10 Times Hollywood Learned The Wrong Lesson From Movies
1. Use Shaky Cam Instead Of Well-Designed Action - The Bourne Supremacy
The second Bourne movie, The Bourne Supremacy, was widely noted for its unconventional approach to action, with filmmaker Paul Greengrass shooting most of the combat with intentionally shaky camerawork in an attempt to give the mayhem a more grounded, faux-documentary style.
And though not everyone vibed with this approach, it did at least make The Bourne Supremacy stand out as an immersive action film, in large part because the editing still maintained a coherent sense of spatial geography.
The film's success of course turned shaky cam into a Hollywood trend, not merely to imitate something popular, though, but also because it allowed filmmakers to easily cover up bad fight choreography and unprepared actors amid the shakiness.
Basically, lazy directors used it in place of tightly designed action shot with intention, deciding to figure out the finer details in the editing room, in turn resulting in headache-inducing messes like the infamous fence-jumping scene from Taken 3.
Shaky cam is a tool like any other, albeit one that's certainly worn out its welcome in recent years, with filmmakers largely pinging back to smoothly shot, wide-open action coverage as in the John Wick movies.