Hey Directors/Editors/DPs...

[QUENTIN]

...I really like being able to tell what's happening onscreen.

Being able to coherently recognize what the image I'm looking at is depicting and how its subject exists in time and space is super keen. I find movies a lot more entertaining and involving when I'm aware of what's occurring in them, rather than having to guess because each shot is 14 frames of blurry motion in closeup.

If you could keep that in mind when shooting and assembling your movies, that establishing things like your locations and the characters' relation to them and what the stuff they're doing and actions they're taking in a scene looks like, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks a bunch.

Sincerely,
-Q

[vesaker]

SHAKEY CAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

but really, i know what you mean. This happens especially on dvd's where the director forgot that not every viewing of his/her/their movie is going to be on a 60' screen. And then there are even those times where you still can't figure out whats going on.

[CyclicNightmare]

I find it much easier to discern the action when at home and able to take in the whole screen at once.

[vesaker]

I find it much easier to discern the action when at home and able to take in the whole screen at once.

true enough but sometimes there are certain things, even just colours, that are really hard to notice on a regular TV compared to a theater screen. I even know of situations where i had seen a movie in the theater then saw it again in IMAX and noticed things that i didn't before.

[Reigh Kaufman]

Pandorum was absolutely unwatchable because of this. When done correctly - Bourne, Narc - it works just fine. Pandorum, however, just made me angry.

[outsyder]

But it's all subjectivism and the like . . . yeah, there's no defence for this.

[APzombie]

/signed.

it's lazy as sin. It's not so much the shakeyness as it is the excessive cutting, it's an absurd way to either generate suspense, generate tension or simply keeping our attention away from the horrid banality of the film making.

[Badbird]

Eh, it doesn't really bother me. There's only been a couple times where I really had a problem with it.

The Marine - But, to be honest, no amount of proper editing was going to make it any better.

Cloverfield - Though, it wasn't the shakey cam that bugged me so much as where they decided to point the camera.

Quantum of Solace - Yeah, this one really was dropped in a blender.

[QUENTIN]

/signed.

it's lazy as sin. It's not so much the shakeyness as it is the excessive cutting, it's an absurd way to either generate suspense, generate tension or simply keeping our attention away from the horrid banality of the film making.

Yep. Totally with you on the problem and the motivation.

There are two great articles I just found with basically the same sentiment.

Inglourious Snatch (http://bigmediavandal.blogspot.com/2009/09/inglourious-snatch.html)

by Steven Boone
2009 is the year I quit film criticism for the fourth or fifth time. It was sort of like the local crazy homeless guy quitting his post as honorary mayor of the corner. Big whoop. I keep coming back to the block, hoping somebody heard my cry of doom and responded accordingly. The cry goes something like this: Cinema as a popular art form has lost the fundamentals that make its expensive products worth our time. Critics, content that a stubborn minority of classically trained filmmakers still endure at the arthouse and on the festival circuit, happily chalk up the disaster at the multiplex as Other People’s Problem. In other words, caviar for us, scraps for the rabble. It's the blithe attitude of Whole Foods shoppers toward the Food Stamp set, and it's disgusting.

And yet, until recently, virtually every film that made it to the multiplex, sublime or atrocious, was constructed of the same sturdy material: the shot.


I quit film criticism because somebody has banished the shot from mainstream commercial cinema.


The shot, man.


That unit of film composition which lends film its cumulative power and structural integrity.


In place of the shot, like a leaky sandbag in place of a brick, somebody put... Well, what to call it, this fragment of film that has more in common with a spontaneous cutaway during Monday Night Football than with the ruminative, kinetic moving image discovered by Kuleshov, Porter, Griffith, et al? I once jokingly called it a gotcha-fragment, but that doesn't quite get it. The word for “shot” in the new century shall be…


Snatch.


No further explanation necessary, but it might be helpful to provide some examples. Here are some blurbs from your favorite cultural authority, revised:


"No matter how cynical you feel about Hollywood, it is hard not to fall for a film that makes room for a snatch of the Joker leaning out the window of a stolen police car and laughing into the wind, the city’s colored lights gleaming behind him like jewels."-- Manohla Dargis, The Dark Knight review


"A busy opening flurry of mock-news snatches and talking-head documentary chin scratching fills in a grim, disturbingly plausible scenario."-- A.O. Scott, District 9 review


"Snatch" is perfect because it describes the image, the manner in which the image was acquired and what the image does to you. Snatches are snatched and they snatch you. By the waistband of your drawers. So, until equality returned to cinema and the average Joe viewer could enjoy shots again, I was determined to stay on strike.


With Inglourious Basterds, the strike has ended peacefully. Quentin Tarantino’s divine slice of movie love is gloriously snatch-free. Every shot, even the ones that whizz by in a blur of violence, is set in stone, not graphite. Tarantino brought the might and resources of big budget commercial filmmaking to bear on the snatch malaise. No critic could attack the problem any better.


This isn't the first time Tarantino came to the rescue. In fact, each new QT feature rebukes snatch culture. Pulp Fiction arrived in 1994, the same pivotal year that Natural Born Killers, one of the first ever snatch features (ironically from a QT script) gave us a glimpse of the future in big screen storytelling.


Pulp Fiction's success over Natural Born Killer's mediocre run should have told the studios that people go to the darkened theater not to be snatched up but to be lured into a delicious trap. Trouble was that Ho'wood attributed Pulp Fiction's popularity only to the jokes and grisly killings, so it commissioned more smirky, bloody potboilers. As editors began to abandon rules developed over a century of filmmaker-audience call and response in favor of lazy shortcuts their AVID editing consoles enabled, shots morphed into snatches. Directors adopted multiple camera coverage, not for any inspired artistic reasons like Akira Kurosawa on High and Low or Spike Lee on Bamboozled, but merely to burn through script pages more efficiently, a la Richard Donner on the Lethal Weapon series.


Another pop power player, Robert Zemeckis, caught hold of audience attention spans that same year with Forrest Gump and later with Cast Away. (Dave Kehr on Zemeckis: "Like the classical Hollywood filmmakers he studied in the 70's as an undergraduate at the University of Southern California's pioneering Department of Cinema, Mr. Zemeckis is well attuned to the nuances of framing and camera movement. He stands as one of the very few filmmakers in contemporary Hollywood who are fluent and innovative in the visual language of the movies.") Also in '94, Frank Darabont's sleeper Stephen King hit The Shawshank Redemption told a grim prison tale in the manner of Frank Capra, full of Capra hokum but also Capra's patient, cajoling camera.

DVD arrived the following year, and such storytelling was suddenly marked for death. When the DVD market exploded, snatchery went into overdrive. The random access of DVD's primed audiences to accept and expect a steady deluge of gotcha-fragments in virtually any genre. (David Lynch waged a small protest in his Mulholland Dr. DVD by refusing chapter stops. If you wanted to skip ahead to any "good parts" you had to fast forward VCR-style at best.)


Portable media devices and web 2.0 further accelerated the spread of snatch, as editing became a matter of assembling shots intended for screening on a 320 x 240 px screen rather than the 20-footer at your local Loews.


None of these technologies are evil. They have freed consumers and media makers in countless ways. But it’s a post-colonial Africa kind of liberation: How to manage an inherited government and infrastructure without proper instruction, or with corrupt tutors?


Among the snatch criminal elite: D.J. Caruso (Disturbia), Paul Greengrass (the Bourne sequels), Peter Berg (The Kingdom), J.J. Abrams (Star Trek). (Michael Bay, often misidentified as a felony-level purveyor of snatch, is actually as classical in his mise en scene as Spielberg. As with juvenile classicist Robert Rodriguez, he just likes to cut fast.)


Along the way, some filmmakers held fast to the tried and true. Many aging ‘70s auteurs (Spielberg, Coppola, DePalma, Malick, Scorsese, Lumet), of course, kept their cinematographic wits. Bankable directors like Joel Coen (Fargo), Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Craig Gillespie (Mr. Woodcock), The Wachowskis (The Matrix), Sam Raimi (Spiderman), Sam Mendes (American Beauty), Steven Soderbergh (the Oceans films), Spike Lee (The Inside Man), Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) could be counted on to retain the power of the frame and the well-considered cut. On the lower frequencies, Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood), Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich), Alexander Payne (Sideways), David O. Russell (Three Kings) and Wes Anderson (The Darjeeling Limited) also kept to the old rules, even as they bent them ever so gracefully to their singular visions.


Even masters of epic bombast like James Cameron (Titanic) and Mel Gibson (Apocalypto) knew that loony borderline kitsch didn't preclude lucid framing, while craftsmen like Ridley Scott suddenly took up the snatch trade in earnest (see the drive-by war flicks Black Hawk Down and Body of Lies). In a universe of his own, Michael Mann spent the aughts getting looser and jazzier on digital video (from Ali to Public Enemies), but never losing an intimate understanding of the rhythms he was subverting.


But it has taken Tarantino, with his infectious love of violent scenarios and grindhouse grand guignol to sell classical film technique not as a quaint alternative to snatch cinema but as the most vital, elastic and essential use of the form. Without shots, cinema disappears, and the movie house becomes just another noisy rec room.


In the 1980's, cineastes lamented the loss of the grand old movie palaces, whose architecture communicated a sense of cinema as a hallowed sanctuary. But the rise of the multiplex couldn't demolish the screen architecture that makes cinema a form of spiritual transportation, dream play and communal understanding-- the shot. Only the death of the shot has burned down the cinema. This hasn't stopped folks from attending movies in record numbers only because, let's face it, multimillion dollar marketing can sell you anything.


In a summer still reacting to last year's snatch apotheosis, The Dark Knight, Inglourious Basterds stepped in to assume the role of proper tutor. Whatever Tarantino's intentions, I happily project onto his film profound outrage at TDK’s senseless, anti-human use of screen time and space, along with an apostle's commitment to sharing his enlightenment with the deprived.


Children, if you want to know how movies, real movies, the kind you heard your great great grandparents wax nostalgic about.... If you want to know how those films deliver visual and narrative pleasure, then pop a Ritalin and watch Inglourious Basterds. Me, I'm going back to work.

While also disagreeing with some of his examples, I fully endorse his lucid explanation of my problem with much of modern cinema and how a return to the style crafted and improved upon for over 100 years as the fundamental method of visual storytelling is necessary if movies are going to be more than quickly-cut color porn.

Jim Emerson's response to that article is just as good and contains a wonderful, instructive quote:

The Snatch and How to Grab It (http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2009/09/the_snatch_and_how_to_grab_it.html)

"As a sequence is being cut, the cutter should know where a particular setup most effectively presents the information needed for that particular part of the scene. In other words, he will stay with the shot as long as that shot is the one which best delivers the required information and cut to another shot only when the new cut will better serve the purposes of the scene, whether because the size is more effective, the composition is more suitable, or the interpretation is superior.... In short, as long as the scene is playing at its best in the selected angle, leave it alone!"
-- veteran Hollywood director Edward Dmytryk ("Murder, My Sweet," "Crossfire," "The Caine Mutiny"), On Film Editing (1984)

Steven Boone at Big Media Vandalism says he gave up on film criticism (for the fourth or fifth time) this year:

I quit film criticism because somebody has banished the shot from mainstream commercial cinema.

The shot, man.

That unit of film composition which lends film its cumulative power and structural integrity.

In place of the shot, like a leaky sandbag in place of a brick, somebody put... Well, what to call it, this fragment of film that has more in common with a spontaneous cutaway during Monday Night Football than with the ruminative, kinetic moving image discovered by Kuleshov, Porter, Griffith, et al? I once jokingly called it a gotcha-fragment, but that doesn't quite get it. The word for "shot" in the new century shall be...

Snatch.

Reading Boone's impassioned personal essay, "Inglourious Snatch," is a rewarding, cathartic experience for me. It does my heart good to witness one man standing up for the cinematic values he believes in, the very essence of what drew him to movies in the first place. And I don't have to endorse all the examples he lists to fully appreciate what he's saying.

The various snatch-enabling technologies (non-linear editing, DVDs, portable media devices) aren't themselves invariably "evil," Boone says, but they have contributed to the erosion of cinematic infrastructure, which relies on the integrity of the shot. As David Bordwell wrote in his essential piece, "Unsteadicam chronicles," about the combination of such techniques as the "shaky-cam," choppy cutting, and frenetic camera movement:

The handheld camera covers three mistakes: Bad acting, bad set design, and bad directing. [...]

The run-and-gun style is indeed visceral, but let's be aware of how it achieves its impact. I've argued in Planet Hong Kong that the clean, hard-edged technique of classic Hong Kong films allows extravagant action to affect us viscerally; by following the action effortlessly, we can feel its bodily impact. We're shown bodies in sleek, efficient movement that gets amplified by cogent framing and smooth matches on action. But in the fancy run-and-gun style, cinematography and sound do most of the work. Instead of arousing us through kinetic figures, the film makes bouncy and blurry movement do the job. Rather than exciting us by what we see, ["Bourne Ultimatum" director Paul] Greengrass tries to arouse us by how he shows it. The resulting visual texture is so of a piece, so persistently hammering, that to give it flow and high points, Greengrass must rely on sound effects and music. As a friend points out, we understand that Bourne is wielding a razor at one point chiefly because we hear its whoosh.

What else does the handheld style conceal? 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, Greengrass 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, showing him 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.

Remember, we're talking about mainstream narrative movies here. When some of us lament the pervasive visual incoherence in contemporary movies (especially the lack of thrills and momentum in flatly composed "action" sequences), we are sometimes compared to fogies who complain that this rock 'n' roll noise is corrupting the young people of today. After all, snatch and grab (or what DB calls "run and gun") is a currently fashionable style, the kids seem to like it, and all styles are equally valid. It's like complaining that Impressionism is fuzzy, or that Abstract Expressionism isn't photorealistic, right?

Wrong. Impressionism is not striving for clarity, and Abstract Expressionism isn't representational art. But a mainstream narrative movie that's trying to create thrills and suspense without an understanding of basic film grammar is simply failing to achieve the desired effect. (Likewise, it's not "Godardian" because it's not doing what Godard was doing -- or interested in doing.) Try painting an Ed Ruscha gas station using Jackson Pollock's technique and you'll get something, but it won't look like a gas station. (See DB's "But what kind of art?.)

Fast cutting is not necessarily the same as "snatch and grab." A director can cut fast and remain coherent if the shots are composed so that the relationships between them matters. (Check out a Hitchcock or De Palma set-piece for a textbook example: the "Psycho" shower scene or the climax of the prom scene in "Carrie," which is a splendid example of combining long takes, quick cutting and split screen.) As DB writes:

... [The] director who is just (apparently) snatching shots doesn't have to worry about building up performances slowly; s/he can simply give us the most minimal, stereotyped signals in facial close-ups. Lengthier shots let the actor develop the character's reactions in detail, and force us to follow them. Classic studio cinema, with its more distant framings and longer takes, lets you follow the evolution of a feeling or idea through the actor's blocking and behavior. The villain in the average Charlie Chan movie displays more psychological continuity than the nasty agents in "Bourne Ultimatum."

Moreover, run-and-gun technique doesn't demand that you develop an ongoing sense of the figures within a spatial whole. The bodies, fragmented and smeared across the frame, don't dwell within these locales. They exist in an architectural vacuum
Boone also links to "The lost art of film editing," a 2006 essay by Jessica Winter (The Rough Guide to American Independent Film), in which the author reports on the increasingly powerful, risk-averse filmmaking-by-committee that determines so much of what we see at the multiplex and the art house:

"You always hear things like, 'We need to put more energy into this scene,"' says Tim Streeto, who edited "The Squid and the Whale" and has also worked on films by Ang Lee and Steven Soderbergh. "That can translate into quick editing, where you go back and forth between two characters like a ping-pong match." [...]

"There is much more pressure on an editor to try to do something 'noticeable,"' [editor Steve] Hamilton ["Simple Men," "Henry Fool"] says, "or perhaps there are more editors who've grown up thinking that they have to make edits that are noticeable, whereas before the goal was simply to tell the best possible story and to do so relatively invisibly. I think this mentality is leading to a mistrust of the shot."

As for Boone, he says it was the respect for the shot manifested in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" that pulled him back in -- to movies and writing about them:

But it has taken Tarantino, with his infectious love of violent scenarios and grindhouse grand guignol to sell classical film technique not as a quaint alternative to snatch cinema but as the most vital, elastic and essential use of the form. Without shots, cinema disappears, and the movie house becomes just another noisy rec room. [...]

In a summer still reacting to last year's snatch apotheosis, "The Dark Knight," "Inglourious Basterds" stepped in to assume the role of proper tutor. Whatever Tarantino's intentions, I happily project onto his film profound outrage at "TDK"'s senseless, anti-human use of screen time and space, along with an apostle's commitment to sharing his enlightenment with the deprived.

Spoken like a true cinematic patriot. Yep, he's back. Welcome back, Boone!

Handheld camerawork and quick-cutting can have valid artistic merit and when used appropriately for genuinely inspired reasons (i.e., it's actually the most effective way to capture the scene) can work fine. But they've become the single most overused tools in the filmmaker's handbook and now are utilized more as an attempt to artificially "spice up" boring and poorly arranged scenes or simply cover up bad craftsmanship than for legitimate creative purposes.

I love shots. I love the way film captures time and space. And I am sick at heart over the fact that we're losing that most essential element of cinema for cheap, lazy, incoherent trickery.

[QUENTIN]

As an example of these two competing styles, let us compare this fight scene from the Batman Begins, a miserable but typical example of the snatch style, that actually has a lot more going for it. There are several levels of action occurring and it has more suspenseful impact and significance to the plot, which should make it more viscerally engaging than just a scene of people brawling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3XXZMD4q78


with the fight scene in Oldboy, which respects the integrity of the shot to a mesmerizing degree so that without calling attention to itself, the shot becomes a source of intrinsic tension and pleasure. It complements what it captures and holds our concerted focus on its subject (and of course, we always know what we're looking at) which is merely one guy forced to fight his way through many:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wha0brbb_44

Which scene do you find more exciting? Why? Can anyone even tell me how you know who is winning and what they're doing in the first clip? What actually occurs in that fight?

[LordSimen]

http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2009/7/11/128918459830012155.jpg

Those words run through my mind when I read this thread.

The style isn't a problem, nor is the technique. The problem is whether the people using the technique and style know what they're doing.

[overwatch]

Watching Transformers 2, it really confuses me how you spen 200 million dollars on robots that are rarely on the screen. They are usually above, below or on either side of the frame.

[QUENTIN]

http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2009/7/11/128918459830012155.jpg

Those words run through my mind when I read this thread.

The style isn't a problem, nor is the technique. The problem is whether the people using the technique and style know what they're doing.


Remember, we're talking about mainstream narrative movies here. When some of us lament the pervasive visual incoherence in contemporary movies (especially the lack of thrills and momentum in flatly composed "action" sequences), we are sometimes compared to fogies who complain that this rock 'n' roll noise is corrupting the young people of today. After all, snatch and grab (or what DB calls "run and gun") is a currently fashionable style, the kids seem to like it, and all styles are equally valid. It's like complaining that Impressionism is fuzzy, or that Abstract Expressionism isn't photorealistic, right?

Wrong. Impressionism is not striving for clarity, and Abstract Expressionism isn't representational art. But a mainstream narrative movie that's trying to create thrills and suspense without an understanding of basic film grammar is simply failing to achieve the desired effect. (Likewise, it's not "Godardian" because it's not doing what Godard was doing -- or interested in doing.) Try painting an Ed Ruscha gas station using Jackson Pollock's technique and you'll get something, but it won't look like a gas station. (See DB's "But what kind of art?.)

Fast cutting is not necessarily the same as "snatch and grab." A director can cut fast and remain coherent if the shots are composed so that the relationships between them matters. (Check out a Hitchcock or De Palma set-piece for a textbook example: the "Psycho" shower scene or the climax of the prom scene in "Carrie," which is a splendid example of combining long takes, quick cutting and split screen.)

In a sense I agree with you, in that fast cutting and handheld camerawork as cinematic techniques can be used and work well when utilized by people who know what they're doing, but I'm complaining about an entire popular style that doesn't do that and by definition is only used by people who do not know what they're doing. Because it doesn't use either technique for a motivated purpose, but rather to conceal the shoddiness, laziness, and ineptitude of the filmmaker in orchestrating and capturing actual scenes. I'm not railing against movies because of whiz bang new technological advancement or anything else that would actually make me a grumpy fogey, but rather an increasingly popular style that completely fails on its own terms, or any cinematic terms, because it's an incoherent mess that disregards at the most basic level what movies are.

Do you think wanting to be able to tell what it is I'm seeing happen onscreen makes me grumpy or silly or is in some way an illegitimate, unreasonable desire?

[overwatch]

As an example of these two competing styles, let us compare this fight scene from the Batman Begins, a miserable but typical example of the snatch style, that actually has a lot more going for it. There are several levels of action occurring and it has more suspenseful impact and significance to the plot, which should make it more viscerally engaging than just a scene of people brawling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3XXZMD4q78


with the fight scene in Oldboy, which respects the integrity of the shot to a mesmerizing degree so that without calling attention to itself, the shot becomes a source of intrinsic tension and pleasure. It complements what it captures and holds our concerted focus on its subject (and of course, we always know what we're looking at) which is merely one guy forced to fight his way through many:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wha0brbb_44

Which scene do you find more exciting? Why? Can anyone even tell me how you know who is winning and what they're doing in the first clip? What actually occurs in that fight?

Yeah but both of these depend entirely on the scenario. Shooting the batman fight in a single tracking shot would be laughable. It'd look silly.

[The Postmaster General]

http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2009/7/11/128918459830012155.jpg

*files away for future discussions about music*

[BakeTheMooCow]

I read those long-ass and insufferable articles by Steven Boone and Jim Emerson and they just strike me as a couple of whiny, snooty purists who can't seem to actually write about why the 'snatch' technique is so much better than the established shots of someone like Tarantino. I loved 'The Dark Knight' and 'Inglourious Basterds' and 'The Bourne Ultimatum'.

[Shinigami]

Are we talking about snatches, about shots being sustained for shorter amounts of time? Are we talking about shaky shots? Are we talking about close shots, hyper ADD cuts? All of the above?

Each of those techniques is interesting and new and can be used effectively. The first time a caveman found a rock he probably tried to eat it before he realized it worked much better for grinding things down into smaller things. Tools take time and visionaries before they're correctly implemented. These technique already have entertainment merit because they're embraced by the younger generations, but they're starting to find their artistic merit now too.

Depending on the technique being talked about, they aren't even prevalent in mainstream cinema. This is a forum of die hard movie fans who probably see more movies every year than the average, and we can't even come up with many charges. Batman Begins had it in a fight scene, and Saw has it a lot, and the Bourne Identity and Quantum of Solace. It seems like we're talking about five movies a year, maybe six. That's nothing. Mountain out of a mole hill.

[someguy]

Seems like people are confusing Quentin's rant for being anti-shaky cam when it's not that simple. The rant isn't an attack on the style itself, just how it's become a very popular and lazily executed way of shooting movies today. The handheld look definitely serves a purpose for giving off a certain style but sometimes it looks like it's only used as a cheap way to generate excitement or tension without actually trying.

One thing I hate about horror movies is when directors use cheap 'boo' scares to startle people. I'm talking about when something will randomly pop up with loud music/sfx that doesn't really do anything except catch people off guard. I'm not denying that jump scares can be well-executed, I'm just focusing my problems on the majority of people who don't put any effort in it. To me it's a sign of laziness. Instead of building up tension or creating a good atmosphere that'll make things scary the director just gets lazy and throws in random jump scares to make people think they're being terrified when they just have a natural reaction to something loudly coming out of nowhere. Quentin's rant is similar to this except it's targeted towards lazy editing and direction. If I made a rant about that topic I'd probably be getting more people agreeing with me than saying 'get with the times, jump scares are the new trend old man!'

Sometimes a director/editor might just be lazy and throw in lots of quick cuts and shaky footage to generate a certain feeling that's more about a natural reaction than actually generating it. If you don't establish things properly there will be a sense of confusion. Using quick cuts makes things seem more fast-paced and create a sense of excitement. These aren't really doing much to create a sense of excitement, it's just letting the style do all the work.

The rant isn't going against the style, it's going against the people who take advantage of it to cover up their own laziness. I can immediately think of two movies this year that fit the type of look Quentin is talking about and work because of how the style is properly used (it's The Hurt Locker and In The Loop, BTW I'm sure Quentin likes both of those movies). I'll agree with Bake if the discussion is about how stationary shots are better than shaky cam (trying to argue that one visual look is better than another one that has a completely different intention is ridiculous) but if we're just getting bugged by how poorly used quick cutting and whiplash camera movements are then I'm completely on board with this rant.

[The Postmaster General]

Good post, someguy.

I think the problem boils down to the "cookie cutter syndrome." Boone even touches on this in his article - how when Pulp Fiction came out, there were so many copycats, but they were trying to make something that was like Fiction only on a superficial level. People thought it was quick and witty banter, pop references and so forth that made it a hit, so in turn they focused on that sort of stuff which goes well with "snatching" (had never heard that term...)

It's happening with everything else, and as Simen said, it comes down to it not being what you use but how you use it.

In short, I agree that there's a lot of laziness in the cinema, but when it comes down to it, I think all that needs to really be said in terms of whether people like Boone need to make a huge point of it -- that all lies in the fact that he gave far more examples of people who get it right than of people who get it wrong.

[poopontheshoes7]

It bothers me as well. The only times I've felt it was handled well and effectively was in Cloverfield, 28 Weeks Later, and Quantum of Solace. Although QOS really didn't use much of it at all. It was just edited incredibly fast.

I couldn't stand the Bourne sequels due to this.

[outsyder]

Bourne II strikes me as particularly bad in that sense.

[APzombie]

excellent articles QUENTIN, really great reads. I agree with everything said.

[QUENTIN]

Seems like people are confusing Quentin's rant for being anti-shaky cam when it's not that simple. The rant isn't an attack on the style itself, just how it's become a very popular and lazily executed way of shooting movies today. The handheld look definitely serves a purpose for giving off a certain style but sometimes it looks like it's only used as a cheap way to generate excitement or tension without actually trying.

One thing I hate about horror movies is when directors use cheap 'boo' scares to startle people. I'm talking about when something will randomly pop up with loud music/sfx that doesn't really do anything except catch people off guard. I'm not denying that jump scares can be well-executed, I'm just focusing my problems on the majority of people who don't put any effort in it. To me it's a sign of laziness. Instead of building up tension or creating a good atmosphere that'll make things scary the director just gets lazy and throws in random jump scares to make people think they're being terrified when they just have a natural reaction to something loudly coming out of nowhere. Quentin's rant is similar to this except it's targeted towards lazy editing and direction. If I made a rant about that topic I'd probably be getting more people agreeing with me than saying 'get with the times, jump scares are the new trend old man!'

Sometimes a director/editor might just be lazy and throw in lots of quick cuts and shaky footage to generate a certain feeling that's more about a natural reaction than actually generating it. If you don't establish things properly there will be a sense of confusion. Using quick cuts makes things seem more fast-paced and create a sense of excitement. These aren't really doing much to create a sense of excitement, it's just letting the style do all the work.

The rant isn't going against the style, it's going against the people who take advantage of it to cover up their own laziness. I can immediately think of two movies this year that fit the type of look Quentin is talking about and work because of how the style is properly used (it's The Hurt Locker and In The Loop, BTW I'm sure Quentin likes both of those movies). I'll agree with Bake if the discussion is about how stationary shots are better than shaky cam (trying to argue that one visual look is better than another one that has a completely different intention is ridiculous) but if we're just getting bugged by how poorly used quick cutting and whiplash camera movements are then I'm completely on board with this rant.

Thank you. I wasn't sure if I hadn't explained myself well or if people were just being argumentative, but I'm glad someone gets what I'm saying.

Notably, The Hurt Locker and In The Loop both have very compelling reasons to be shot the way they are. The Hurt Locker aims for and succeeds at delivering a "you are there" sensation throughout to further build and maintain a tension it never lets up and also gets across through every other element of its storytelling. It's reminiscent in style and rationale of the masterful United 93, oddly made by the same guy who fucked up the last two Bourne movies. In The Loop, like The Office, is shot like a fly-on-the-wall verite documentary to give us the impression we're listening in to conversations the public isn't privy to and gets a lot out of that approach. Also key is that both, despite handheld work and fairly quick-cutting, have a firm respect for spatial integrity and the shots are never disconnected, but flow logically.

The problem for me is with movies, most often action movies, where there is no rhyme or reason to the style except that the director is too lazy to actually stage a competent action scene and hides the fact that they didn't take the time to choreograph anything exciting by cutting so fast, whizzing by with the camera, and pumping up the soundtrack so we can't tell what's happening but are supposed to be assured that whatever it is, it's really cool.

I think it's far more prevalent than just a scene in Batman Begins, that was merely an example. Both recent Batman movies were annoyingly done this way almost entirely (a couple exceptions are really well done though), and the fight scenes in those are totally unintelligible. I'd say it's the norm now for Hollywood action, which is why something like Kill Bill or The Hunted or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where real action is occurring and we get to see it, is so refreshing and much more viscerally engaging.

[Jon Lyrik]

I think The Dark Knight had gorgeous cinematography, really. I never had an issue with seeing the action, except in the sonar climax (which was the point). It's not like Transformers where I really can't follow at all.

[LordSimen]

Transformers was easy as hell to follow. The Dark Knight was much tougher, but I was still able to follow it. Batman Begins on the other hand is difficult as hell.

[drc5145]

The climax of Transformers 2, I think, epitomizes everything that's wrong about the abuse of the style. For the life of me, I could not tell who was what for those final 20 minutes. Like mentioned before, it's also trying to create tension and intensity that's not there, and ultimately just trying to shout at the audience "Look at the big robots fighting!" "Look at the big explosions!"

[APzombie]

Thank you. I wasn't sure if I hadn't explained myself well or if people were just being argumentative, but I'm glad someone gets what I'm saying.

Notably, The Hurt Locker and In The Loop both have very compelling reasons to be shot the way they are. The Hurt Locker aims for and succeeds at delivering a "you are there" sensation throughout to further build and maintain a tension it never lets up and also gets across through every other element of its storytelling. It's reminiscent in style and rationale of the masterful United 93, oddly made by the same guy who fucked up the last two Bourne movies. In The Loop, like The Office, is shot like a fly-on-the-wall verite documentary to give us the impression we're listening in to conversations the public isn't privy to and gets a lot out of that approach. Also key is that both, despite handheld work and fairly quick-cutting, have a firm respect for spatial integrity and the shots are never disconnected, but flow logically.

The problem for me is with movies, most often action movies, where there is no rhyme or reason to the style except that the director is too lazy to actually stage a competent action scene and hides the fact that they didn't take the time to choreograph anything exciting by cutting so fast, whizzing by with the camera, and pumping up the soundtrack so we can't tell what's happening but are supposed to be assured that whatever it is, it's really cool.

I think it's far more prevalent than just a scene in Batman Begins, that was merely an example. Both recent Batman movies were annoyingly done this way almost entirely (a couple exceptions are really well done though), and the fight scenes in those are totally unintelligible. I'd say it's the norm now for Hollywood action, which is why something like Kill Bill or The Hunted or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where real action is occurring and we get to see it, is so refreshing and much more viscerally engaging.

100% right. Especially concerning Greengrass. I have the same feelings, United 93 just worked, but the Bourne sequels didn't do anything for me. In the Loop and The Hurt Locker worked as well. Both weren't doing it to compensate for anything, the camerawork serviced the characters and the story, when it's used frivolously in action sequences, most of the time it doesn't serve anything, it simply is a false sense of tension.

[APzombie]

I think The Dark Knight had gorgeous cinematography, really. I never had an issue with seeing the action, except in the sonar climax (which was the point). It's not like Transformers where I really can't follow at all.

I agree. I think Batman Begins had a lot of these faults in the action, where as i could easily follow The Dark Knights amazing truck sequence. I can only assume Nolan realized he had to make his frame wide and his angles long if we were to make sense out of the imax stock. Though i agree, the sonar ending had all the faults of the Batman Begins action set pieces.

[Jon Lyrik]

The sonar ending was supposed to be confusing, which a lot of people don't seem to realize.

[ThatGuy09]

Shaky-Cam is a fad that needs to be stopped.

Sure, it can work if it's a docu/mockumentary or in the Bourne sequels or District 9, but in other cases, it's very, very annoying.

In my opinion, unnecessary shaky-cam means that the director or DP are too lazy to concoct more interesting camera work to make the movie unique. This technique should be a last resort, as in the very, very last resort. Even more if it's shot in digital. It's just a cheap and lazy technique.

I mean, when I saw The Dark Knight and Indy 4, I was glad that shaky-cam was barely used. I actually SAW the action CLEARLY!

Quick cuts I really don't have a problem with, but it can be annoying, like in Quantum of Solace and the dialogue scenes in Houseguest. But if I had to pick one of the two, I'd choose shaky-cam. It has to end. NOW!