JJ Abrams apologizes for lens flare

The initial Kelvin fly-by is one of the worse uses the lens flare. Every individual window on that ship had a lens flare. Totally distracting and uncalled for. Hell, it was enough to make me forget about the zero in the registry.

 

I'm also among those who liked the use lens flare in both films. They add a distinctive look to the movies that help convey the shiny quasi-utopian future that defines Trek. After years of sci-fi that employs a dark and gritty visual style, I found JJ's approach to the look of Trek to be refreshing.

 

ST09 is the only Abrams production (film or television) I have seen. I had seen previews and trailers for his other films and his visual style doesn't captivate me at all, primarily because of shakey cam and handheld camera doing constant whip pans to the next person speaking or whatever we're supposed to see. It seems to be some fashionable thing to do for the last ten years or so for some filmmakers.

I will say that the moving camera shot during Spock's beam down to disintegrating Vulcan impressed me from an effects standpoint, and I'm still not quite sure how they accomplished it.

 

Didn't this crap start with Cloverfield?

You KNOW this is coming.

This too. Anyone wanna speculate on how many Trek vs Wars threads we'll see here? Might even warrant a separate forum.

 

I can't figure out what Abrams is trying to accomplish here. Either he knows what he is doing as a filmmaker and stands by his "artistic" decisions or he doesn't (could say a thing or two whether he is an able filmmaker or not).

I would have rather preferred an apology for this TWOK derivative scene in the warp core room and the slapstick nature of it (why don't they have a sledgehammer in there to "fix" things when necessary).

Bob

 

I think the current shaky cam trend started with Saving Private Ryan. The excessive use of lens flares, I'm not sure.

 

One man's "derivative" in another man's clever alternate reality version of an event.

 

No matter who you are, not every decision you make turns out exactly as you envisioned. It takes a big person to admit maybe something didn't work out quite the way they imagined.

It's funny, he admits he may have went a bit overboard and fandom jumps on it. If he had said they were perfect or had said nothing at all, fandom would have jumped on it.

These people simply cannot win.

 

Spielberg was/is bad for it too.

 

Thinking back, I think shaky cam really got going on TV decades ago with Hill Street Blues being one of the first to use it, then other cop shows picked it up because of its supposed to supply a "gritty" and "realistic" look and feel to what's going on.

I can take a few judiciously placed lens flares (the only one in STID that really bothered me was the one that briefly entirely covered Carol Marcus's face on the bridge of the Enterprise as she was talking to her dad), but I've never really been a fan of the shaky cam.

 

My problems with lens flare and shaky cam are that it screams camera.

Now that seems odd to say. We're watching something that was filmed on a camera. Right?

Well that's my point, I don't need to be reminded of that. Unless it's excessive, it usually isn't a bother for me (STID, I didn't notice it, ST09 was right at the edge of bugging me). If the script, acting, and all the other pieces work, I can get over poor stylistic choices most times.

Maybe cause I've watched to many straight-to-video, shot on video, B-movies, but excessive shaky cam and over the type "realism" stands out worse with digital video filmed shows and movies than it does on those shot on filmstock.

 

That's a good point. Is it supposed to bring the viewer into the action and make it more realistic, or is it breaking the fourth wall and reminding the viewer that he's watching a movie? To me, it's more of the latter.

I don't mind cameras "walking along" with people (I think TOS was one of the first shows to actually do that, have a camera follow characters down the corridor of the ship, I don't know) or following the action. I also don't mind shots with a lot of panning around in long takes. In fact, I rather like that. But yeah, especially in digital, shaky cam draws far too much attention to itself.

 

There are cameras all over the ship, remember? "These are the voyages..." is literally true.

 

Shaky cam is really just a derivative of the old cinema verite approach that was popular mostly in the late 50s & early 60s, and originated with European filmmakers like Truffaut, Antonioni, and others.

Abrams' trademark lens flares and shaky cam really seems to ignore the concept that each frame of a film should have a sense of composition, and just leads to looking like a jumbled mess. The late Roger Ebert really seemed to hate the trend and would call out directors he thought abused the style (notably with Christopher Nolan's Batman films).

 

There is excessive use of lens flares in Nolan films?

And I always found that Wally Pfister's (Nolan's DoP of choice) cinematography is some of the best in current cinema. Too bad he decided to switch to directing.

 

No, I should have been more specific. Ebert was critical of Nolan's camera making quick cuts during action sequences, where you can't really tell what is happening in a scene, and where things or people in a scene are in relationship to each other. Such as chase scenes down a highway, where instead of the vehicles speeding along from left to right, often crosscutting to right to left direction without anyone making a turn.

 

Yeah, that SWAT truck sequence in TDK seems to split the folks. I had no problem with it at all and knew what was going on at all times, others rambled about how confusing it was to them.

 

don't apologize jj. don't EVER apologize.

 

You haven't been a Star Trek fan for very long, have you?