So I finally got the chance to see paranormal.... I was at the point of turning it off for the camera style alone nm the movie itself. I couldn't hear a damn thing, had to turn the treble way up as their 'home cam' mic was complete crap and hard to hear and the wobbly "Look I'm using a home cam!" footage drove me nuts. I think at this point the only home cam style movie I genuinely enjoyed was Cloverfield.

Why is this style considered a good thing It isn't artsy, and certainly doesn't add to the immersion levels, if anything it detracts from it.

Anyways, Paranormal itself was sooooo slow. I don't think I found it interesting until towards the end, say the last 15 minutes or so. not even worth posting about in itself, more irritated by the camera work at this point (and the mic... argggg the mic)


Edit: I take it back, I also really enjoyed Quarantine, but they also had a much higher quality to the camera work and didn't give crappy angles every few minutes to accentuate the fact it was an 'our point of view' movie.

/Ramble /ramble

That shaky home cam crap is stupid. Lucky for me it makes my lady friend violently ill so I have a great reason to complete avoid them.

 

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Agreed, most of the times I hate them. I never saw Cloverfield because of it. District 9 was alright but it wasn't that bad. Most of them use it way too much and it makes it hard to watch.

 

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Hate it. Just like any other style it has a place but once Hollywood gets hold of some new thing they drive it into the ground.

 

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Its one style that was interesting the first time. But afterward it just got annoying.

 

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How many of these are there, though? A few a year? If it's handled well, by a talented director, it can still work, as District 9 showed. If it's just a gimmick, like it was in Paranormal Activity, then it's going to seem overdone... but Paranormal Activity would have been a bland film with or without that home video feel.

yeah district 9 used it really well. the .. documentary? aspects of the film had a realness to them because of the film style. but that was also professionals with cameras following this guy around to document the whole alien thing vs some douchebag with a home camera trying to film ghosts.

pa was god awful. it wasn't as bad as legion but it was close.

 

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Jokes on all of you... it was a home video.

 

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Heh, I reember when people thought Blair Witch was real too.

Poor actors kept getting reported to the police stations everytime someone saw them in public as "them missing kids".

 

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I was going to start a thread too, good thing I looked twice.

I just came from "Green Zone" (starring Matt Damon as a US Soldier in Iraq). The shaky cam + that zoom or snapzoom or whatever you call it were excessively exploited if you ask me. I can handle the mainstream of this function, as the director is most likely trying to evoke these "live in action" emotion, but there's this other half of me screaming "ZOom one more time, and I swear I'll kill you ".

I don't know if it is really worth the uproar, but I had trouble actually following the moves in close-combat scenes. Bourne triology also had the shaky but it was possible to follow something - now, the cam is so "absurdly" zoomed in, I can see atoms and boogers ;P.

zomg, when 3D glasses mainstream hits, I'll prolly be sick'n'dizzy all the time.

 

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