These two techniques seem to be a perennial source of contention among videogs and editors.
See here...(starts at the bottom of page 2)
http://forums.dvdoctor.net/showthrea...t=40828&page=2
and here...
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=111162
I think it’s time that we acknowledge that the wobbly camera and quick zoom are now part of the repertoir of film and video editing. What was once a “mistakeâ€, like the jump cut, is now an accepted part of the editing language.
So why are there still professionals who will argue that one should avoid the wobble and zoom? Mostly because good wobble and zoom are very hard to do well and many young filmakers will pass off bad footage as artsy and say, “I meant to do that!â€
In spoken language the way to test if a certain word has become part of the vocabulary is to check the frequency of use and to see if it has a definable meaning. Do wobble and zoom meet the requirements to be considered part of film language? I think so.
Good or bad, these two techniques are everywhere lately so I think the first criteria is easily satisifed.
As for the meaning, in my mind the wobble can communicate “casual†when done mildly, (see many current TV commercials) all the way up to “very agitated" or "excited†or even "searching" when done to an extreme. (See LOST or Cloverfield)
The zoom is mostly used to bring sudden attention to something as if to say “Look at this!†but is often used as the visual version of the snare hit, ba-dum-bum, after the punchline of a joke.
When used together tastefully these two techniques convey a comfortable informality, mostly because of their origins in amateur videography. I saw them used to great effect in a recent Hillary Clinton ad in which they made her seem less stuffy.
I think it’s time we accept the wobble and zoom as legitimate parts of our editing grammar and, instead of ignoring them, try and find ways to use them properly and do them better.
Mike
I have no arguments with that, but with the following caveat.
Any trick played in production should enhance the story-telling, not distract from it. I don't mind jump cuts, never have, they are a quick way to re-direct the viewers' attention. But deliberate wobbly-cam is usually a major distraction. I found that I couldn't watch "The Thick Of It" for more than a couple of minutes because of this, but found that all I needed was in the sound track.
I'm in agreement with Alan. It's a strange thing that professionals use more and more amateur looking techniques to convey 'realism'. Sometimes I absolutely hate it, because it just distracts from the acting. But when it's done well, it can add to the piece and you hardly notice it.
Generally, the decision isn't made by the DoP, but by the production team. In the case of Thick Of It, that decision was taken by the Producer, Armando Iannucci, Jamie did as he was told, and did the best he could. He wrote a long explanation in Zerb at the time.
I watched the beginning of "The Bill" last night but, had switch off after five minutes, the wobbly shots and quick zooms were way too much for me to handle and, for me, were absolutely pointless.
You are all absolutely right! EVERYTHING we do must be in service to communication. Jump cuts are jarring in the wrong place, yet they can perfectly convey a sense of urgency or time passing or disorientation when used well.
Same with the wobblys and zooms. Maybe it's just because these are new techniques that they are being overused. Right now you're not hip if your image isn't careening all over the screen, but in time these methods will become an accepted part of our vocabulary and filmmakers will better understand how and when to use them.
The problem is that good 'wobbly, andd unmoitvated zoomy' camerawork doesn't wobbly and isn't unmotivated, in fact it is the complete opposite. :) The BBC's recent adaptation of 'Bleak House' is a case in point. Shot totally handheld, yet to watch it you wouldn't realise it because the camerawork is in sympathy with the rest of the piece and I suspect very much rehearsed along with the actors. Every zoom and move of the camera is planned just as it would be 'normally'. When it doesn't work is when people don't realise that and just take the camera off the sticks.
In many ways, the camerawork becomes part of the editing process in that the camera is being used to direct the viewers attention rather than cutting to a closeup and so just as unplanned editting doesn't work and sticks out like a sore thumb -- so does unplanned camerawork.
Steven
Right now you're not hip if your image isn't careening all over the screen, but in time these methods will become an accepted part of our vocabulary and filmmakers will better understand how and when to use them.
THey aren't new though -- I can point to examples from 1970 where the camera is off sticks to get that sort of effect (Dr Who: Spearhead from Space -- it's available on DVD both sides of the pond, about half way through the first ep, in a media scrum outside a hospital, you can even see one of the cameras in shot at one point -- deliberately I might add)) and again it works because the director (Derek Martinus) uses it where it fits the pace of the story. If the whole thing had been shot like that, it would have been awful.
The problem is that it is being seized on by people as being what makes a successful production or as giving high-production values and copied rather than just making a good programme. It's exactly the same problem as the desire to add jerky-motion to perfectly good video...
Steven
...the camerawork is in sympathy with the rest of the piece and I suspect very much rehearsed along with the actors. Every zoom and move of the camera is planned just as it would be 'normally'.
Yes! The American version of The Office is like that. Faux reality-style camerawork, and yet one can tell that it is precisely planned out for maximum comic effect.
Bleak House was shot 2-cam and hand-held to speed up the shooting, for budgetary reasons. But the crew knew what they were doing and got it right. It's interesting that there was only one DoP for the entire series, but they got through at least 6 cam-ops for the 2nd camera. Shooting hand-held doesn't have to be wobbly, Sorted is another example of a hand-held series without wobblies, Nick Dance is very good at it.
I watched the beginning of "The Bill" last night but, had switch off after five minutes, the wobbly shots and quick zooms were way too much for me to handle and, for me, were absolutely pointless.
I have worked on The Bill for over 5 years and every now and again they do this to an episode, the producer perception is that it makes it more earthy and exciting. To my mind it just makes me feel queasy and distracts from fundamentaly what is a very poor script or story line.
.....To my mind it just makes me feel queasy and distracts.......
Here, here!
Just so. If the viewer asks why did you use a trick, you've got it wrong, because he should be interested in the story and not in the techniques used.
Unfortunately, today's viewers are not easily distracted - onscreen junk; wrong aspect ratios; bad filmising; shrunken credits; intrusive continuity; endless repetition of the same material within the programme etc etc - nobody seems to bother any more. Today's average viewer isn't as discerning as we are.
The general dumbing down of TV continues apace. You only need to watch programmes like The Real Hustle and Dragon's Den to see what I mean - the constant narration to explain what we've just seen on screen is getting worse and really puts me off watching in the first place.
Anyway, to quote Ronnie Corbett, I digres! :)
Somebody on "The Bill" has decided that certain episodes contain a quick flick zoom reframe. It's difficult to explain but it looks like the camera op catches the lens mounted zoom lever and just zomms in by a few percent at the start of a shot. It anoys me every time but it's not a mistake.
LOL, you know they might even be using a macro in post production.
Do you think that they're trying to give the 'real' feel of unrehearsed documentary.
One of those things that once your conscious of it jars on you every time you see it.
Somebody on "The Bill" has decided that certain episodes contain a quick flick zoom reframe. It's difficult to explain but it looks like the camera op catches the lens mounted zoom lever and just zomms in by a few percent at the start of a shot. It anoys me every time but it's not a mistake.
I second Chris' question...What's the purpose of it?
I am not surprised that I am getting far more negative reactions to the wobbly-cam than positive from the professionals here. I think it is true that it bothers us more than it does the general public when something is "wrong". The standards are now so low that they have nearly disappeared. The most horrendous looking things are acceptable these days.
I would still be interested in hearing of instances where these techniques were used in a way that made sense and you enjoyed.
If you think reactions here are negative, you should try posting the same question on the Guild of Television Cameramen's board. They tore Jamie apart for The Thick Of It, and he had to write a long, detailed article in Zerb to set the facts right.
First time I noticed it in drama was NYPD Blue. The way they did it was predictable, formulaic repetitive - I hated it, it didn't seem real, random, organic.
Then again are we just turning into our parents? I remember mine complaining that Top Of The Pops made them dizzy :)
I like to think all video professionals should aspire to the best in camera work, not the easiest or most trendy.
I watched a documentry on Leni Riefenstahl the German filmmaker. Ignoring the politics of the time, her film style was cutting edge in its day (1934).
One of the first to use tracking rails and cranes.
The stark, eye catching angles and composition are still breath taking.
Good camera work from any era never fails to hit my button.
Any film or video made these day will have a element of what we classify as bad or good regards the comments made above.
Like always rules of good filmmaking are there to be broken. In some cases it works and in others it is a bad judgment too incorporate those effects.
I just watched yet another commercial (a mother and son eat breakfast) that used a gently moving "wobbly-cam" and I thought it imparted a nice, warm feeling to the spot. I think it's a technique that's here to stay and I like it.
Reactivating this thread I saw "Cloverfield" on DVD last night and felt sick at the end. Nothing to do with the plot, just the camera work. Wouldn't mind so much but it was so obviously contrived.
Then, went to see, "Hancock" today. Good film, nice script, good acting and a nice twist, but Oh god! shakeycam from beginning to end. (And the print or the projector was 'racky'. I suspect it was the print and having watched the film I can see why they wouldn't care) When I stood up and left at the end I actually blundered into the walls. Why? The production values are obviously there and I don't mind the 'edgy' fast cutting, but why do we suddenly throw the baby out with the bathwater? Shakeycam isn't clever, it isn't new and 'cutting edge' directors such as Robert Rodriguez don't seem to feel the need so, what the hell is Hollywood up to?
Suddenly feeling very old.
I saw OUTLAW this evening - by Nick Love
AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID!!!! the camerawork was non-stop bash-the-camera-for-gritty-look, and the script was insane.
sad sad day for british thrillers when this was made (2007)
I've just had a client book me for a job. They asked me and two of my competitors to submit work for their evaluation, which we all did. I asked what was the over-riding reason for choosing me and was told that I held the damn camera steady.
Blair Mountain i think that is the name. Was the first film to delve into the arty style of camera work and silly story. Making a large some of money the idea snowballed and Cloverfield is a prime example of how far can we go.
In our days story and camera work was king. One film did buck the trend and it worked. "A Fistful of Dollars".
Once all the experiment of trying all these new things out. Die down, then we will be back to good story telling and good camera work
That's my line as well, shaky camera is a fashion trend, it'll go away when the proponents all grow up. And wasn't the film "The Blair Witch Project"?
It was Blair Witch and I'm just surprised that it's suddenly trendy even in films such as Hancock which do not have the plot device of an amateur documentary camera as an excuse. In the case of Cloverfield it isn't even well done. The shaking and movements are very different to what you get from somebody who doesn't have the faintest idea what they are doing. If anything Hancock is quite a good simulation of amateur hand-held but, as I said, there is no plot reason for it unlike Blair and Cloverfield.
Yes Thank You
I seem to be in agreement with most of the people here in that a lot of the time "wobble-cam" can be a distraction.
However I do think it is extremely well done by Paul Greengrass in films like Bloody Sunday, United 93 and the two Bourne movies. Two standout examples of great editing etc are the scene at Waterloo station in The Bourne Ultimatum and the scene with Matt Damon taking a rifle onto a Berlin rooftop in The Bourne Supremacy.
Can't comment on the Greengrass films but in the Bourne films at least the shakeycam is not continuous and only used when appropriate. In the first of the franchise the camera is rarely still but that is not the same thing. It doesn't shake and there are few if any hosepipe zooms. What there is, is some highly profficient camera work and direction.
Just so. Any trick that supplements the story is fine, but when it distracts, it's a mistake. But, you can't always blame the cam-op, because it may be a deliberate production policy where the DoP or cam-op is simply doing what he's told to do as well as he can.
An example of hand-held being done well is the BBC series "Sorted", all hand-held, 2 cam shoot. The technique followed action neatly but never hose-piped, so it can be done sensibly. It's when it's donje just for effect that I object, like "The Thick Of It", where it was a specific instruction from the producer to keep it waving all the time, Jamie had no choice, he did what he was paid for.
Mike Figgis devotes a small chapter to 'Wobble-Cam' in his book 'Digital Film Making.' He opens the section with 'I shoot on video because it gives me freedom as a film maker to try new things. However, I would still like the result to be watchable - unless I'm deliberately trying to make it wobbly, as in The Blair Witch Project, which gives a sense of a point of view that is very fragile and sometimes terrified. That's a perfectly honourable technique.'
In another chapter he says ' If you want to move the camera, you have to have a very good reason why.'
Too much these days is shot in shakycam mode. I find it very distracting and often pretentious. I think the worst offenders were some of the DIY TV shows where I literally had to switch off the programme/s. They were not certainly not 'watchable.'
I don't think shakycam is a passing fad unfortunately but there are many films that do employ the technique to good effect - Rob said 'in the Bourne films at least the shakeycam is not continuous and only used when appropriate.' I agree - it serves the story and adds to the excitement and urgency.
I have a feeling that limited depth of field is going to follow the shakycam fashion and become constantly over-used. I saw one movie a few months ago that really irritated me because it used the technique so frequently.
Regards
Any trick, used for reasons not related to the programme, is a distraction. Wobby-cam and extra-short DoF both fall into this category. I watched the one-week "Criminal Justice" series, and was seriously worried by the extreme short DoF used, it made following the story quite difficult. That was shot on a HDWF900R with P+S 23mm adaptor to use 35mm movie lenses, but with a silk-stocking diffuser behind the lens. Overall, I would have preferred them to have used ordinary B4 lenses and delivered a rather bigger DoF, but that's just my opinion.
It does seem rather ironic that in years gone by film camera men were always striving to INCREASE DoF! Now we have almost limitless DoF on video restricted DoF is suddenly seen as desirable. As Paul says, it has its place but is becoming over used.
There is one scene in the Bourne Ultimatum that severely p***es me off. The scene where Bourne tells the girl friends brother that she's tatey. Totally unnecessary waving about of the camera, that really distracts from the acting - still a brilliant film though!
Small DoF is an artistic requirement, a trick used to tell you which part of the picture is important. But, coincidentally, it also has a useful place in the engineering, because using a small DoF with motivated motion means that your background is always soft and therefore easier to code. This trick, as much as anything else, is the reason why films look better than video on dvd and digital tv. On training courses, I get the students to demonstrate this for my, simply by gpoing out and shooting stuff. It works every time.
Small DoF is an artistic requirement, a trick used to tell you which part of the picture is important. But, coincidentally, it also has a useful place in the engineering, because using a small DoF with motivated motion means that your background is always soft and therefore easier to code. This trick, as much as anything else, is the reason why films look better than video on dvd and digital tv. On training courses, I get the students to demonstrate this for my, simply by gpoing out and shooting stuff. It works every time.
Now thats something really obvious that I had never thought of.
BobA
The interesting thing is to see just how little the DoF needs to be reduced in order to drop the required bit rate. Tim Wallbank (BBC Training) has a lovely demo of a chap shot against trees (a still). Actually, he's keyed onto the trees so that the fore- and backgrounds can be dealt with separately. Using a relatively small amount of diffusion, the required bit rate (for a JPEG) for the still drops by about 70%.
And the BBC is now routinely using software to simulate lower DoF in post. Actually, it diffuses rather than defocuses, there's a difference bit it would take a long time to explain the it, and the effect is rather subtle anyway. I can tell when it's been used, because there's a trick in the physics, but the effect is good.
Small DoF is an artistic requirement, a trick used to tell you which part of the picture is important. But, coincidentally, it also has a useful place in the engineering, because using a small DoF with motivated motion means that your background is always soft and therefore easier to code. This trick, as much as anything else, is the reason why films look better than video on dvd and digital tv. On training courses, I get the students to demonstrate this for my, simply by gpoing out and shooting stuff. It works every time.
Sorry Alan, I never meant to imply that it didn't have it's uses just that it used to be hard to achieve large depth of field especially on longer lenses due to the insensitivity of the film stocks.
No problem :)
The real issue now is that, as format sizes shrink and the maximum aperture of lenses increases (as an F/ number) so the DoF in pro- and con-sumer cameras is going upwards very rapidly. And that means they need compressors with higher bitrate than you'd expect. This is one reason why so many of the single sensor cameras are claiming "large format", like D20, F35 and RED. And why tricks like the P+S are so popular, even though they're a pig to use.
I was a loyal viewer of The Bill since its inception, much to my wife's annoyance and despite the fact that it was "on the other side". (I worked at the Beeb). For many years I admired the whole setup, and the team's ability to cope with a very intense shooting schedule whilst retaining high production values and craft standards. Regrettably, I now don't bother to watch any more, because the obsession with wobbly cam DRIVES ME UP THE WALL!
Am I the only retired broadcast operator who thinks there are too many nine year olds with media studies degrees directing in TV, or am I just turning into Victor Meldrew?
Welcome to the boards, Martin. As a new user, it's not surprising that you've browsed an old thread and replied to it.
I think you'll find a lot of like-minded people here though! e.g. Don't get us started on The Thick of It! :)
You're not the only one. Lots of us here have been expressing the same feeling for a long time. This thread started just under 2 years ago. The problem is not that the operators are inexperienced or amateur, it;s that the production community seems to think it's a good idea. Next time you see unacceptable camera-work on a production, take a close look at the credits. You'll almost always find (at least if it's a reasonably high-end production) that the camera op or DoP is well known in the industry and has a long record of 'doing it right', so the only conclusion you can make has to be that he/she has been instructed to go for the wobbly look.
"Take a close look at the credits"????
Chance would be a fine thing! :)
The BBC's "Credit Squeeze" certainly seems to be a permanent "feature" now. The other channels do it too. Is that what you're referring to, Stuart?
The BBC's "Credit Squeeze" certainly seems to be a permanent "feature" now. The other channels do it too. Is that what you're referring to, Stuart?
Indeed it is! It's just another thing we've got to thank Sky / America for IMO! :)
Yep, yet another unwanted intrusion on the programmes themselves. Just like the truly appalling gain ducking at the end so that a continuity announcer can tell me all about another programme I don't want to watch. It's truly refreshing to play DVDs and be able to see programmes the way the makers intended.
Oh well...back to grumpy 'ol man mode. :) My current pet hate is the 'NEXT' message that slides into the picture just as the current programme is coming to a climax/conclusion. Particularly annoying in drama series. :mad:
Martin, your 'credit squeeze' is quite wonderful!
Martin, your 'credit squeeze' is quite wonderful!
Not a Points of View viewer, then? :)
Oh well...back to grumpy 'ol man mode. :) My current pet hate is the 'NEXT' message that slides into the picture just as the current programme is coming to a climax/conclusion. Particularly annoying in drama series. :mad:
There was a film a couple of months ago on a channel which I can't remember(old age) and it had a sad ending and in the middle of the pathos a superimposed little man walked on the screen in a comical fashion with a banner for the next show.
Martin, your 'credit squeeze' is quite wonderful!
Kind of you Tom, but I can't take credit (ha!) for that term. It's a quasi-technical term the BBC themselves have coined. The phrase occurs several times in those guidelines.
Those guidelines are nonsense, though. They still use horizontal rollers on some programmes and it doesn't matter what size of font they use, they are still pretty illegible after the squeeze.
Re my Points of View comment - it's something which is frequently mentioned by viewers as something they dislike but the Beeb people they wheel on always come up with some preposterous reason to justify this practice.
To get WAY off topic.....
Re my Points of View comment - it's something which is frequently mentioned by viewers as something they dislike but the Beeb people they wheel on always come up with some preposterous reason to justify this practice.
...and my prediction: same thing will happen (i.e. users complain, BBC justifies it preposterously) when DOGs (onscreen channel idents) appear on BBC1 and BBC2 after the digital switchover in UK.
Sadly, I think you're right. There was an outcry when they tried this years ago but by now, more people are accustomed to seeing permanent logos so I suspect those complaining will be the vocal minority.