Every bloody camera on a movie set, that’s what.
Hollywood is in the grip of the ‘shaky-cam’ action movie at the moment and doesn’t look like its loosening that grip anytime soon (possibly through fear of dropping the camera). I’m not sure where this trend started (but I have my suspicions) but I will tell you one thing : It doesn’t make the film ‘exciting’ and it’s making me nauseous and giving me a migraine. On top of that, it’s just bad film-making. The excitement and thrill from great action movies comes through the composition and staging of the shot; the fluid use of the camera; well paced editing, not, I repeat, not, simply shaking the camera about and cutting it together so quickly no one notices that you haven’t actually filmed anything exciting.
The best example I can think of is, driving your car on the motorway.
Picture the scene. It’s an empty motorway, the sun is out, and you decide to live a little and put the foot down. The world starts rushing past you, the speedometer starts rising – 70.80.85.90. The road is flying past now, your adrenalin is starting to pump a little, 95. 100. The car zooms off into the sunset.
Exciting, eh!
Now try that again but instead of watching the road race towards you, randomly turn your attention to other things as quick as you can. The road. 70.80. Hands on the steering wheel. One of the car wheels going round. 85. Gear change.Cool angle of the car with an orange filter on the lens for some reason.90. shot of steering wheel. nice shot of road rushing pas…oh, its gone already,95, gear change again (how many gears does this car have), continuously zoom in and out on drivers face, steering wheel, gear change. 100.
Now try visualising all of that while you shake your head violently from side to side.
In fact, just try reading it while shaking your head from side to side. You can’t. It’s near impossible to concentrate when the object your viewing is constantly moving around. This is just as true in the cinema.
I think most people will agree that the first description give an emotional and visual sense of driving at high speed in a pretty simple way. Anyone whose done that will recognise it. In movie terms, we see the road speeding along, we see the speedometer rise, we see the concentration of the driver. We get a visual thrill form the camera racing along the road, we get information on how fast the car is going, we get information about the character driving. Doesn’t need anything else.
The second description is probably more familiar to modern audiences, and it may sound like movie scene of the year if you’re a 15 year old boy with ADD, but its all unnecessary flash and edits. By shaking and zooming with the camera and cutting lots of images together really fast you’re just giving the illusion of something exciting happening. You could probably shoot most of that without actually moving the car.
Simple, well planned, shot and edited scenes will always trump this kind of cinematic masturbation.
A good example is the Truck and motorbike chase in Terminator 2 and say, the motorway carnage chase scene in Bad Boys 2. Now Bad Boys 2 may seem the more spectacular of the two, and there is some fine car smashing fun in it, but really take a look at it, shot by shot, how much of what you’re seeing is just smoke and mirrors. Consider the pacing and editing of T2 and the exhileration of the pay off. Now look at BB2. A few spectacular shots and lots of zooming, shaky-cam filler and it just stops. What was the purpose of this scene?, what did it do to drive the narrative forward?
I have more to say on this and a few ideas on why we might be suffering it but i’ll keep them until part two…
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What’s shakin’ in Hollywood?
Every bloody camera on a movie set, that’s what.
Hollywood is in the grip of the ‘shaky-cam’ action movie at the moment and doesn’t look like its loosening that grip anytime soon (possibly through fear of dropping the camera). I’m not sure where this trend started (but I have my suspicions) but I will tell you one thing : It doesn’t make the film ‘exciting’ and it’s making me nauseous and giving me a migraine. On top of that, it’s just bad film-making. The excitement and thrill from great action movies comes through the composition and staging of the shot; the fluid use of the camera; well paced editing, not, I repeat, not, simply shaking the camera about and cutting it together so quickly no one notices that you haven’t actually filmed anything exciting.
The best example I can think of is, driving your car on the motorway.
Picture the scene. It’s an empty motorway, the sun is out, and you decide to live a little and put the foot down. The world starts rushing past you, the speedometer starts rising – 70.80.85.90. The road is flying past now, your adrenalin is starting to pump a little, 95. 100. The car zooms off into the sunset.
Exciting, eh!
Now try that again but instead of watching the road race towards you, randomly turn your attention to other things as quick as you can. The road. 70.80. Hands on the steering wheel. One of the car wheels going round. 85. Gear change.Cool angle of the car with an orange filter on the lens for some reason.90. shot of steering wheel. nice shot of road rushing pas…oh, its gone already,95, gear change again (how many gears does this car have), continuously zoom in and out on drivers face, steering wheel, gear change. 100.
Now try visualising all of that while you shake your head violently from side to side.
In fact, just try reading it while shaking your head from side to side. You can’t. It’s near impossible to concentrate when the object your viewing is constantly moving around. This is just as true in the cinema.
I think most people will agree that the first description give an emotional and visual sense of driving at high speed in a pretty simple way. Anyone whose done that will recognise it. In movie terms, we see the road speeding along, we see the speedometer rise, we see the concentration of the driver. We get a visual thrill form the camera racing along the road, we get information on how fast the car is going, we get information about the character driving. Doesn’t need anything else.
The second description is probably more familiar to modern audiences, and it may sound like movie scene of the year if you’re a 15 year old boy with ADD, but its all unnecessary flash and edits. By shaking and zooming with the camera and cutting lots of images together really fast you’re just giving the illusion of something exciting happening. You could probably shoot most of that without actually moving the car.
Simple, well planned, shot and edited scenes will always trump this kind of cinematic masturbation.
A good example is the Truck and motorbike chase in Terminator 2 and say, the motorway carnage chase scene in Bad Boys 2. Now Bad Boys 2 may seem the more spectacular of the two, and there is some fine car smashing fun in it, but really take a look at it, shot by shot, how much of what you’re seeing is just smoke and mirrors. Consider the pacing and editing of T2 and the exhileration of the pay off. Now look at BB2. A few spectacular shots and lots of zooming, shaky-cam filler and it just stops. What was the purpose of this scene?, what did it do to drive the narrative forward?
I have more to say on this and a few ideas on why we might be suffering it but i’ll keep them until part two…
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