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Shaky-Cam Movies


Nemo

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Today after enduring 20 minutes of the movie Cloverfield, I had to chase my wife out of the theater when she went to throw up :sick: because she got so dizzy. Up until we left the movie it was as it was filmed with a handycam. It was unbearable! :angry: Thanks for nothing to the Blair Witch for the stupid technique!!

Anyway, if you get motion sick or are sensitive to that kinda' thing, don't go watch that movie.

:angry:

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My wife has the same problem.... ;) I won't be seeing this one unless I go alone, or rent it when it comes out....

Anyone want to take in Cloverfield without their motion-sickness-prone wives at the FL Open??? :D

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Apparently the actors don't supply enough "action" so the directors supplement it with 'shaky cams'.

Other than the fact that it works havoc on my head, :sick: it is incredibly distracting when you are trying to watch a movie.

dj

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Thanks for the warning. I don't get ill, but my stomach gets queezy and I work up a good sweat. The Flight 93 movie did that to me. The first time I experienced that was watching my son playing some of the first person shooter games.

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One of the first TV shows to use shaky cam on purpose was NYPD blue. Someone on Madison Avenue figured out that if you shift the camera just enough to change the background, called a "frame change," it snaps people's attention to the screen even more than movement in the foreground.

Almost every TV show on now, except talk shows, uses this technique. Commercials as well.

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I agree with the fact that overuse of shaky cam is ruining movies and TV. The creators are using old advertising techniques to make up for poor story, dialog and visual composition. They are purposely adding ANNOYING visual elements in the hopes of keeping our attention and distracting from the weak elements of the film. Just like commercials with annoying jingles or guys wearing red pigtail wigs.

In the old days, the equipment was so big and unwieldy that pans, zooms and tracking shots were considered daring and added excitement to the images. As equipment came down in size, directors started using more mobile camera positions and techniques. Helicopter shots, car shots, boom cameras. All these added the ability to give breathtaking visual frame shifts to the images that we were seeing. Then steady cam mounts came along and now the camera could follow action almost anywhere and give a visual perspective almost exactly like we have when we are walking down the street.

Then the shaky cam kids came along. Used in a limited fashion, shaky cam can convey valid ideas and concepts. But in true dummy fashion, some directors figured that if a little is good, more is better. In Blare Witch and Cloverfield, they did it to convey the amateur status of the supposed cameraman, a regular Joe with a cheap camera. But in the last Borne film I went to see, they still used it all the freaking time. Every 2-person dialog had partial faces moving around in the frame. When you or I as the viewer, get distracted from the story of the film and pulled back to reality because of an annoying camera technique, then that camera technique has failed to do its job and or is being used incorrectly.

I wish a pox on every director who uses shaky cam as a prop for their piss poor film craft. Maybe we could send them over to the Middle East for some documentary work. They might have a valid use for some shaky cam there.

Gringop

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