I love a good action movie. But a bad action movie can be confusing, disorienting, and totally displeasing. A lot of that has to do with the almost exclusive use of the “shaky cam” in modern day action sequences. As far as I’m concerned, only one director can properly use that technique for action: Paul Greengrass. And even he goes too far sometimes.
Mattias Stork, a Los Angeles scholar and filmmaker, has made a fantastic video essay that examines techniques of past action films and present. It’s really pretty brilliant. Take a look.
Chaos Cinema Part 1 from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.
And here’s part two.
Chaos Cinema Part 2 from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.
Thanks to Slashfilm for posting this.
Loading tweets...