Hurt Locker!?!?

J

jimpatro

Well-known member
Barry Ackroyd nominated for an Academy award? Sheesh! He does that shaky, zoomy zoomy cam stuff. At one point the AUTO IRIS actually kicks in!!
A lot of it is super dark or not even lit at all. You see a lot of indie stuff shot this way out of a lack of a lighting budget. Understandable. But to do this on purpose it's all of a sudden art? Unbelievable.

If he wins I'm going back into radio.

Rant over, carry on.
 
Wasn't Hurt Locker S16? No AUTO IRIS there.

I'm not a huge fan of shakycam stuff but there is something it does very well. And I didn't notice it until I had gone through the latter two Bourne movies a second time. For the first 10 minutes or so, I was ticked but then the movie just flew by and I forgot to complain. There's an energy there that works really well for certain things - Bourne, Hurt Locker, United 93. It definitely is over-used in the indie world, but when it works it works.

And it's all just a matter of opinion anyway.

~~Dave
 
Yep, a matter of opinion. Just ranting from my own perspective.

When Bourne really gets going, say in the fight scenes, the handheld is natural because fists are flying, people are flying across the room. It looks no different from any other good fight scene. But when two people are having a sit down talk and the camera operator seems like he's about to collapse from 15 hour days well, that's just the director or DP wanting to be cool.

I may have mentioned this before but watch Man on Fire. High tension, editorial energy, no shaky cam. It can be done.
 
I love the cinematography in THL. Hell, I hope it wins the award. It just worked beautifully for the film.

To each his own, I guess.
 
I thought THL was shot really well. I never really felt anything needed to be shot differently from the way it was (except for a few things). At some point I sensed *low budget* based on coverage, but so what? I've been rooting for Kathryn Bigelow's return and I'm glad she pulled this off and gets to compete with the king of mega-budget filmmaking (even if it is just a show).

The Constant Gardener was way more shaky-cam and I personally didn't have a problem with it (even having watched it in a theater).

It's actually not easy to shoot good shaky-cam stuff even though a lot of operators think all they need to do is shake the camera around. I've seen a LOT of really awkward looking shaky-cam stuff over the years shot by people who just didn't have an affinity for movement.

Not everyone likes to look at shaky-cam footage, but it's beautiful when it works.

.
 
You should look at the behind the scenes for Star Trek. JJ Abrams personally pounds on the camera during takes to get the shaky cam effect.
 
I saw her give a Q&A about the film and it most definitely was "low budget" as far as movies like this go.

They shot on location in Jordan and a lot of the action sequences were multi-camera one take deals. All things considered, I think the film came out beautifully.
 
Twice the camera gets a blast from the sun and you can clearly see the lens reflection right in the middle.

Subtle, butttttttttt come on.
 
I thought this movie needed to low budget. If hollywood pumped tens of millions more into it we could have had keanu instead of renner. Just my 2
 
What a horrible movie. I hated every single aspect of the film and I had such high hopes.

I really loved Strange Days and K-19.....oh well.

The cinematography was horrendous, the script and storytelling made no sense.
 
Gohanto said:
Could you point out a moment or two where it stood out?

(I didn't notice that and I'm just curious what you're referring to)
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I took a quick look at it again and I think what I felt was (based on shots) that is was more about seeing a lot of tight shots, which generally means "low budget" since it's easier to shoot around production design and lack of lighting package with tight shots.

.
 
djkarn105 said:
Wow. I thought this was the best movie I saw in 2009.
To each his own I guess (except when you disagree with me :grin: )
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Well there is an old saying "You cant compare colors, just like you cant compare taste."

Everyone draws their own conclusions and mine come from my experience.

-I used to work as a documentary cameraman and traveled to the region including Iraq for many years.

-I know a lot of Marines that were there during the initial invasion and patrolled the streets.

-I have recently worked with a bomb squad on a movie and got their opinion on the technical aspects of the movie.

Its easy for me to sit on the sidelines and critique the cinematography based on handheld use/available lighting/budget and location restrictions but at the same time with my experience of working with similar budgets and constraints I personally do not believe not everything I saw on screen was due to a compromise but purely their choice of doing it a certain way.

I have seen better story telling, cinematography and flow in indie film makers with almost no resources compared to THL. My hat off to the hard working filmmakers that get by with much less.

THL is a movie style is I hope I never waste my money on again.

just my 2c
 
I noticed the f-stop adjustment too, but for me it just added to the realism of the scene because the movie feels documentary-esque at times so it just felt like the cameraman had to compensate for the lighting on the fly.

It's obviously a narrative no-no but for this movie it just seemed to work. Especially for that scene in which they find...
 
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