[b112]

What really gets me are two things. The jiggle cam, and "let's film stuff but obscure what is happening in post".

I have watched so many 2005+ movies, where all the action scenes are just replaced with 'jiggle the screen around', and thus, you see nothing.

Worse, I've seen fight scenes with no/little jiggle, but then every move, punch, dodge, car stunt is replaced with a fast cut, so you don't actually see... well, anything.

Someone else mentioned that the reason stunt doubles are changed vfx wise, is because maybe they couldn't find one similar enough.

I call hooey on that, the real issue is cost. Generic stunt doubles are far cheaper than "stunt double who looks like top tier star".

And the jiggle cam is cheaper than a real action scene, and fast cuts are too, because who cares how well it is timed/shot if you can't see it.

I think, much like any industry, all this junk is just cost savings. It also shifts blame, and requires less talent from the director and actors.

I doubt any modern director, or actor, could handle the pressure of expensive shots, dangerous shots, with people running through explosions, or car chases, stunt doubles or not.

Nope. Just throw all that at sfx, and all the stress, cost, and reputation risking shots are no longer an actor's or dieector's issue.

Ah well.

[grumbel]

> I call hooey on that, the real issue is cost.

It's actually rarely about cost itself, just look at modern movie budget, they didn't exactly get cheaper than 20+ years ago. The main factor is time, predictability and control. When you do it in post with CGI, you always have full control and can change your mind at any time. If you do it practical, you are stuck with whatever you filmed. Going back and doing a reshoot takes a long while, in CGI you just jiggle some parameters and rerender. If your movie-star-lookalike stuntman breaks a leg, you have a problem. If you do it with CGI, it barely matters what you captured in camera, just change it.

With modern movies there is so much CGI to begin with, that it hardly even matters what you filmed, it's not unusual to completely redesign scenes in post, as the script wasn't even finished when they started filmed the thing.

[mindslight]

In theory, the flexibility is great. In practice it is itself a problem, as those decisions are avoided throughout production and instead accumulate into post. Where they get further kicked down the road - client for first 80% of schedule: "looks alright". client for remaining 80% of schedule: "[now that we've actually thought about this] we want it to be this way". The artists lament what they could have done had they gotten this direction earlier, ultimately just polish the turd with weekly extensions until the client is satisfied-slash-actual-deadline, and look forward to the next show where things might not go as awry.

Like everything in our society, the real problem is that the people in charge of managing don't know how to do the work, and rather than listening to, taking feeding, and trusting the people doing the work, they act as if their job is to blindly push orders downwards and micromanage whatever catches their attention. The article ('s followup) touches on this, ("managed to get themselves into really high positions but don’t know how a green screen works... People in the traditional leadership roles are boomers or Gen X guys, and what we do now didn’t exist when they were coming up"), but is naive in thinking that it's going to get better over time. In actuality, the "creatives" of tomorrow are busy gladhanding today, and the dynamic will persist.

I think this is why the production setup of Mandalorian got many VFX people excited, despite Engine being so counter to the standard workflow. It pushed the bulk of CGI to where it belongs - as a backdrop for actual acting and storytelling, and directly fed into the director's real time decision making. There are always going to be touch ups and last minute changes, but those are only practical in the context of having larger structure locked down. There are definitely constraints of the digital backdrop technique (watch Mandalorian again after that video, and you see it in everything), but I look forward to seeing how it might trickle out into the rest of the industry.

[mkl]

> Worse, I've seen fight scenes with no/little jiggle, but then every move, punch, dodge, car stunt is replaced with a fast cut, so you don't actually see... well, anything.

Jackie Chan's non-American work is the antithesis of this. Here's a great Every Frame a Painting on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1PCtIaM_GQ

[b112]

Yes, I sort of wish he'd dive more into producing/directing.

[bitwize]

Shakycam is the worst. Casino Royale (2006) was loaded with it. It was so bad I couldn't parse what was going on in an action scene. In a James Bond film, which is supposed to ride on its action scenes.

The shakycam trope can probably be traced back to The Blair Witch Project, but for the action/thriller genre it really comes from the Bourne series. It's an easy way to add verisimilitude to a fight/chase and lets you skimp on the fight choreography because the fighters can't be seen very well. But personally I find it disorienting, and it took me right out of what everybody says was an excellent Bond film (and might've been if they committed to smooth reasonable action shots rather than shakycam).

[nabilhat]

If yt wasn't so hostile to fair use, running shaky scenes through video stabilization to explore the artistic contributions of camera shake could make for an interesting channel. Is the scene ridiculous without it, like the stabilized Star Trek scenes making the rounds years ago? Or is watchability improved by the contents not bobbing and weaving around?

[dharmon]

In my memory it was Batman Begins (2005) that had if bad and started the trend, but you’re right about the first Bourne movie (2002) being somewhere near the start (as far as tent pole movies go).

At any rate it’s a super lazy crutch for bad choreography. Contrasted with something like the Indiana jones airplane fight scene with its wide shots of the action is like night and day.

[ogogmad]

To me, this seems subjective and grouchy. It might be that when you were growing up, things were a certain way, and now they're a bit different. You have a minor aesthetic disagreement. Some people like the shaky cam.

[b112]

You may like the shakey cam, and that's fine naturally, but claiming age has something to do with it is weird. It is also unfair to call me grouchy.

All I know is that shakey cam is incredibly unreal to me. I have never, in my entire life, experienced scenarios where my vision was like a shakey cam, and I say this as someone with a history of racing, stunt driving, and a variety of athletic activities which jostles one about.

When in such real life situations, my body senses motion, my brain sorts it out, and there is no shakey cam effect.

I liken it to making a sound track for a movie, but imagine two people talking, while someone randomly cranks the audio up and down, and changes the aurial position of the speaker randomly.

Sure, that's going to create tension and stress in the movie goer too, but it draws one out of immersion, and is just lazy work.

Intensity can be created with real actual intensity, the shakey cam is a crutch.

[BLKNSLVR]

The only people who like shaky can are those who haven't experienced real, well choreographed, action sequences that are clear and visible.

It works in some scenarios but really has been used a lot, likely predominantly, to obscure unreality.