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For decades now, a form of Cinematography has
infected TV series and Movies like a plague.
It's called Documentary Style Cinematography.
Basically, the people who impose this jerky,
nauseating camera work on the public believed
making the camera move around randomly and flow
in and out of focus made viewers feel they were
watching out-in-the-field camera work from
rushed news journalists, therefore making the
viewers feel the show was more real. This,
however, was a completely wrong assumption. Most
people have just gotten used to this amateurish
style and learned to ignore it. Unfortunately,
I'm one of the minority of people who this
cinemagraphic style literally makes sick. I
remember watching World Trade Center in the
theater and had to spend most of the movie with
my eyes off the screen. Since then, if I see
previews that portray a lot of jerky camera
work, I will not go see that movie. The remake
of the Battlestar Galactica TV series came very
close to losing me as a loyal viewer during its
first season because they employed this awful
style. Lucky for me, I endured it for the first
year and the producers toned it down after.
I've had this discussion with people who took
offense at my position, saying the equivalent of
"I loved that movie/TV show. Why should I have
had to suffer because of your issue with
nausea." It is a complete fallacy.that the
cinemagrapic style made the TV show or movie
good. The reality is that over the years, there
have been outstanding movies and series that
were hugely adored and made tons of money that
didn't use documentary style. The camera
movement did not make any of these shows good.
The story, acting and directing made them good.
If any of the productions these people
vigorously defend were, instead, originally made
without the jerky camera work, none of those
defenders would have liked it less. In fact, I
believe they would have liked it even more,
without realizing it.
As a writer, I was taught that anything that
pulls a reader out of the story is author's
intrusion and it negatively affects the reader's
enjoyment. I know this is true, having read
many, many books, and have experienced this
myself. Sometimes it was so bad that I was
actually jerked out of the story hard enough
that I found myself angry at the author. The
same principle applies to TV and Movies. If a
percentage of your viewers are looking away from
the screen, then you have pulled them out of the
story.
Luckily, I'm seeing less and less of the
documentary style cinematography on the big and
small screens. However, there are still those in
the industry who continue to hold firm, and keep
trying to make people like me sick, driving us
away from their products. I can only hope that
the trend away from nauseating cinematography
keeps going until it is only a bad memory.
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