Camera Shake...

[L.M]

Whats your opinion on camera shake in films?
I think sometimes it can be very effective (To make something look hyper-realistic like the Blair Witch Project)
And other times not. (Eg: Man running away from a dog, camera shake to make something ridiculous, dramatic.)
Any thoughts?

[Marc Peters]

Overused and annoying.

[seymore]

Whenever i see camera shake i always think it's unintentional and bad camera work. Unless there's an explosion of course, then it looks good.

[mrlipring]

It all depends. Sometimes it looks ok, but generally it looks amateurish.

On the subject of NO camera shake, though, i watch Pulp Fiction again last night, and there's a bit fairly near the end, when Butch Coolidge is going back to get his dad's watch...

He parks the car, and walks through some wasteland to get to his old apartment. He climbs through a fairly small hole in the fence, and the camera follows him through, and it's SO smooth. Go watch it.

Same as the Tarantino section of 4 Rooms. There's a CRAZY long section of that that's one shot. PF is full of long shots too, but 4 Rooms has the best one. It's all shot in one room, and people are moving to and fro, and it's just so seamless. Amazing.

But yeah, if the camera shake "fits" then go for it.

[Nick Niehaus]

I've become accustomed to camera shake. I have an old (manufactured in the late 1980's ) Bogen/Manfrotto tripod, and it was in storage for almost a decade. A ton of icky junk got stuck inside the head, making it very hard to smoothly pan and tilt. Until I decide to stop being lazy and clean it out, I am stuck tripodless - and I have found that the subsequent camera shake is not too distracting if

- the video is interesting and catching, thus distracting the viewer from the shake
- the shake is minimal enough to make little difference in the framed shot
- the video's content makes a bit of camera shake appropriate, such as the previously stated Blair Witch Project

[Alan Mills]

I recently watched 'The Bourne Supremacy' again and was very conscious of the camera shake. Seems it's the director's fad of choice for that movie, the handheld look.

My view on this is simple. I noticed it and for a few seconds concentrated on it rather than the story. Therefore it was wrong to do it.

For me the best piece of camera shake I'm aware of is in 'Fight Club'.