Hand held cameras
I thought was a good film, but could not understand all the hand held camera filming flicking about, what was the director trying to accomplish apart from giving the movie public eye strain. Still a good film though.
shareHand-held is filmic language to suggest 'realism'. It gives a film a documentary feel. Given that this film is based upon a 'true' story I'm guessing Liman wanted to suggest this via his use of hand-held cameras.
shareWhile I completely agree with you 100%, this film did have some spastic motions in some of the hand-held shots. While I am a huge fan of hand-held shots there are right ways and wrong ways to do it.
The Wrestler, Black Swan, Babel, and Syrianna had some great shots as well... I can give examples all damn day though...
If you can avoid those sporadic spastic moments then it's a great technique,(probably my favorite to be honest) but when it happens, (at least for me) it takes me out of the film for that brief moment.