Movie Fights-- When did this start and when will it stop?

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olimario

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I watched Batman Begins again tonight and I'm sick of the ECU, shaky cam fight scenes. It ruined the Bourne Supremacy and it took away from the amazing Batman Baggins.

And it's made worse because we just finished with a wonderful run of wonderfully choreographed fights in the Matrix Trilogy, Crouching Tiger-esque movies, The Bourne Identity, and Kung Fu Hustle.

Where exactly did this trend start, why do directors think it's good, and when will it stop?
 
I think someone important in Hollywood must have convinced the hive mind jump cuts and aggressive editing make audiences enjoy action sequences more.

Shaky cam, I like least, but even the cut-heavy action in Star Wars Ep. 3 annoyed me. I don't know why it's so popular. I haven't seen Batman Begins yet, but I don't like the sound of that... and I agree on Bourne (well, I think the movie was still good, but the action sequences are one of a few reasons I like the original better than the sequel)
 
I haven't seen Batman Begins, but I know exactly what you're talking about and I find it just as annoying. I think directors are just getting lazy and this gives them a way to cheat having to choreograph large fight scenes at greater expense to the actors and professionals/choreographers.
 
My friend has a theory and I don't think it's far from the truth. Directors are afraid to hold a shot because teenagers today have to constantly see something new or they'll tire of what they're watching. MTV doesn't hold a shot for more than 3 seconds. Watch a random show and have a stopwatch handy and you'll see what I mean.

It's sad. I know asses are getting kicked during scenes like that, but I don't know who is winning or how it's happening.
 
I don't like shaky cam effects either. They are stupid, they take away any possibility of some cool fight technique being shown. That being said I saw Batman Begins tonight and the shaky cam effect is used for effect. The director is trying to convey how chaotic a fight can be.
 
If I have one complaint for Batman Begins, it would have to be the close up action of the fight scenes and the shaky cam. Otherwise, the movie was fantastic.
 
i hate the term shaky cam. cause the camera doesnt shake. whoever coined that term should be shot. quick cuts is what they use. and it works great in batman begins. i had absolutely no problems with it. its supposed to give you the sense batman's foes feel ..
 
quadriplegicjon said:
i hate the term shaky cam. cause the camera doesnt shake. whoever coined that term should be shot. quick cuts is what they use. and it works great in batman begins. i had absolutely no problems with it. its supposed to give you the sense batman's foes feel ..
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Eh, I feel it comes from the way it looks like the camera is being shaken around in the shots. It could be quick cuts, but that's just how it looks to me.

I don't want to get the sense of what Batman's foes feel, either.

Zen - [spoiler ] [/spoiler ] (w/o the spaces)
 
I liked the way it was used in most of the scenes in Batman Begins, the only scene i thought they really overdid it was
the fight scene on the train at the end, it made me lose all perspective of the action, and it was supposed to be a definitive moment, the student defeating the teacher, etc.
The scene could have benefited from a moderate amount of the effect, but I feel it was overdone.
 
Quick cuts are used in BB because they don't as Liam put it want to show you some graceful drawn out fight... the League taught him to be brutal aggressive and quickly take down his opponents because he's facing so many the director tries to capture that brutal aggressive feel by the quick cuts to show that Batman is quickly taking down each opponent... no drawn out individual fights, 1-2 shots per opponent and that's it.

It's one of the few movies where I actually don't mind the quick cuts.
 
quick cuts are a bane, especially in good fight scenes.

And shaky cam is a term applied to literally shaky camera shots, mostly when the director or cameraman is actually running around with the camera themself; like in a chase or some such.

Bourne Supremacy has one of the worst/best examples of shaky camera during its car chase sequence; a sequence that I thought marred an otherwise excellent film, making me want to throw up or at least look away due to motion sickness.
 
FUCK extreme close-up quick cutting shaky cam. Killed Batman Begins for me, and with Bourne Supremacy I wanted to vomit all over the director for the seizure-inducing crap he put on screen. CAMERAS AREN'T FOR THROWING.
 
Quick cuts are used in BB because they don't as Liam put it want to show you some graceful drawn out fight... the League taught him to be brutal aggressive and quickly take down his opponents because he's facing so many the director tries to capture that brutal aggressive feel by the quick cuts to show that Batman is quickly taking down each opponent... no drawn out individual fights, 1-2 shots per opponent and that's it.
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See, I get that but......why not show it? Like that last fight scene from batman. It was terrible.

No other way to fucking cut it. It was sloppy and an awful scene for the final fight. All the other stuff with the thugs (i hate quick cuts no matter where they are in a fight movie) was alright and not too bad.

But that last fight, no way. Bruce and "badguy" were two equal fighters. Even if the fight was brutal and quick, that doesn't mean it should look like a muddled mess. During the 'fight', I was thinking to myself "I hope someone says something soon so I can find out who's winning". That's not good directing at all.

Quick cuts and bad wire-fu. Get that shit out of my moives.
 
I don't like the camera either, I love to see fights with a wide camera on all of the action.


I've seen people say they hate it, some say it didn't matter, but who the fuck likes this crap?
 
Fights can be brutal yet Coherant. No need to make it drawn out but atleast make the camera move back so we can see whats going on.
 
its sickens me too, this reliance on 'mtv'-style editing for 'style'.
i could imagine a production who are tight on money trying to hide the low fx with tight cuts, so to give you an impression rather than the converage.

so it surprises me greatly that high budget movies give us 'impressions'.

compare the fight scenes in Point Break, eg, the Keanu/Swayse chase, to must action scenes nowadays.
you see SHIT, whereas in PB you knew exactly what was going on.

under-lite, over-cranked, cut to shit action-scenes should be banned!
 
I agree with you guys completely. I loved Batman, but between the quick cuts, and the dark atmosphere, it was about impossible to see what was gong on. Bourne Supremecy was the first movie to actually give me a headache while watching it. Loved the movie, but the shaky cam was too much.

My theory on it is that most western directors do not know how to choreograph or shoot a proper fight scene. They use the quick cuts and moving camera to cover-up flaws in the fight sequences.
 
i believe mr. and mrs. smith suffers from this style of shooting action sequences too. so says an aussie reviewer anyway.
 
Yeah. I miss the days when editing was suppossed to be invisible. This was an annoying way to show Stealth and Brutality and I don't think it worked at all. Nolan may as well have just faded to black. I know a stuntman who worked on it and he's pissed because he says they filmed some cool stuff (he works in HK too).
 
Well everyone's mentioned Bourne Supremecy already and I guess it's clearly the worst example of the disease. I think it gained in popularity when directors wanted to do something "different" in their fight scenes to seperate their movies from the classic action film fight scene. I also agree that a huge part of the appeal for directors is that it makes it much easier to shoot a fight scene when you have the camera jerking around and quick cuts of the main actor and his stunt doubles.

One of the first times I remember seeing it ironically was in Batman & Robin (or the other crappy Batman just before that, can't remember which one) when they did that a bit in an obvious attempt to hide the fact that neither George Clooney nor Chris O'Donnell could even pretend fight worth a damn. I also remember it most in large scale fight scenes, whether sword fights or WW2 stuff. I think it helps hides effect shots, especially CG armies in the background and the like. Either way, I think it's becoming less of a stylistic choice and more of a crutch in a lot of cases.
 
As for the original poster's question of when this started, the earliest film I can think of that has that kind of editing to the fights is On Her Majesty's Secret Service (which is one reason why I will never understand why so many hardcore Bond fans claim it's the best in the series). And the director of that one never got his hands on a Bond film again.
 
Bourne Identity is a perfect example of how to make fights cruel and brutal and yet still make them coherant.


Whats worse abotu movies these days is that usually the choreograph great fights but just dont let you see them cause of teh quick cuts. Thats what happened with bourne supremacy atleast.
 
I'm not sure where the rapid editing began. The overall editing frequency is higher today because of the rise of home video (tighter framing = less detail to take in = shorter cut), but hyper-editing is a fairly recent development in popular cinema. This might be because of the influence of music video directors.
 
quadriplegicjon said:
i hate the term shaky cam. cause the camera doesnt shake. whoever coined that term should be shot. quick cuts is what they use. and it works great in batman begins. i had absolutely no problems with it. its supposed to give you the sense batman's foes feel ..
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Even if the camera is moving, the term is fucking retarded. Why can't people say "handheld"?

Anyway, I've defended the technique several times now. I know I had no problem with the handheld in Bourne Supremacy during the fight scenes. It was at its worst in the opening 15 minutes when there were several long takes and the loose handheld work truly produced a disorienting effect. Otherwise it was fine.

For Batman Begins, the fast-paced editing and tight camera angles were designed to create the mental and physiological responses that would come from such combat scenarios. They were chaotic, brutal, flinching and claustrophobic. Really, read some old, old film theory from the 30s and 40s and you might appreciate what's really going on.

It's not a technique that works everywhere, of course, but it has its place.
 
Dan said:
Even if the camera is moving, the term is fucking retarded. Why can't people say "handheld"?

Anyway, I've defended the technique several times now. I know I had no problem with the handheld in Bourne Supremacy during the fight scenes. It was at its worst in the opening 15 minutes when there were several long takes and the loose handheld work truly produced a disorienting effect. Otherwise it was fine.

For Batman Begins, the fast-paced editing and tight camera angles were designed to create the mental and physiological responses that would come from such combat scenarios. They were chaotic, brutal, flinching and claustrophobic. Really, read some old, old film theory from the 30s and 40s and you might appreciate what's really going on.

It's not a technique that works everywhere, of course, but it has its place.
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It obviously doesn't work in the two films most often quoted here, Batman Begins and Bourne Supremecy. When your audience is complaining about it, it's a problem, and it isn't working. I shouldn't have to go to film school be able to appreciate a good fight scene. When you can't see what is actually happening, in a visual medium, than you have problems. I do agree there are times when it can work well, but not for an entire movie.

In the case of Batman Begins, the fight scenes didn't feel clausterphobic or brutal to me, because you mostly just couldn't tell what was going on.
 
Chris Nolan said in a number of interviews that he "hated" choreographed fight scenes because they weren't convincing and "looked like dance numbers." He also said that Batman was about the stalking, not the fighting, and the "fight" should just be a sudden flurry of violence that ends the hunting episode.

Personally, I think it worked great for the movie.
 
Kung Fu Jedi said:
It obviously doesn't work in the two films most often quoted here, Batman Begins and Bourne Supremecy. When your audience is complaining about it, it's a problem, and it isn't working. I shouldn't have to go to film school be able to appreciate a good fight scene. When you can't see what is actually happening, in a visual medium, than you have problems. I do agree there are times when it can work well, but not for an entire movie.

In the case of Batman Begins, the fight scenes didn't feel clausterphobic or brutal to me, because you mostly just couldn't tell what was going on.
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You know, when shit consistently reigns at the box office, I don't feel particuarly inclined to take the criticisms of mainstream America to heart.

I seriously have to question whether some of you have actual problems with your brains deciphering what your eyes perceive if you had no idea what was going on in the fights in Bourne Supremacy and Batman Begins. Isn't this the post-MTV generation that's been groomed to decipher a blur of images with no problem? It's sure not an issue for me and obviously a lot of other people on these boards.

Iceman said:
I don't think you can call it "handheld" since the steadicam is also a handheld (that one straps on).
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True, but it's still a better descriptor than "shakycam."
 
Drinky Crow said:
Chris Nolan said in a number of interviews that he "hated" choreographed fight scenes because they weren't convincing and "looked like dance numbers." He also said that Batman was about the stalking, not the fighting, and the "fight" should just be a sudden flurry of violence that ends the hunting episode.

Personally, I think it worked great for the movie.
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You can makes fights chaotic brutal and realistic without making them look like random flashes. I mean honestly how are we suppose to knwo afight is brutal when we cant even see what is happening?
 
all these cuts are crazy. They do it because 'kids' don't have the attention span. But if you show them all this stuff, they'll never get the attention span.

It'll just sprial down and down until TV and movies are one big blipvert, with kids watching 50 channels simultaneiously.
 
Batman Begins is the first film where I'd say I was disappointed by its usage. Bourne Supremacy I had no problem with it at all -- but this, everyone's wearing dark clothes AND its at night.. so you're left with very little in the way of distinguishing features. It was even difficult in the first major fight scene and that had some light outside. I'd say it was the film's one flaw.

The feeling I got from Batman though was that it was partially used since he himself is so fast and it was meant to be slightly disorienting, but man I could have used for something a little easier to digest.
 
Drinky Crow said:
Chris Nolan said in a number of interviews that he "hated" choreographed fight scenes because they weren't convincing and "looked like dance numbers." He also said that Batman was about the stalking, not the fighting, and the "fight" should just be a sudden flurry of violence that ends the hunting episode.

Personally, I think it worked great for the movie.
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Ditto.

If I see a Woo-Ping choreographed fight in a Batman flick, I'll cry. Really. His fights shouldn't last long enough to choreograph.
 
Kung Fu Jedi said:
It obviously doesn't work in the two films most often quoted here, Batman Begins and Bourne Supremecy. When your audience is complaining about it, it's a problem, and it isn't working. I shouldn't have to go to film school be able to appreciate a good fight scene. When you can't see what is actually happening, in a visual medium, than you have problems. I do agree there are times when it can work well, but not for an entire movie.

In the case of Batman Begins, the fight scenes didn't feel clausterphobic or brutal to me, because you mostly just couldn't tell what was going on.
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No, it obviously doesn't work for YOU and the few other detractors here. I loved the fight scenes in Batman Begins. The filming technique used is an aesthetic choice, and like ALL aesthetic choices, some are going to like it and some aren't.
 
SteveMeister said:
No, it obviously doesn't work for YOU and the few other detractors here. I loved the fight scenes in Batman Begins. The filming technique used is an aesthetic choice, and like ALL aesthetic choices, some are going to like it and some aren't.
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You're right. It obviously doesn't work for me, and pretty much everyone I know who has seen these two films. In the case of Bourne, most people I know say the film is great, but they wished the camera wasn't so jumpy. In the case of Batman, most people I know who have seen the film say that it's a great film, but the one flaw is that they wished they could have seen more of the action, and granted, it's a mix of the quick cuts and the darkness. The darkness should be part of Batman, that much I know and understand.

I do realize that Batman is suppose to take out most run of the mill thugs in no time at all, but is it too much to ask to be able to actually see him do that instead of mostly hearing it? Obviously, sometimes, it works great to not be able to see what's going on, it enhances the mystique of The Batman. But when he's fighting Liam Neeson, a man who is on par with him in skill, I actually wanted to see the fight between these two masters. Perhaps it is because of my martial arts background that I actually enjoy seeing the actual moves more.

(For the record, there is one other bigger flaw with Batman Begins, and her name is Katie Holmes!)
 
:lol "Few detractors".

"Shakycam" isn't always hand held. :/

I'll just quote Don lenzer.

have been asked from time to time (almost exclusively in those rare instances that I’ve worked on commercials) to “jazz things up” with skewed angles and “shakycam.” And I’m usually pretty frustrated when I’m asked to do that. Skewed angles for an architectural or graphic montage, that’s one thing and a fairly traditional one at that. But I’ve spent a lot of time trying to develop the skills to tell stories with as little intrusion of technology as possible. For me storytelling is the preeminent issue. And I feel that a lot of gimmicks (but not necessarily electronic manipulation of the image) are an excuse to mask the lack of good storytelling. I may be wrong about this, of course, and it may really be true that the MTV generation has a minuscule attention span that can only be held by some formalistic techniques. I don’t think so, though
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A distaste for choreographed fight scenes is pretty ridiculous. Nolan's method was kind of like breaking the fourth wall.
 
Have you ever watched fucking Animal Planet? When a predator cataches its prey, its usually a blur of bodies, and over in a heartbeat. Nolan wanted the fights to look like the flurry of a large bat taking its prey.
 
but the camera sits back and lets you witness the "blur of bodies." what good would it be if they cut to a tight shot as soon as the animal attacked so you couldn't see it? @_@
 
karasu said:
but the camera sits back and lets you witness the "blur of bodies." what good would it be if they cut to a tight shot as soon as the animal attacked so you couldn't see it? @_@
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exactly. Besides whatever effect he was trying to go for he failed to generate any excitement or thrills. IMO

It just became a mish mash of images. Luckily everything else was awesome.
 
SteveMeister said:
But pretty much everyone I know loved the movie and had no complaints about the way the fights were filmed, Kung Fu Jedi.
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I did say most of my friends felt that way. I do have a few friends who just go to the movies to be entertained and don't think much about the way it is shot. They haven't mentioned any flaws in the film either, including Katie Holmes. ;) But my friends who are really into movies, the look and feel of them, and how they are shot, have all commented on the fight scenes.

If Nolan wanted to emulate something from Animal Planet in order to capture the feel of a "large bat trying to caputre it's prey", I'd say he succeeded and failed at the same time. There were some scenes where you could clearly see Batman dropping in on a foe, pulling him up onto the rooftoops, etc. But those shots were mostly taken from a bit of a distance, with a few shots from the point of view of the prey to show how disoriented they were. Those were done very well, and I think he captured the spear just fine. But the actual confrontation scenes, the fight scenes, were just cut too quickly, and the camera was too close to the action, to actually follow it to as well as I would have liked. Again, against a run of the mill thug, I know it should be fast and over quickly, but I want to see how it was over so quickly. I want to buy the DVD, slow it down, and marvel at the Batman taking out his prey. In the case of Neeson's character, I really wanted to see these two masters go to work on one another, but you couldn't really tell what they were doing some of the time.

For the record, I love the movie, and this is really a minor point for me. But it was annoying enough for me to notice while I was watching.
 
See, now you're saying that the people I know are idiots when it comes to getting anything than getting entertained. You're saying that if people DON'T think the way the fights in Batman Begins were filmed, then they're just morons who don't put any thought into what they are watching. You're assuming that I don't know anyone who's "in to" movies, because nobody who is would accept the fight scenes the way they were filmed.

And that's simply not true, on any level.
 
SteveMeister said:
See, now you're saying that the people I know are idiots when it comes to getting anything than getting entertained. You're saying that if people DON'T think the way the fights in Batman Begins were filmed, then they're just morons who don't put any thought into what they are watching. You're assuming that I don't know anyone who's "in to" movies, because nobody who is would accept the fight scenes the way they were filmed.

And that's simply not true, on any level.
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honestly the the scene where batman stalked the guys shipping the bears and and stuff was awesome and benefited from the editing and camera work, because it was tight yet also COHERANT but cmon when he faced off against fucking NINJAS! and and when he fights the baddies HEAD ON there is no need for that crap. If you cant understand that then well yes i would say you know nothing about fight scenes. Random images flashing on the screen just do not impress me.
 
Kabuki Waq said:
honestly the the scene where batman stalked the guys shipping the bears and and stuff was awesome and benefited from the editing and camera work, because it was tight yet also COHERANT but cmon when he faced off against fucking NINJAS! and and when he fights the baddies HEAD ON there is no need for that crap. If you cant understand that then well yes i would say you know nothing about fight scenes. Random images flashing on the screen just do not impress me.
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And that's absolutely fine that you feel that way. My point was that not everyone does -- the way the fight scenes were filmed was a stylistic choice, one you (and some folks you know and others on the board here) don't like. But it's one that others (including myself, several people I know and others on GAF) do like. This difference of opinion does not make either side "wrong", or morons, or less movie/film afficionadoes than the other side.
 
The whole 'yeah but it's to show that Batman is brutal like in the comic' is complete bullshit. The fights in Jet Li's Unleashed and especially in Besson's new flick, Banlieue 13, are incredibly violent and brutal, yet you see everything.

Banlieue 13 is certainly one of the most brutal martial art movie I've ever seen, and it uses no quick cuts and close ups. I can't believe that people are actually trying to come with EXCUSES for why Batman was badly shot like that.

It's just shitty editing and choegraphy
 
On video Batman Begins will look better. I saw it at Imax and while the movie looked stunning that much motion across that large a space will blur and look disjointed anyway. On a smaller screen it won't be near as bad. That said I'd still have liked them to give the fights more choreography and better composition.

I don't agree witht he teenager thing that Oli brought up because Hong Kong action is still held in pretty high regard and people still like seeing a proper flow that they can understand.
 
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