"Shaky Camera" techniques in NYPD Blue tv show

Post Reply New Topic

I tried watching an episode of NYPD Blue earlier today and found it extremely uncomfortable to watch. I had tried in the past when it first came out and couldn't watch it then, either.

The problem is their use of techniques to try to make it look "realistic" and "unscripted" by using hand held cameras that shake and jitter and lots of panning. Also lots of extremely short camera shots that leave you unable to comprehend the scene you are looking at before going to the next.

When the cameraman focuses up on one speaker with the camera bouncing around and then pans over to another speaker it is particularly distracting.

And it doesn't appear at all realistic to me.

It's true that our head, and thus our eyes, move around all the time, but our brain is used to adjusting to that and so we see the world as being solid and in one place. When the camera is bouncing around, they aren't mimicking our head moving slightly -- they are really giving us the same affect as being on a bouncing object such as on a boat in choppy seas or a car on a rough road.

Do these techniques bother anyone else? Does anyone here like NYPD Blue?

Oops. This probably should have been on the Television, Film, and Video forum. I had forgotten that that forum exists.

It's alright.