothered to see it.
It can be used effectively; one of the best of all TV shows, Homicide: Life on the Street used it regularly.* The key is not to have it call attention to itself: If you’re in a two-shot, keep the camera aimed in the shot as best as you can without a tripod. NYPD
Blue tried to use the same effect for it’s setup shots, and the artifice is obvious as the camera just pans and jumps around in a way that clearly deliberate.
Here’s an example from Homicide. Note that though the camera is clearly hand held, the motion is naturally following the action, and there’s no shakiness for shakiness’s sake.
*When Richard Belzer crossed over to do a Law and Order episode, he was startled to see the cameras were on tripods.
