I. Hate. Shakycam.

You know what I'm talking about: the constant insistence of random, second and third-tier directors that shaking the camera violently somehow immerses the viewer in the action.

I've gotten literal headaches from it. On a dozen different occasions, I was unable to tell what was happening. On exactly zero occasions was I more immersed in the film.

I hate shakycam. Hate it hate it hate it. It's stupid. More than that, it's dumb. Review after review will praise a film, offering only a qualifier about the shaky camera as criticism. And yet, it keeps happening.

Who actually likes this technique? I can see someone giving it a try in hopes that it makes for a more engrossing action sequence, but surely seeing it on screen would squash that notion. And if it didn't, surely the vitriol which has resulted would convince filmmakers that it's absolutely despised. What could possibly convince them that people like it?

Does anyone like shakycam? Does one single human being here like it? Are directors being bribed by Tylenol Extra Strength © to keep using it? Discuss.

I quite like it. It does the trick.

What prompted this rant?

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You must explain this most heinous of claims.

Its prominence in 28 Weeks Later, which got me thinking about how prevalent its become, and how much I (and so many others) loathe it, which in turn led me to wonder just what it is that makes so many directors continue to use it, which made me loathe it more, thereby setting off an undending self-referencing recursive cycle of hatred.

Or something like that.

So...what about Children of Men? The hand-held cam during the escape from the village is incredible, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't know, I guess I tend to like it quite a bit...

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^^Exactly. For some reason, it makes the action seem more realistic, pumps me full of adrenalin.... I'm sure my parents hate it....

I differentiate between a camera that shakes and "shakycam." The former becomes the latter when a) the camerman appears to be having a full-body spasm, and/or b) the effect lasts for, oh, I dunno, several consecutive minutes, and/or c) you can't tell what's happening.

Using 28 Weeks Later, if it were a stationary camera showing infected running around and getting shot at, falling over, eating, attacking like they do, would it capture the energy of the scene? No, obviously not every shot is shaky, but the verisimilitude Weeks presents with hand-held digital cameras means anything but would be almost surreal, i'd imagine, on most occassions it would draw more attention to the fact you are in fact in the audience watching a movie, very theatrical/Brechtian.

The fact it shakes is more a reaction to the fact it's more a POV shot than a shot outside the action, which of course, if you were running with the infected you ain't gonna be steady. Considering Weeks main protagonist Carlyle turns, its perfectly keeping that the view we're shown would be this perspective and yeh. I don't know how to disagree with you, it just adds to the atmosphere of running zombies, they're insane and so the camera.

I get it can be disorientating and even nauseating but surely that's the point. It's understandable not to like but when the viewer is in control of the camera, seeing what they want you're in a safe environment but when you loose control and it's thrown around, you're out the safe zone.


Babbble.

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Again, I'm not talking about just any shaking here. The scene where Don (Carlyle) runs away is fine. You can tell what's actually happening, for example.

Also, I don't see how not liking a violently shaken camera obligates anyone to advocate a perfectly stationary one.

I have to agree with Adidass and Sedai, I feel that it draws the viewer closer to the action and offers a first hand account of the events unfolding. I recall watching Saving Private Ryan and truly noticing this effect for the first time and thinking to myself how well it added to the overall impact of the scenes. A film that has the ability to displace a viewer from their reality and immerse them into its realm, if only for a brief moment, has done something remarkable. For me, 'shakycam' can offer that extra push to becoming a 'participant' in the film as opposed to just an observer.

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Gah! Last try, then, I give up:

I am not using the phrase "shakycam" to refer merely to a camera which simply shakes, or which utilizes a first-person POV. I am using it to refer to instances in which the shaking is extreme, possibly prolonged, and greatly interferes with the viewer's ability to tell what is happening on screen. Children of Men, Saving Private Ryan and the opening scene in 28 Weeks Later where Don is running from the cottage are not examples of this.

If you like the seizure-style shaking, more power to you, but it seems to me that most of the respondents so far are talking about something entirely different.

So....we are talking the fleeing scenes in Blair Witch, or something along those lines then... I can see your point with stuff like that.

Paul Greengrass - Not welcome in Our Glorious Leader's abode

He's to blame. I remember feeling queasy in the cinema watching Bloody Sunday, which is a shame as otherwise it is a fine film.

It's one thing to strive for Cinéma Vérité style realism when the camera is madly trying to keep up with a bunch of British soldiers frantically chasing innocent Irishmen but that wasn't enough for Captain Vom... Oh no.

Even when Jimmy Nesbitt was attempting to have a quiet moment with his wife, the camera was lurching around like a drunk man on a ferry.

Blame Woody Allen too - I can't remember the film offhand, but he too made me feel a little green around the gills...

EDIT - Manhattan Murder Mystery. That's the bugger!

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What were actually talking about here is the fact that there are good and bad sequences with shaky cam directed by filmmakers that are more or less good at mastering the technique. And then we have the thing that Tacitus is talking about, the fact that some people actually get seasick from watching a film shot with shakycam. Then, of course, you're not exactly loving the techinque. That's not a problem for me though. [I have friends who can't play computer games like Quake or Counter Strike because of that reason. Poor things.]

Personally, I love Bloody Sunday and I consider Greengrass to be the leading guy of the docudrama genre right now (if there is such a genre). I even based my Masters thesis on Bloody Sunday (together with Passion of the Christ and Bamboozled).

It's pretty simple, really. When done with skill the shakycam (or the hand held camera) improves the film and reversed when done without skill it makes the film worse. And since the shakycam is a pretty extreme effect, or rather can be an extreme effect, it runs the risk of taking over the film entirely if it's not being used in a good way.

Lars von Trier has used his fair share of shakycam in his career and in some cases definitely too much, in my opinion. One of the reasons to why I disliked Dancer In the Dark is because of the exaggerated use of shakycam and pointless editing. It just steals away too much attention from the plot. Or maybe that's the point and I'm totally missing it.

The hand held camera is often successfully used when it is supposed to give the impression of a news team out on the field or of someone making some kind of home video. Or simply when the filmmakers have such small financial funds at their disposal that hand held DV becomes the only option. It is when the shakycam is being used as some kind of special effect to add extreme motion or chaos to the scene that the director often gets out on thin ice, even if there probably is successfull examples of that as well.

I like when the director/editor interferes as little as possible with cuts, camera movements and a thousand different angles. But when the director has a clear vision, as I'm sure Greengrass had with Bloody Sunday, the result can be brilliant. And I don't know if you've noticed, but besides the extreme documentary camera style, Bloody Sunday is almost free from other "manipulation" such as lighting, sound, music or editing.

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

There you have it. One man's brilliance is another man's overkill. I thought that the Vom Cam overtook the film and I wonder - did you see it on the big or small screen?

I've seen it on both and while the epileptic camerawork isn't as pronounced on DVD it still made me mutter to myself - Dolly Parton attempting the 100m sprint bounced around less than this...

I don't think Greengrass is a bad director, per se, I just hope that he doesn't become more influencial than he is already.

Have you seen Omagh, directed by Pete Travis but, tellingly, written and produced by Greengrass? The subject is as close to my heart as Bloody Sunday (I'm a native of Omagh and my father got his foot broken in the Bloody Sunday riots) but the camerawork grated with me again, albiet on a less grandiose scale.

It almost ruined the experience, but not quite.

I've only seen Bloody Sunday on my regular tv. Perhaps the effect is a lot stronger on a big screen. I don't think it would matter much to me since I'm not bothered by the camera movements.

I don't think I've seen Omagh, only read about it.

I think Bloody Sunday is the only Greengrass film where he uses the hand held cams to that extent. In United 93, for instance, things are more calm. Most probably because it's not a film that requires that kind of camera movements or, to put it better, to use a "shakycam" in that one would be a very odd move for him to do.

I don't think we will see more docudramas solely because of Greengrass' films. What he's doing is nothing new, really. He just happens to be particularly good at it. Filmmakers depicting historical events, especially war, terror and catastrophies, will keep using the documentarian/news reel style as a way of enhancing realism and authencity in the film, just as they have been in the past (saw The Battle of Alger (1966) a couple of weeks ago and was struck by how timeless it felt).

just try and shake your head about when they shake the camera...the violent shaking to the head puts you "right in the action"

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Omagh looks very similar to Bloody Sunday and features a fantastic performance by Gerry McSorley (local man, I'm mates with his nephew and you might remember him from The Constant Gardener - Gerry, not my mate ). I'd recommend it.

EDIT - He was in Bloody Sunday too, as Chf Spt Lagan.

He was up to his old tricks in The Bourne Supremacy and I bet was hired because of ..Identity director Doug Liman's hatred of steadycam. He'd reined it in, though.

I've seen a slew of locally-produced TV docudramas recently with that style. Maybe it's an Irish thing - we're a nation of drinkers after all.

I can relate to that, watching the seminal 60s Irish documentary The Rocky Road To Dublin a while back. Of course, the camera was probably shaky because it was being operated by a bloke called Seamus who was more used to filming the odd wedding in Clonoe...

I'm with you on this one, Yoda. Having a camera giving a participant's point of view of the action was great in the opening credits of Requiem for a Heavyweight when Anthony Quinn was getting his brains knocked out by Cassius Clay and in the brief scenes of combat when Army troops were fighting their way into Gen. Jack Ripper's airbase in Dr. Strangelove. In both cases, the hand-held camera was used briefly with surgical precision, then put aside for the rest of the movie. But subsequent directors and producers figure, "Hey, if a little bit was good, than a whole lot will be fantastic!"

Wrong! The net effect is like watching home movies shot by someone who has no idea how to hold a camera. The camera bounces everywhere, never holding any image long enough to register, and produces vertigo and nausea among viewers. The industry spent many years and a lot of money researching the best way to get cameras to move without losing focus or the target image. Now a nutty few want to throw out that technology for a "natural" look that is going to alienate a large portion of their potential audience.

I don't hate shakycam as much as I hate fast edits that make action scenes almost incomprehensible. (looking directly at Christopher Nolan's work on Batman Begins especially here...)

You know Yoda, why don't you give us an example so we don't keep making references to "non-shakycam scenes"?

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