Cloverfield directed
by Matt Reeves is a film that uses hand-held video camera footage to
show a group of friends struggle to survive an attack from an unknown
being on New York City. This style of filming has begun to be more and
more popular within recent years, and some other examples are
the Paranormal Activity
installments, Chronicle, and
Project X. This type of filming
which you can see in the videos I have attached creates a personal
first-person vantage point of all of the action. Now, this
first-person point of view has its advantages and disadvantages. I
think that Cloverfield was
faced with some of these challenges while filming. For example, when
you use the hand-held camera to film it gives the viewer only one
vantage point for an action sequence or scene. There is no other view
of the action and things can be happening off screen that may
actually be worth seeing.
As the viewer you almost get a headache from all of the
movement and change of focus created by the camera. Because all of
these large explosions are computer generated, the physical
acting involved in these scenes are affected as well. Some of the
movements of the actors are a little out of sync with the explosions,
and sometimes they are heavily over-exaggerated. All of these obstacles come with the territory when filming from the first-person perspective. I think that in this movie the disadvantages really outweighed the advantages of filming in this new style, and the constant movement of the camera takes away from the actual action scenes of the movie. The director tried to make this movie seem too real, and by doing so he really hindered the viewing experience. Although the plot line of the movie is not bad, the combination of shaky camera movements and the below average acting and special effects make this movie hard to really enjoy. Because of this I give it two out of five slurpees.
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