The invention in the early 1970s of the camera stabilizer popularly known as the Steadicam (actually a brand name, like Kleenex or TiVo) was a milestone in the technology and aesthetics of film. The freedom and fluidity with which the camera could "float" through a scene was astounding. It was first used in films such as "Bound for Glory" and "Rocky" -- but try to imagine "Halloween" or "The Shining" without it. (On the other hand, the "Shaky-cam" created by Sam Raimi and crew for "The Evil Dead" -- which involved bolting a 16 mm camera to a two-by-four carried by two grips running through the woods -- had a lesser historical impact, but was comparably effective for its purposes.)
Woody Allen and cinematographer Carlo Di Palma used old-fashioned hand-held camerawork for "Husbands and Wives" (1992) -- most noticeably in the opening scene, which became notorious because it made some moviegoers dizzy or nauseous. Theaters posted signs at their box office windows warning people that the movie could induce motion sickness.
Roger Ebert has received a lot of Answer Man mail about all the jittery camerawork in Paul Greengrass's "The Bourne Ultimatum" (see "Shake, rattle, and Bourne!"). And now David Bordwell, in a characteristically well-researched and fun-to-read post on his and Kristin Thompson's blog ("Unsteadicam chronicles"), says: "A spectre is haunting contemporary cinema: the shaky shot."
... Some viewers and critics think the jarring quality of ["The Bourne Ultimatum"] proceeds from rapid editing. The cutting in "Bourne Ultimatum" is indeed very fast; there are about 3200 shots in 105 minutes, yielding an average of about 2 seconds per shot. But there are other fast-cut films that don’t yield the same dizzy effects, such as "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" (1.6 seconds average), "Batman Begins" (1.9 seconds), "Idiocracy" (1.9 seconds), and the "Transporter" movies (less than 2 seconds). [...]To put this in perspective, check out the Cinemetrics database (to which, of course, Bordwell is a contributor), and you'll find the average shot length of the late Michelangelo Antonioni's "L'Avventura" is 18 seconds, while that whiz-bang "L'Eclisse" has a zippy 11.9-second average. (See Bordwell's article at Cinemetrics here.)
But as Bordwell explains, when it comes to the disorienting effect of some shots, it ain't the meter, it's the motion:
... Directors nowadays tell us that they are in search of energy, a moment-by-moment spiking of audience interest. You can get it through fast cutting, arcing camera movements, sudden frame entrances, the nervousness of the handheld shot, or all of the above. [...]Bordwell cites the "Late Tony Scott Rococo" style (referring to the director of "Top Gun," "True Romance," "Domino," "Déjà vu" and many others) as being one of the more extreme examples of this keep 'em off-balance approach, which he says is also used to cover a multitude of sins, including plot holes.Essentially, intensified continuity [a traditional Hollywood technique, described by Bordwell here] is about using brief shots to maintain the audience’s interest but also making each shot yield a single point, a bit of information. Got it? On to the next shot. Greengrass’s camera technique makes the shot’s point a little harder to get at first sight. Instead of a glance, he gives us a glimpse.
Although this strategy is more aggressive in this third "Bourne" installment, we can find it as well in "Supremacy." An agent pulls a document out of a carryon bag, and for an instant we can see the government seal. In the next shot the agent bobs in and out of the frame, as if the camera can’t anticipate his next move. [...]
Since the 1980s, in many action pictures the cutting has become so fast, and often capricious, that we can’t clearly see the physical action that’s being executed. That complaint is justified in "Bourne Ultimatum," certainly, but here the style also seeks to make the stunts seem less preposterous. Instead of showing cars crashing and flipping balletically, he barely lets us see the crash. All the conventions of the action film are smudged in Bourne Identity, as if a sketchy rendering made them seem less outlandish. In a Hong Kong film, Bourne in striding flight, grabbing objects to use as weapons without missing a beat, would be presented crisply, executing feats of resourceful grace. But many viewers seem to find this sort of choreography outlandish or cartoony. So when Bourne plucks up pieces of laundry and wraps them around his hands to protect them when he vaults a glass-strewn wall, Greengrass’s shot-snatching conceals the flamboyance of the stunt.
Now: Read the whole thing here. No, here!
I think shaky cam, the name I use for it, is an extremely cheep and annoying gimmick. The director doesn't trust that what's happening on screen is interesting enough, so he shakes the camera to make a shot disorienting. Supposedly, because we have to work harder to make out what's happening, we're supposed to care more. As a direct result, I care less.
Consider the famous shaky battle scene in Gladiator. It's horrible! I think Ridley Scott's feeling was that it would add an element of realism. I feel that it took one away. If you look at how the human eyes see, they really don't go into shaky cam mode even when the body is moving quickly. Eyes have a way of stabilizing the world. We needed the steadicam to recreate that. Shaky cam doesn't recreate any kind of way that people really see. It's just a gimmick designed to drum up excitement. And I think that if people are resorting to gimmicks like this, what's happening on screen must not be very worthwhile.
Consider another recent film: Sunshine. The shaky cam in that film was just annoying. One astronaut wants a strong exposure to the sun. He asks the computer to dial down the filter. When he does, all we need is some intense light and a beaming smile to get the point. Instead, we get shaky cam and closeup shots. Very tacky. Later, shaky cam is used to show two astronauts having a fight. We can't tell who and who or what they're doing to one another, so we're supposed to have our interest perked. Instead, I feel like the director is explicitly using cheap tricks to manipulate me, so I just roll my eyes and wait for normal cam to pick up again.
There's a great shot in The Sum of All Fears that's my idea of that kind of style done right. The Secret Service are clearing the President out of a stadium where a nuclear bomb is about to go off, and throwing him into the back of his waiting limo. The way it's shot, the hand held camera tightly follows the stampede out the exit and into the garage for several seconds in a single take.
What's great about that shot is that you don't get the impression that the operator is deliberately trying to shake the camera for effect as in most cases, but that by keeping the take rolling the shaking seems involuntary, genuinely overwhelmed by the physical exertion. It's more impressive than any shot I've seen in Geengrass' films. I'd urge to to check it out on DVD to see what I mean.
For me, this whole argument is a lot less about whether the camera is shaking or not than how often the edits come. Cameras can obviously move too often or too much, but it starts feeling like the director's not confident when the cuts come too quickly. That's when information starts to get lost.
I don't get people calling Greengrass' "style" (which doesn't seem to exist, really) a "documentary style." That's where they really are confusing shaking the camera with non-fiction. The two don't go hand in hand, so bringing up the "documentary style" of Ultimatum or Children of Men or whatever is just naive. Nothing about these films and they way they're shot or edited makes me feel like I'm any more there than The Simpsons Movie.
I dunno, I think like anything it's a perfectly fine tool that gets abused on a regular basis. It works in Bourne because (as Bordwell notes) it's a movie that's all about pursuits, chases, and motion. I also happened to adore the tight shots over someone's shoulder of whoever else it was talking -- a perfectly classy and appropriately claustrophobic way to emphasize nothing but the character speaking.
What I'm bothered more by is the shaky editing in action sequences, mostly because I think it's become de rigeur even though most directors probably couldn't tell you why they use it... other than everyone else does, of course. In movies hoping to depict the chaos of battle, or a more realistic sense of hand to hand combat, fine. But why not pull back and let us enjoy, say, the unique sight of two gigantic robots fighting? It's not like anyone would go to a movie like that for anything else...
Chris made me think of how the phrase "documentary style" is used freely by a lot of critics. I think a distinction needs to be made in styles. Is a movie that's employing the conventions of newsreel footage trying to look like a "real" recording or is it trying to look like real "reality"? It's easy to understand in films like Zellig and JFK. But in films that we're meant to assume are happing here and now, are we supposed to accept the conceit that there's an invisible documentarian in the room? Or is it just meant to create an association with reality?
Dan, your last suggestion is the right one: The shaky camerawork is just meant to create an association with reality. In reality, it has little in common with the way documentaries are shot.
These shots may leave the impression of something done guerilla-style, but the fact of the matter is that they often involve high-end telelenses and are therefore quite laborious to pull off. A lot of them are not even handheld, but shot on a tripod far removed from the action, while the operator is loosely moving the camera on the head.
The "Shaky-cam" can, I think, add something to a movie if it is done correctly. I remember seeing Bourne 2 and thinking "Wow, if Matt Damon wasn't so good this would be horrible. Look at the camera work, that's ridiculous." I haven't seen Bourne 3, but a friend of mine said it's more of the same. "Shaky-cam" was effective in Cauron's "Children of Men" and "Y tu Mama Tambien" because it was used sparingly and not exclusively. It worked in Bourne 1 for the same reason. There's no need for the camera to be shaking uncontrollably while two characters are talking, it doesn't make us "feel more there" it's just annoying as hell. I actually watched Bourne 1 again this weekend and I was surprised at how well directed it was (why did the studio kick Doug Liman out for 2 & 3? Idiots). Liman allowed the camera to stay back and observe and let the story breathe and unfold in front of us. I simply think it's that Paul Greengrass is an inept director (the same way the other acclaimed directors like Baz Luhrmann are), who doesn't have confidence in his story so he doesn't allow it to breathe and instead tries to shove it down our throats. He's a lo-fi Tony Scott.
I would also like to point out one thing that I forgot in my previous post, which is in referance to the ASL (average shot length). Greengrass's style is often referred to as "quick-cutting", but as Bordwell points out "Batman Begins" "Sky Captain", and I would add "Dark City" (which I've read has an ASL of 1.8) all have shorter ASL's than Greengrass's Bournes yet aren't confusing visually, so it isn't so much a quick cutting style as it is an unfocused, amateur style.
Having not seen Bourne 3 yet, I can’t comment on that film specifically, but it seems to me there are two separate issues here: one is the shaky cam and the other is the fast edit. While some of the comments here are correct that most documentaries aren’t shot that way, the shaky cam can still give me the feeling of immediacy, as in Greengrass’ Bloody Sunday, where it felt like I was watching the actual events happen and a cameraman just happened to be present to catch it all. But the technique is far too overused, especially on t.v. shows such as any of the Law and Orders or CSI’s. More often than not when I see it these days I think “What’s their point in shaking the camera all around? Hold the damned thing still so I can see what I’m supposed to be looking at!” But used sparingly, I think it can still be effective.
The fast edit can also be used effectively, as it is in Run Lola Run’s Polaroid montages, or in the sequences in Requiem for a Dream in which we see the characters shooting up. But too often the fast edit is used to cover up bad choreography or acting. See just about any fight scene filmed in an American movie in the last 10 years (Gladiator was the WORST for this). You can’t tell who is doing what to whom or get a sense of where bodies are in relation to each other and I think this is deliberate. That’s one thing I appreciated about Crouching Tiger (I don’t watch a lot of Hong Kong action films, so don’t have other references): the fight scenes were shot with longer takes, so you could actually see the characters in relation to each other and watch the choreography unfold.
Used sparingly, both techniques still have their place. But combine an overuse of the shaky cam with an overuse of the fast edit, and I can see where the film might wind up a big mess–hard to watch and hard to follow.
I wonder... did this all start wich Jack Nicholson's axe swinging towards the bathroom door?
I'm talking about The Shining. Kubrick did a subtle and classy move with the camera, just matching the speed of the axe's blade. It really made the shot much more powerful.
I wonder if since then the idea just catched on and went overboard.
DanielG, this all started long before "The Shining". In my view it started in the French New Wave, but more than likely it started even before that. Either way, people have learned the wrong lesson's from it, much like the studios that stopped funding smaller movies after Jaws, Star Wars, and Close Encounters were huge successes.
I'm not a huge fan of the Bourne movies, but I thought that the camera work during the fight scene in Morocco (i think) in Bourne 3 was fantastic. The shaky close-ups conveyed the intensity, yet the action was staged so clearly that it was very easy to follow. My big beef with a lot of action movies that use many hand-held close-ups, is that you can't follow the action clearly (which can be totally fine if it's not an "action" movie.) Some of the car chases weren't as successful, but the fight is one of the best action sequences I've ever scene. It was a nearly perfect moment in an otherwise slightly above-average film.
I have yet to see this latest installment, but I found the film techniques and storytelling (both one and the same) in the second Bourne to be quite maturely done. It was one of the most effective action movies I've seen in a long time. Hardly anything that Tony Scott, with his stock characters, could pull off.
I haven't seen "Ultimatum" yet, either, but I'm a big fan of Greengrass's "Bloody Sunday" and "The Bourne Supremacy." ("United 93," not so much.) I couldn't imagine that I could still feel tension and adrenaline and DANGER during a car-chase sequence (which usually come across as so routine), but the one in which the now-quoted shot of the car crashing into Matt Damon's vehicle, seen through the driver's side window, really knocked me out. Provides exactly what David B. says is lacking in many of these movies ("Top Gun" especially!): A sense of where things are in relationship to others in 3-D space. You actually see the car coming (Damon doesn't) and smash into the car, from your position in the passenger seat. Suspense and surprise -- in a couple seconds.
Anybody know if that's the first time that shot was used? Or where else it's been used? I swear I've seen it since...
I'm surprised no one has mentioned The Blair Witch Project. Like many people who saw that movie, I came out of the theater with a pounding headache.
The Blair Witch Project is a special case. Given the unique way it was filmed, with the three actors also filming the action while running through the woods, it basically has to be unsteady.
Hand-held camera work, or shakycam, is a tool. I talk at length in my blog about how it irritates me that it is so overused. Greengrass exaggerates the jerky motion of the camera work in his films to terrible effect, though I like Bloody Sunday quite a lot. I don't buy the reasoning that hand-held camera work puts the viewer "in the moment" all the time. It is a subjective camera move most of the time but when overused it either becomes distracting, nauseating, or invisible, none of which adds anything to the film or the method of storytelling.
I've got bad news for you though. Having graduated from film school a few years ago, my fellow students didn't feel the way I do. They were huge proponents of hand-held camera work and their films were loaded with them. I shot many of those student films and I would have extended conversations about what motivated the hand-held shot, conversations that would usually end with the directors saying "just do it".
I watched 15 minutes of On the Lot and that footage included a film made by one of the contestants. The film was a two hander with the characters seated at a table, and it was hand held. Why? I think it's a crutch, just like over cutting. You cover up performance and blur your pacing by keeping the shot in a constant state of movement.
We left Ultimatum feeling queasy and cheated. Greengrass made a hash of what could have been a very good movie. His "style" is shoddy cover for his utter lack of skill and inability to do anything but that which made him famous -- the Bloody Sunday-style camerawork. I've never felt *anger* at a movie until seeing this one; it was frustrating that what could have been a rather good action movie was so thoroughly hacked to pieces by, well, a hack director. We can only vote more wisely with our dollars in the future and never again see a movie directed by this idiot.