From The Office To The Home
I caught a bit of the new ABC sitcom Modern Family. It seems to be getting decent reviews, but all I noticed is it's done in a mock documentary style. Why? Shaky cameras don't make things funny, and characters commenting directly on the action while talking to the camera is a cheap device. It makes me feel the writers weren't good enough to come up with a regular show.
PS I'm surprised to report the show got good ratings. It's been a while since viewers tuned into ABC for their sitcom fix.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:14 AM
5 Comments:
Glee is using the shaky camera trick too. I don't get it - there is not even a suggestion in this show that it is "gretty realism." The show is surrealistic if anything - it should be shot in vibrant techo-color like a 50s musical (imho).
The shaky camera thing I could overlook--it's the idea that instead of telling a story, we're watching something real, with interruptions by characters commenting (not narrating, but commenting) on the action, which slows down the proceedings.
The irony of the shaky camera is it was originally found almost only in movies, and generally documentaries, and became associated with something "real." It was bad enough when fictional movies adopted it, but then TV, which had never tried it, starated using it all over to make the dramas feel gritty. Soon this ugly look becae popular on so many hourlongs the look almost became associated with TV. So much so that they even start using it on something like Glee, where it doesn't fit at all.
I find the "shaky cam" approach to be incredibly annoying.
The argument used to be that "this is the way the eye really sees" but that's BS - the eye and brain work in conjuction to stabilize our vision, not (very consciously, IMO) shake it.
Even on a show like "THE OFFICE" which - after what, 4 seasons? - is supposedly still being filmed by a documentary crew, it's incredibly annoying and prevents me from watching the series. The shaky camera moves are so exaggerated that a 3rd grader with a "My First Camcorder" could shoot a steadier image.
And on a show where no "documentary crew" is present, it's nothing but Pure Pretension.
Wow, Anon and I wrote our comments at the same time.
I don't think it's about how the eye sees it. I think it's the look of small, underfunded documentary crews catching stuff on the run in the days before steadicam. It became associated with a real look, even though it's purely artificial and, yes, in copying what originally was a flaw, pretentious.
I feel the same way about animation that imitates another flaw of the camera--keeping the background out of focus.
The reason I think the documentary pseudo-non-staged look for The Office (I really don't notice the camera as shaky) is that it was a relatively new shtick and seemed new and fresh and the characters and plots grew up in that look. Any change now to The Office would be a fundamental change to the look and feel of the show and would probably kill it.
Agreed that the new shows are just trying to copy a successful show and the documentary look seems fake and forced and pointless.
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