Shaky Cam

Cafe Society
1

Once upon a time, motion picture cameras were big. Really big. They had to be supported on a tripod or dolly. Later they became light enough to hand-hold. The cast-metal, lead-lined ‘blimps’ used to deaden the camera noise were quite heavy, but ‘silent’ cameras started appearing in the '60s. (A note: A ‘silent’ camera is one that runs relatively silently. Most motion picture cameras did not record sound. The term ‘silent camera’ just means it is quiet mechanically.) Light, quiet cameras afforded flexibility unheard of in previous decades.

Documentary filmmakers had long used ‘MOS’ cameras. MOS means mit out sprechen or mit out sound, attributed to Ernst Lubitch or possibly Fritz Lang. The origin may be apocryphal, but you know how it is: ‘When the myth becomes reality, print the myth.’ Cameras were lightweight and had clockwork motors. Examples include the Bolex H16 and Bell & Howell Eymo In the '60s documentarists began using cameras with electric motors, such as the Beaulieu R16, which was not silent but was quiet enough for sound recording in some situations, and the Eclair NPR. These lightweight cameras were ideal for documentarists who often could not use a tripod for their shots. Lacking solid support, many shots in documentaries are not steady. Since documentaries were for the purpose of… well, ‘documenting’ true occurrences, the unsteady hand-held shots became associated with cinéma vérité. If you want to add an element of realism into a narrative film, use a documentary-style hand-held shot.

When Sam Raimi made The Evil Dead (1981) he could not afford a Steadicam. So he mounted the camera on a board so that he could ‘fly’ the camera around. The board dampened the shaking of the camera. He called this rig the ‘Shaky Cam’, since it wasn’t as steady as a Steadicam. (He also made a ‘Vas-O-Cam’, which allowed the camera to be slid along a Vaseline-covered board. He couldn’t afford a dolly either.) The Shaky Cam did two things: First, it allowed Raimi to get the fluid shots he wanted. Second, it made the somewhat shaky camera shot popular.

Cinéma vérité techniques and Raimi’s Shaky Cam combined to create a new style. Of course others had used it, but I first noticed it in Three Kings (1999). This is the first film I saw that used the 45º shutter technique (my take on it) that gives the effect of choppy motion. This not only gave the ‘You Are There’ feeling of the hand-held camera and the fluid motion one sees with the eyes when one is in motion, but also added the feeling of being pumped up with adrenaline. The technique was also used to great effect in Saving Private Ryan (1998), and seems to have become the default technique for many other films. Personally, I think it’s overused and has become a cliché.

That’s a buttload of unnecessary words that have little to do with what I started to write.

What I was thinking about this morning was the overuse of hand-held shots. In watching Downton Abbey, I noticed that they tend to hand-hold the camera in the kitchen scenes. Sure, it’s a confined space; but in the context of the series the not-too-steady image is distracting. They really should use a tripod there. But at least the motion does not appear ‘intentional’. What really bugs me is in films where the camera operator is doing a handheld shot and then intentionally bobs and weaves. It’s like he’s saying, ‘OK, this is real! Cinéma vérité, everybody! “Truthful Cinema!” Everyone look!’ I don’t know if anyone else notices this, but since I’ve been a cameraman I think that the involuntary movement of a hand-held camera is enough. Too much motion spoils the shot for me. The way I see it is this: I can’t use a tripod for this shot. (Or I want the effect of not being able to use a tripod.) I try to keep the camera as steady as possible, since I am recording ‘truth’ and want people to see it. But I’m only human, and some motion is inevitable. When someone intentionally mimics involuntary motion, it just doesn’t work for me.

It seems to me that many filmmakers today rely on ‘tricks’ without understanding the context. It’s like they’re displaying that they are ‘in the know’ and ‘here is me using the technique to prove it’.

2

The way it comes across to me is as if the director is shouting “This is fake! Fake!”

In real life your POV employs smooth transitions. Your head does not bob and weave. You don’t see things in a jerky fashion.

Whenever TV shows or movies deliberately have the camera jouncing around, it destroys any semblance of realism for me. Whatever statement they’re making is destructive to my getting involved in and enjoying the plot.

3

This is how it comes across to me. But I think the director/cinematographer thinks otherwise, else they wouldn’t do it.

But yeah; they need to see how people see with their eyes.

4

I think the idea of “shakey cam” is twofold - a) convey “this is exciting action, dammit” without having to actually train the actors how to fight and b) subliminally trick the mind into believing it because if we can’t focus/process properly on what is going on in the scene, it tends to raise our anxiety/tension levels as we try to take it all in, therefore it is “exciting”.

I guess those are two sides of the same coin, but that’s my theory at least.

I HATE shakey cam, but it seems doomed to be with us for a long while.

Still, I thnk someone should do an edit of something like “Anna Karenina” with shakey-cam style editing just to see how it turns out.

5

90% of the time it’s cheap, Ed Wood style directing. The 10% of the time it might be appropriate is ruined by the overuse.

6

I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Dawn of the Dead on the same evening. The relentless shaky-camming of the first made me nauseous. The gore and decapitations of the second settled my stomach.

7

It also covers up bad/insufficient choreography and bad editing. Shakey cam is often paired with super short cuts. Whole fight scenes don’t have any cuts that last for more than a half second, with shakey cam all the way - it means the fight barely has to be choreographed and you can make some sort of jumbled actiony mess in editing rather than actually shooting a skillful fight scene. It’s lazy and obnoxious, I hate it.

8

Yeah, but they’re not trying to emulate an first-person perspective, are they? I always took it to mean that they were going for that ‘live camerman’ look, as if it were a documentary. Basically, Cloverfield without the literal concession of having a in-story cameraman actually there.

9

I was watching The Bourne Legacy the other day, and they were clearly trying to emulate the Paul Greengrass style, but failing. I hate the Paul Greengrass shakycam, but it at least has a broad motivation half the time, whereas this was just wiggle and zoom for the sake of it.

And I identified a specific shot that made me understand it a little bit. If someone reaches down to pick up something, we usually would see a mid shot of the actor reaching down, then a close up of the object being picked up, then back to a mid of them using the object.

But what I saw was a very rapid pan down and back up each time he picked up a new thing of the ground. The end result was about 5 seconds of constant blurring. 5 seconds may not sound like much, but that’s exhausting for the eyes, not being able to focus on anything long enough to register what they’re even looking at.

It’s all style with no motivation. I think it happens less often now than it used to, thank goodness. Tony Scott’s death instantly reduced its frequency by a quarter. But it really has to stop.

10

Actually, the Bourne Supremacy and United 93 are pretty much the only times I have found shaky cam to work. Even Bourne 3 wasn’t as good for me.

11

re: the live cameraman perspective, another version of “shakey cam” that bugged me in the last few years came about with (I think) Babylon 5 and later with the Battlestar Galactica remake - the camera zooming in and out and panning trying the find/focus on fighters and such. Ok, works the first few times it’s done, maybe, but gets old after awhile.

12

The purpose of “slightly shaky cam” is in your OP:

If you want to add an element of realism into a narrative film***…

The purpose is to put you in the scene instead of merely observing it, and when done correctly and sparingly, that’s what it does.

I can’t remember exactly when it occurred, but there was an epidemic of shaky cam, maybe early 90’s, so much that it was being used in coffee commercials. Except it was more like intentionally jerky-cam, which of course screams technique.

I had a Bolex; no doubt it would be considered comparatively lightweight, but it wasn’t a picnic to hold for an extended period of time; you ended up getting shaky cam whether you wanted it or not, although I don’t think it would run for more than 30 seconds on a crank.

13

The OP evolved as I was writing it. There are two (or more) things going on. One is the ‘shaky’ Shaky Cam intended to put the viewer ‘in the scene’. As you say, it’s effective when it’s done correctly and sparingly. Too often it is used as a crutch. It has been used so much that I perceive it as a display of lack of imagination.

The other thing is the ‘simulated hand-held’ hand held camera, where the camera operator intentionally moves the camera around in an attempt to impart a cinéma vérité look. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look ‘vérité’ at all. It looks fake, as if the camera operator is intentionally moving the camera around in an attempt to impart a cinéma vérité look. The unintentional, random movements of someone holding a camera and trying not to be unsteady is what makes ‘real’ hand-held shots work. Except, as I mentioned, something like Downton Abbey, where the overall style of the production does not call for hand-held shots. (In that specific case, I can understand the decision if it is to show the lower class of the household residents to be more ‘normal’, while the upper class is bound by tradition, societal rules, and tripods. Not that I agree with that decision. Or maybe the set is just too small for a camera support.)

Bolexes and similar are very lightweight, but anything will get heavy after a while. Even so, it’s not that heavy for a 25-30 second shot. As I said, I put crystal motors on two of mine. That makes them heavier – but they can run for 2-1/2 minutes (the length of the roll). The M5 has 400-foot magazines, but if I want to shoot that much I’ll use the Aaton or the Eclair. My Arri 16.S is heavier than a Bolex, but it’s easier to hand hold because of the cylindrical section where the (crystal) motor is on the right side, and the cast-in hand grip at the front.

Of course these cameras are too noisy for shooting while recording. (Robert Rodrigues filmed El Mariachi with an Arri 16.S – which sounds a bit like a blender – and then re-enacted the scenes for the audio. See his book, Rebel Without A Crew.) Sixteen millimetre filmmakers now tend to use shoulder-braced cameras like the Aaton or the Arri SR-series that are much less stable and impart less involuntary movement in hand-held shots. Larger format cameras are much lighter and quieter than they were 30 or 40 years ago, so it’s easy to get a hand-held shot with them. Maybe that’s why so many camera operators and directors feel the need to fake the documentary style movement.

14

Another place where shaky-cam is justified is if the action is taking place in an inherently shaky environment: A drop-ship reentering through heavy turbulence, say.

Though of course, such environments are far scarcer than shaky-cam.

15

Shakey cam sometimes makes me so nauseated that I have to stop watching the movie.

16

Firefly and the updated Battlestar Galactica were famous for that, along with the “snap-zoom”. Like there’s some dude floating around outside who suddenly sees a Raptor shuttle flying by and has to zoom in on it.
Another big camera effect from the early 2000s was the “Saving Private Ryan-cam” or “Gladiator-vision” (also used in 28 Days Later). I forget how they do it. I think they use lower shutter speed cameras but then double up on the frames to create a strobe effect.

17

Bourne 2 is one of the very few movies I switched off after 45 minutes. Shakey-cam is fine where utilised well but I don’t think the ENTIRE FILM needs it.