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For me, the abuse of shaky cam is often the result of lack of clear vision. Its often very difficult to break away from the shaky cam aesthetic in a project (once you’ve started it) if you don’t have a clear understanding or vision of why you started using it in the first place. So for the filmmakers that overuse shaky cam, there may be an unjustified fear that the transition from shaky to steady feels out of place or inconsistent with the story. As a result, they may unintentionally find themselves leaning more into the shaky cam in scenes that don’t call for it. Again, if you don’t really have a good reason for using shaky cam in a story, then you’re likely not going to have a good reason for transitioning out of it.
AI will certainly wreak havoc in certain industries just as every major innovation throughout history has done. But humans will also continue do what humans have always done — adjust and adapt to those changes. The ones who will suffer the most will be the purists or the ones unwilling to adapt. So while we should be concerned about the unknowns of AI’s potential, I think society will be fine in the end.
Having said that, after feeling the initial shock of each innovation in AI capabilities, I find that as time goes on, AI’s regurgitated generative “art” becomes more recognizable and less impressive. I think that we’re initially afraid of it because our minds haven’t adjust to it yet. But just over the past year alone, society quickly and naturally learned to spot AI generated images. Teachers can now naturally tell (without the help of AI detectors) whether a student used Chat GPT to write a paper.
The human mind is pretty darn good at recognizing when something isn’t quite right. So while AI will create problems in the film industry, I just don’t see it completely replacing human filmmakers.
I think it has its valid uses and advantages, but overall can be a dangerous tool. Especially in the hands of a non-DP pretending to be a DP.
Looking into it, I also find that a lot of the DaVinci tutorials and reviews online, while very helpful for beginners, tend to be a little deceptive (I assume unintentionally). Many of the tutorials for tools like “Relight” are often times performed on stills or a single frame where they can push the limits of the effect, without showing you how it looks on the rest of the clip. Its only when you play the entire clip that you see the effect quickly breakdown with noticeable noise, artifacts, wonky tracking, etc.
Granted, it all depends on the motivation and purpose for doing it, but for me, dolly pushes tend to feel more natural than zooms. I think because so much within an image is altered in some way during a zoom as the focal length changes that zooms tend to feel a little more jarring. Maybe this is because it is a natural human instinct to move in closer when we want to see something more clearly. Afterall, unless we’re using a phone camera or something, we don’t stand in one place and zoom in with our naked eye. Also, I find that dolly pushes tend to be a little more forgiving in the shakes and bumps than zooms, but maybe that’s just me.
Having said that, there’s also the option of doing neither and just doing a digital zoom in post. haha!
I’m sorry. I’ll see myself out. Please don’t ban me! lolThe film school I went to years ago took a very mathematical approach to contrast ratios, which was very helpful from a fundamental learning standpoint. However, because the approach to it was treated almost dogmatically, every short film felt strangely over lit (unnecessary fill and atmosphere light everywhere regardless of low or high key scenes) in order to try and capture the accurate numbers. Granted, you could just blame most of the problem on film students being inexperienced. But everyone was afraid to let anything fall into darkness (even if it was a 4:1 scenario) if the numbers in the exposure didn’t match up exactly. It took having a working DP in the industry to come in for a semester to break the habit by asking us, “Does it look good and feel right for the story? No? Then why are you lighting it that?”
