Shaky camera

Shaky camera,shaky cam,queasy cam,queasicam, hand-held camera or free camera is a cinematographic technique where stable-image techniques are purposely dispensed with. The camera is held in the hand, or given the appearance of being hand-held, and in many cases shots are limited to what one photographer could have accomplished with one camera. Shaky cam is often employed to give a film sequence an ad hoc, electronic news-gathering, or documentary film feel. It suggests unprepared, unrehearsed filming of reality, and can provide a sense of dynamics, immersion, instability or nervousness. The technique can be used to give a pseudo-documentary or cinéma vérité appearance to a film.

Too much shaky camera motion can make some viewers feel distracted, dizzy or sick.

History

Traditionally, still and motion photography have relied on firm, stable mountings for a jitter-free image. Great effort is spent to obtain a perfectly stable image. However, experiments with hand-held camera began as early as 1925 with Ewald André Dupont's Varieté and Abel Gance's Napoléon.