Don Norman

Giant The Big Country The Magnificent Seven Lawrence of Arabia The Birds Ryan's Daughter Tess

I noticed that the younger of the two nephews of Bryce Dallas Howard was shooting with a Holga or Diana medium format film camera and that he had two different film cameras on a shelf in his bedroom. Also with the way he was taking pictures, the results would have been pretty bad because of careless framing and not really making an effort to hold the camera steady. I thought the movie looked good but you couldn't really tell that some sequences were shot in 65mm. All the formats - 35mm spherical, 65mm, and Red Dragon cut together very well.

I think "Lawrence of Arabia" would be another good example of visual storytelling. I posted this on AICN about LOA: There are many clever/brilliant touches in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA that I've discovered with repeat viewings. A few examples: O'Toole using his dagger as a mirror when he first puts on the Arab garb (he sees his virtuous, heroic self-image) and again later at the massacre of the retreating Turks where he sees his ironic "barbarous and cruel" self-image; the scene with the sour grapes which is an omen of the "bitter fruits of victory" feeling that Lawrence has after the taking of Damascus; the left-to-right movement of Lawrence in his travels which was meant to convey the idea that Lawrence was on a personal as well as physical journey. That last sequence of Lawrence in the car going back to Egypt (note the right-to-left movement) and eventually home to England has a lot in it: his love for the desert and its people (his standing up and looking at the camels and their riders going in the opposite direction), an omen of his eventual fate and cause of his death (the motorcycle passing by), and his enigmatic character (the dirty windshield obscuring his face). There's a lot of discussion of the music and how the movie works on multiple levels here: http://tinyurl.com/252u4kn or: http://www.filmscoremonthly.co m/board/posts.cfm?forumID=1&pa geID=1&threadID=52145&archive= 0

Not just the stabilization platforms, how about the all the effort and expense expended to create the other advanced technologies such as fine-grained film, sharp lenses, precision camera movements, high MP sensors etc.. Shaky-cam or handheld camerawork degrades or erodes the image quality that all these technological advances were meant to elevate. Right?

I think that in many cases, the shaky-cam technique actually diminishes the sense or illusion of reality that it attempts to create (if *reality* is the director's intent). Many and perhaps most viewers, I would think, are conscious of the fact that there's a hand-held camera being used to record the images that they're viewing when the shaky-cam technique is used. Maybe it's time to question or re-examine the assumptions as to what the psychological effects really are on an audience of the shaky-cam technique. Maybe the way it affects an audience is actually the opposite of what the film-maker intended. Perhaps a scientific study would provide some definitive answers. I happen to think that with a little more imagination and effort, the intended sense or level of reality or unreality of a scene or an entire film can be realized with the traditional fly-on-the-wall paradigm and without the use of shaky-cam, thus sparing a significant percentage of the audience physical discomfort or a sense of queasiness (why would anyone truly want this to be experienced by an audience?). Just my $.02.

Regarding the orange and teal color scheme, what is the rationale for its use? Does anyone else here find this color scheme to be annoying or a distraction? There is an interesting article at this link called "5 Annoying Trends That Make Every Movie Look the Same" that lists it at #4: http://tinyurl.com/37g66va - Don