Shaky Cam - Your Thoughts? (Forked Thread: The new Star Trek movie is...)

[Agamon]

I didn't even notice it in Star Trek, so it doesn't bother me much. BWP and Cloverfield didn't make me ill, unlike my friend (who tells me Cloverfield "sounded" like a good movie, but he couldn't watch it).

One movie that this is a problem for me is Gladiator. The fight scenes pretty much ruined that movie for me.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Shaky cam doesn't make me ill - it makes me IRRITATED. It goes hand in hand with lightning fast cuts and the two combined make it impossible to follow any action. I'm no film editor but it sure does seem to me that it gives editors an excuse for being really bad at their jobs. At the end of some sequences I can literally say, "Wow! Something very frantic just happened. I'd better pay attention now so I can figure out what it WAS!"

These are techniques that can be and have been used to good effect, but are indeed VASTLY overused. There are far too many filmmakers who are so wrapped up in what they CAN do that they don't stop to think about what they SHOULD do. Some movies are getting to be like staring into a strobe light for 90 minutes, but like others I'm either getting numb to it or it's actually used more tolerably in Trek, because I didn't notice it. I was too busy enjoying the movie to ANALYZE it, so that says that for me at least it was actually working.

 

[Dykstrav]

Shaky cam doesn't make me ill - it makes me IRRITATED. It goes hand in hand with lightning fast cuts and the two combined make it impossible to follow any action. I'm no film editor but it sure does seem to me that it gives editors an excuse for being really bad at their jobs.

In all fairness to editors... Many times, it's not their fault. It's usually the director or the DP. They don't want to pre-visualize or storyboard, they just want to show up the day of on the set and figure out how to shoot it when the production is spending multiple thousands of dollars per hour. Either that, or they want to achieve that look.

It's pretty common for an editor to not even be hired until about half the footage is in the can, then get handed a melange of clips and a copy of the script and be expected to make magic. "We'll fix it in editing," pretty much equates to "we're not going to deal with this problem right now." To top it all off, some directors are known for getting upset when a scene can only be cut one particular way because they didn't get enough coverage when they were shooting the scene. But that's what you get when you shoot something without a shot list...

Since most of the project's budget is spent during principal photography, editing can be one of those things where they're really trying to shave dollars in the eleventh hour. So not only will the project not have enough footage, but they'll hire an editor for only a certain number of hours and make sure that they understand that there's not enough money to reshoot something.

Sometimes, it is the editor's fault. But not always. I've seen enough editors get handed a pile of footage with the expectation of a miracle that I have respect for them.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Hate it. People go using that 'technique', and they've immediately lost another viewer/buyer here.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I despise the use of shaky-cam. I think it typically covers up bad film-making and does the opposite of what it is 'supposed to'

I'm not sure I buy "it's supposed to feel like a documentary" as the main reason to use it. In "Blair Witch" or "Cloverfield" sure, there was an actual camera in the story and it was acknowledged.

This is the point. In those two films you are supposed to be viewing it through a hand held camera.

Take drek like its use in transformers though. It ruined what immersiveness there might have been by putting you the viewer at one extra remove. It made the transformer fight scenes look like news footage rather than being there (and I think a good action film needs to put you in the action, so you feel like you are there. Transformers felt like I was watching a television report from a cameraman who was there).

Bottom line - don't say never, because there are some styles where it is appropriate (blair witch, cloverfield) and sometimes it is appropriate for parts of a film (take Aliens - the distinction between the bits we see as an audience and the confused melee which comes over on the marines headcams is effective and telling. I loved Aliens, but I wouldn't want to have seen it if the whole thing had been shaky-cam. The Michael Bay's of this world seem to have misunderstood its use for immersiveness in one particular genre (blair witch, cloverfield) as general immersiveness, when it actually does the opposite.

Regards,

 

[Mallus]

This is the point. In those two films you are supposed to be viewing it through a hand held camera.

Like it or not, its just a technique. Do all techniques need in-story justification? Consider a novel written in the closely attached 3rd person. Does the author have to specify that another character is following the protagonist around, writing down what they do and say?

In a way, shaky-cam is a bit like a cinematic form of free, indirect discourse (when a 3rd person narrator starts to sound like the person it's attached to). The bodiless 3rd person POV behaves as if it were a character in the scene.

Take drek like its use in transformers though. It ruined what immersiveness there might have been by putting you the viewer at one extra remove.

Agree completely with this one.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Like it or not, its just a technique. Do all techniques need in-story justification? Consider a novel written in the closely attached 3rd person. Does the author have to specify that another character is following the protagonist around, writing down what they do and say?

In a way, shaky-cam is a bit like a cinematic form of free, indirect discourse (when a 3rd person narrator starts to sound like the person it's attached to). The bodiless 3rd person POV behaves as if it were a character in the scene.

The problem is not that 3rd person needs to be mentioned, it is that using shaky cam is like going from 3rd person to 1st person then back to 3rd person. In a book I would find it confusing if the narrative kept jumping between 1st and 3rd person without a justification. Its not that it can't be done, but when it is, it is mostly by stating some means like a diary entry or 3rd person omniscient stating that this is what is going on inside some person's head.

Blair Witch and Cloverfield were the equivalent of 1st person throughout, while Aliens used the justification of helmet cams to show 1st person action in an otherwise 3rd person omniscient perspective.

If a movie or a book wants to do a 2nd person observer perspective that is fine as well, but I would not want that 2nd person observer perspective to get muddled with a 3rd person perspective without some justification or demonstration of that 2nd person in the 3rd person view.

 

[Mallus]

The problem is not that 3rd person needs to be mentioned, it is that using shaky cam is like going from 3rd person to 1st person then back to 3rd person.

Yup.

In a book I would find it confusing if the narrative kept jumping between 1st and 3rd person without a justification.

I like tricks like that. Then again, when it comes to art, I freely admit I'm a sucker for tricks. Or rather, I view art as a bundle of tricks that produces profound responses when done right.

Its not that it can't be done, but when it is, it is mostly by stating some means like a diary entry or 3rd person omniscient stating that this is what is going on inside some person's head.

The most common form of this is the free indirect style I mentioned, when there's deliberate confusion between who is speaking; the 3rd person narrator or the character?

Consider the difference between:

Marie left without saying another word. "How can she be so cold?" said John to the empty room.

and...

Marie left without saying another word. How can she be so cold? The room was empty.

The first example is strictly 3rd person. In the second we start in the 3rd, slide into 1st, then back to 3rd. Happens all the time. A good chunk of the 3rd person novels since Flaubert (who's usually credited with inventing this trick) do this.

Whether something like this, say shaky-cam, becomes a lasting film technique is anybody's guess.

(sorry for the tangent... I've been thinking about criticism lately, thanks to a great --and short!-- book called [ame=http://www.amazon.com/How-Fiction-Works-James-Wood/dp/0374173400]How Fiction Works[/ame])

 

[WhatGravitas]

I despise the use of shaky-cam. I think it typically covers up bad film-making and does the opposite of what it is 'supposed to'

I rather think a big problem is that some people think it covers up bad film-making, just because it is a "trendy" technique, when, in fact, it rather exacerbates existing problems.

It's like CGI - when you don't really notice it, while still being there, the effect is working well. If you notice it, you've done it wrong (unless you're doing a film centred solely around it - like Toy Story was CGI incarnate, so is Blair Witch/Cloverfield shaky-cam incarnate).

Star Trek did it right, in my opinion, because it was there, helped to convey the action, without being noticeable.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Yup.


I like tricks like that. Then again, when it comes to art, I freely admit I'm a sucker for tricks. Or rather, I view art as a bundle of tricks that produces profound responses when done right.


The most common form of this is the free indirect style I mentioned, when there's deliberate confusion between who is speaking; the 3rd person narrator or the character?

Consider the difference between:

Marie left without saying another word. "How can she be so cold?" said John to the empty room.

and...

Marie left without saying another word. How can she be so cold? The room was empty.

The first example is strictly 3rd person. In the second we start in the 3rd, slide into 1st, then back to 3rd. Happens all the time. A good chunk of the 3rd person novels since Flaubert (who's usually credited with inventing this trick) do this.

Colour me an old fuddy-duddy but I find that second example extremely hard to follow. I would give up on any book very quickly if the writing style were like that.