nBSG GRIMDARK

[Skylon]

Wait, wait, shakey cam was invented for nBSG? Even the Bourne movies started using it before nBSG, and that's what I can remember off the top of my head. I don't think this makes it unique to the series. Pan-and-scan, like what's been used for some of the battles, was used even in the show Skylon's avatar is from. Several space battles or faux news reports in series used it. It's nothing unique to nBSG.

I never said it was invented by BSG. It was used a LOT by BSG and became tied to the look and feel of the show.

Edit: Other sci-fi shows may have used it, but offhand, I can't think of any that did to the degree of nBSG.

[Sarevok]

To Galactica's credit the shakey cam work most of the time was very fantastic. It did it's job of putting the viewer in the scene as opposed to creating nausea like Bourne Identity. You could say Galactica is the leading example of shakey cam work that actually improved instead of turned a decent movie/series unwatchable.

[Captain Seafort]

To Galactica's credit the shakey cam work most of the time was very fantastic. It did it's job of putting the viewer in the scene as opposed to creating nausea like Bourne Identity. You could say Galactica is the leading example of shakey cam work that actually improved instead of turned a decent movie/series unwatchable.

You may feel it's a good thing, but I find that that it's very effective at giving an impression of chaos and confusion at the expense of making it impossible for the viewer to figure out what's going on. It improved drastically through the series (although there was still the occasional establishing shot that gave the impression of someone constantly fiddling with the zoom), but I still found the whole style irritating.

[Stark]

That was a directorial decision from day one, that I think gave the show its own feel. So long as it stays unique to BSG, and is not copied to death by subsequent sci-fi shows and movies, I have no problem with it.

So what? It can be DELIBERATE and still SUCK. The terrible TNG music was 'deliberate decision' too, and it sucked. The idea that it's okay for precious virginal nBSG to do it, but not anyone else ever to 'copy' it, is utterly asinine.

Some of the biggest effects scenes actually stopped the camera shaking...maybe to serve as a cue that it was important. The image was pretty steady during Pegasus' suicide run and the destruction of the Resurrection Ship.

Should I point out what's wrong with giant climatic action scenes NOT tumbling around the scene like the cameraman has Parkinsons and scenes with stationary people talking having random zooms on people's chests? It's not a bad device itself, but from what I've seen it was used lazily to force a mood. 'Documentary feel' is one thing; a three-year old with a camera doing better is just sad.

[Skylon]

So what? It can be DELIBERATE and still SUCK. The terrible TNG music was 'deliberate decision' too, and it sucked. The idea that it's okay for precious virginal nBSG to do it, but not anyone else ever to 'copy' it, is utterly asinine.

Okay, so you hated it. To each his own. I simply took it as part of the feel for the show, and never had a problem with it. That said, I don't see how it's asinine to feel it shouldn't be copied to death by subsequent shows. If it works for the show, it works...but I can't picture it being used in Star Trek, or Stargate on a regular basis.

Should I point out what's wrong with giant climatic action scenes NOT tumbling around the scene like the cameraman has Parkinsons and scenes with stationary people talking having random zooms on people's chests? It's not a bad device itself, but from what I've seen it was used lazily to force a mood. 'Documentary feel' is one thing; a three-year old with a camera doing better is just sad.

Chests? Faces, objects of attention, like the DRADIS or keeping up with the Vipers for example, seemed to be the focus of the zooms. I can't recall a specific sequence that was outright ruined, or I could not follow due to the camera's crazy antics.

[NecronLord]

Personally, I've never had an issue with the shakey cam. I've never really noticed it in BSG, except in the way they want it to highlight something.

[Stark]

The best part is when someone says 'over there' and that camera wildly skews in that direction only to snap back to an unfocused shot on the speaker. If they treated the camera as a character this would make sense, but as it is all it does is provide endless blurry shots of nothing.

[Darth Onasi]

Generally I liked the camera usage in space, as it felt like it was a real event being filmed by someone on another ship.
The live action stuff could get a bit much at times, as if the directors were getting too full of themselves with the whole "gritty, oh so realistic cam action".

[Uraniun235]

Shaky-cam got toned down a bunch as the series progressed. It's a lot more noticeable (less refined?) in the miniseries and early episodes.

[JME2]

Shaky-cam got toned down a bunch as the series progressed. It's a lot more noticeable (less refined?) in the miniseries and early episodes.

Makes sense; they were still honing their craft. And yeah, while it annoyed me somewhat at first, I got used to it and I do seem to recall it getting toned down as it progressed.

[VT-16]

All I know is, I got sick of shaky-cams back when NYPD Blue did it (and got extensively parodied for it, iirc).
And to be fair, even AOTC had some shaky-cam (or at least a couple of zooms)... It's ok in battle scenes, but not much else. Now it's in everything from sci-fi to documentaries to interviews.

[Covenant]

Shakycam is something that needs to be using sparingly, and BSG really abused it. The thing is, most people don't really understand, but a stationary cam is a bodiless viewer, but a shakycam is "as if it were filmed." So when you add a shakycam, it brings the viewer into the shot and makes the camera and the viewer part of the shot. That's not necessary for most shots, and just disturbs the view.

While they used it less as time went on, they had more and more on-ship scenes, and you nearly never need a shakycam for those kinds of shots--so it went from over-used to used without need. Either way, too much shake.

Generally I liked the camera usage in space, as it felt like it was a real event being filmed by someone on another ship.
The live action stuff could get a bit much at times, as if the directors were getting too full of themselves with the whole "gritty, oh so realistic cam action".

I agree with this. When filming the spaceships, which would normally be fairly stationary, the shakycam makes it look interesting and helps establish some realism and makes you feel like you're watching a hand-shot video of the Galactica out a porthole.

But I really am tired of the shakycam fight scenes. It makes the fight scenes feel more 'chaotic' but most of the time I wish the camera were stationary and I was able to actually enjoy it. By shaking it up, it makes me less impressed by the action, and it makes me wonder what they're hiding. If you want me to feel the chaos of battle, use the shakycam every once and a while, such as when the camera is following some characters (the "as if you were a soldier" cam) and the rest of the time just set off explosives. As far as fights go, I'd rather have the Sparta cam (slow and fast 300-version fight scenes) than the shaky cam, and that's still not as good as an oldschool well choreographed fight scene with a stationary camera.

[Marcus Aurelius]

All I know is, I got sick of shaky-cams back when NYPD Blue did it (and got extensively parodied for it, iirc).
Now it's in everything from sci-fi to documentaries to interviews.

I was just going to write the same thing... NYPD Blue really was probably the first major TV show that used deliberately exaggerated hand-held camera effect, otherwise known as the "amateur camcorder née 8 mm effect". However, in some documentaries it might not have been not deliberately overdone, since they may have actually been recorded with a lightweight camcorder that does not have a proper shoulder brace.

The mother of all shaky camera work signifying realism in Western culture is of course the Zapruder film, although hand-held 16 mm and 8 mm cameras were used already in WW2 for combat footage.

[Stark]

Shakycam is something that needs to be using sparingly, and BSG really abused it. The thing is, most people don't really understand, but a stationary cam is a bodiless viewer, but a shakycam is "as if it were filmed." So when you add a shakycam, it brings the viewer into the shot and makes the camera and the viewer part of the shot. That's not necessary for most shots, and just disturbs the view.

This is what I was getting at earlier - in many scenes, the shakycam positions the audience as present in the scene; they are snapping looks at the participants in The Discussion, they're glancing out the door into the chaos, they're turning in response to Important Revealations, etc. That the camera ISN'T a character and this isn't consistent makes it appalling, and I think it's actually very ironic that as others have said the space stuff is far LESS annoying because the camera doesn't behave like a person.

[Prometheus Unbound]

Would it count as 'less grimdark' if they learned how to point a fucking camera at a stationary object without shaking like a three-legged washing machine? I have no problem with the 'gritty' themes of nBSG; the ham-fisted way we're informed THIS IS EXCITING or OMG DID YOU SEE THAT is just tiresome.

That was a directorial decision from day one, that I think gave the show its own feel. So long as it stays unique to BSG, and is not copied to death by subsequent sci-fi shows and movies, I have no problem with it.

Some of the biggest effects scenes actually stopped the camera shaking...maybe to serve as a cue that it was important. The image was pretty steady during Pegasus' suicide run and the destruction of the Resurrection Ship.

Do you remember the episode where a piece of space-junk hits the camera, cracks the lens and sends it spiralling away from the focus of what it's pointing at?

That was a lolwut moment for me.

[Battlehymn Republic]

The ending IS grimdark.

The climax of the series was clever enough: everybody gets to Earth, even if they have to do it by renaming a planet, and the Story Begins Again. There were a couple of problems with the final episodes, though. The show made a big deal out of the leave-taking of the decrepit Galactica to free the little semi-cylon girl, to good dramatic effect. A particularly touching moment was when the old doctor tried to volunteer for the suicide mission, and the admiral gently rejected him because he was too valuable to the fleet. But a few hours later in story-time, after the girl had been rescued, the Galactica and the fleet are back together anyway, in orbit over the Earth of 150,000 years ago. The goodbyes were all a waste. Moreover, so were the doctor's skills. The fleet had determined to adopt a primitive mode of life on the new world, to break civilization's cyclical violence of man versus machine. In that case, the doctor is just an old guy with hypertension who is unlikely to live more than a few weeks on the African veldt.

those fuckers killed Dr. Cottle