Big Willie Camera Style

I Am Legend came out in 2007, actually the third movie rendition of a novel by Richard Matheson with the same name, published way back in 1954. Francis Lawrence directs it. His first real deal directing job was Constantine, and he appears to have learned a hell of a lot of things in the two years since then. Before that he directed a lot of music videos, some for Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez. That explains his making a movie in which the majority of the human race is dead.

Two distinct styles of camera use that the film switches between that I'm going to call (1) Documentary camera style and (2) Steadycam style, but that second style also includes crane shots, helicopter shots, all kinds of things that are basically the opposite of a documentary feel. Steadycam? A very heavy and expensive contraption that a steadycam operator (now the cameraman) wears. It holds the camera steady no matter what the operator does, essentially. You can jump up and down, run the 100-meter dash, but through the eyes of the camera it will feel like gliding over a pond, hence STEADYcam. Documentary crews, real ones, can't bring steadycams everywhere they go, trying to catch real life on film, because the operator passes out. Steadycams are VERY heavy and uncomfortable. So when Michael Moore is harassing someone, chasing them down the street probably, in his latest steaming pile of box office crap, the cameraman is just a man with a camera, probably resting on his shoulder, and the image is accordingly shaky.

Recently, some feature films have started to use documentary camera work like that to create a realistic feel in their films. Traffic was the first that I know of, shot entirely with a comparatively cheap HANDHELD camera. All the shooting portion was director Steven Soderbergh just walking around holding the camera in his hands. That's amazing. And the film still starred Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Don Cheadle, Dennis Quaid, and the whole rest of an ensemble cast! Another notable film in this category is Cloverfield. Such realistic camera work that people get motion sickness in the theatres. I haven't seen it, though. I may be wrong about Traffic being the first. Technically The Blair Witch Project came out first, but that film is such an anomaly that I can't include it. They used shaky camerawork because it was important to the story that they fake a documentary, and in terms of money they had no other choice anyway. What distinguishes Traffic in this way is that the film easily had the resources for big, expensive, high-quality camaras, but opted against them for a very important reason.

The opposite of documentary, shaky camerawork would be any of the Pirates of the Caribbean films, or say, Jurassic Park. All very steady films, just as examples. Nothing bumpy about them. Steadycams and crane shots and so forth.

Dang, lets get back to I Am Legend already. This movie is big budget, and it has both styles that I've talked about, and the selection of when to use one or the other is well thought out. I'm going to look at places in the film that use the shaky feel, and talk about if it works and why it works.

So look at this shot. This is a shaky shot, and the framing of it even feels like an war correspondent, embedded with troops shot, as we follow Will Smith through an urban battlefield. What's effect? We feel like we're there, or at the very least we feel that it is actually happening. We remember at a deep, deep level that cameras shaking means things unplanned and unchoreographed, which is totally at odds with most Hollywood films, we remember what war looks like through news cameras, and this film capitalizes on that, and receives the residual realism of other works. Well done. Just before it: a high-angle crane shot with deep focus, rising over Will Smith and the New York jungle surrounding him.

And these. That's Robert Neville's (Smith) dog. He's giving the dog a bath, and without warning just zones completely out, stops what he's doing, and just stares. The camera gets shaky on the close-ups of Smith's face, and even shakes in reaction to the dog barking, trying to snap Smith out of it. It's the camera performing the literal reacion that a person would have to the dog. The other shot is intended to heighten the emotion in the shot. There's a sense of loss on Smith's face, and camera makes it real to us.

This next one is especially cool, and not just because of the Mustang. How do you create a realistic feel to a shot from inside a car? The shaking action while driving straight is obvious, but what about that turn coming up? Well think about what people do, that's the question behind this particular camera theory. So what do you do? Lean into it, and that's what the camera does, too. This technique puts us solidly in the...well, the rear passenger seat. The dog has shotgun.

Here's another good one. Dr. Robert Neville feels like he's at the end of his rope. Every attempt to find a cure for the disease only he is immune to has been useless, it seems, and he loses his composure in this scene, shaking a cart in his basement lab. This shot is dual purpose, the shaking is both motion-literal, and intended to strengthen emotion.
I can't go shot for shot like this forever. Some interesting and timely news from 2 days ago, the 25th of September: Will Smith has signed on for, and Warner Brothers has green-lighted a prequel to I Am Legend. Outstanding.

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