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This camera guy sucks

Cinematographers try too hard to shake things up.

By Kevin Rayburn

Published May 7, 2010

The shaky camera style was officially named in 1981, but not until recently have audiences been subjected to the effects of it, with the occasional moment of nausea.

So what's up with this camera guy? What am I going to gain from my only view of this scene being played with like a bowl of Jell-O?

"Varieté," directed by Ewald Andre Dupont in 1925, was the first instance of experimentation with hand-held, and thus, shaky camera work in a motion picture. After almost 50 years of silent film, who could blame cinematographers? They needed to shake things up.

Reel by reel, the film industry became more adventurous with its filming techniques. Director Sam Raimi had his crew rig the camera to a two-by-four piece of wood and drag it through a scene in his 1981 film "The Evil Dead." This unfortunate camera ran over the dead body props in the scene and was thrashed around street corners as it chased an actress.

However, the shaky camera can involve much more finesse and purpose. Surrounding the millennium, Y2K was accompanied by a fascination with documentary-style featured films like 1999's "The Blair Witch Project," in which a shaky camera was used to give the appearance of an amateur cameraman's work.

The birth of reality television-inspired TV series like "The Office" and "Arrested Development," both filmed as documentaries, created an opportunity to avidly use the shaky camera. The feel of these shows is enhanced by the filming method, making the documentary of the characters more believable.

Although the first TV series to use shaky camera filming was "ER" in 1994, now shows have popped up all around -- including hits such as "House," "Bones," "Glee" and shows like Science Channel's "Mantracker."

More apparent in documentary-style shows, shaky camera filming still attributes a reinforcement to the scenes portrayed by the actors. In "Bones," about a murder-solving forensic anthropologist partnered with an FBI special agent, the shaky camera effect can be clearly seen in scenes that focus on interpersonal relationships, and it continues the overall plot development of the series rather than the specific episode. In contrast, the camera barely moves at all in scenes where scientific evidence is discussed.

TV shows employ a better, wiser use of the shaky camera technique compared to movies, where it is continually used to show strong emotional distress in a scene, as in the "Bourne" trilogy. Not to mention the loom of mortal peril like in "Cloverfield," which even forced movie theaters to place signs warning viewers that its filming method could cause motion sickness. In brief digression, opponents of the movie might have had more to fear in the dreaded shaky camera than the movie's alien invader.

In light of each instance of the shaky camera, it does encourage, even if subconsciously, a personal investment to the characters. And as long as you bring some Dramamine to combat potential motion sickness, you might even get more out of a shaky camera-riddled movie than just an intense fight scene.