Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Overdue Indictment of Shaky-Cam?

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Posted by Michael Coate (Member # 757) on 03-16-2011, 10:58 AM:

Salon Article

quote:
Time to declare war on the shaky camera

The obnoxiously photographed "Battle: Los Angeles" shows how utterly bankrupt a movie technique has become

By Matt Zoller Seitz

How to describe the aggressive dreadfulness of "Battle: Los Angeles," maybe the worst-directed Hollywood movie I've ever seen? Incompetent doesn't do the trick, because it implies an inability to master basic craft. That's not the case here. "Battle: Los Angeles" takes one of the more controversial cinematography fads of recent years -- the "shaky camera and shallow focus equals 'reality'" fad -- to noxious new levels of excess. The movie is the work of professionals who decided to make their film look bad on purpose.

It's a science fiction war movie shot like a YouTube record of a natural disaster -- only much more so. Frankly, the most chaotic footage from the most terrifying disasters of recent times is more visually comprehensible than most of the shots in this expensive action film. Director Jonathan Liebesman and cinematographer Lukas Ettlin shoot most of the action with a very long lens, which gives the images a narrow plane of focus, and they appear to move the camera around more or less at random to make the action feel more "real" or "documentary-like" or something. I say "or something" because the idea that this type of image is "realistic" or "documentary-like" is nonsense. Look at actual documentaries of combat in war zones and you will rarely see any images as chaotic, junky, poorly framed and visually impenetrable as the ones that occupy 90 percent of the running time of "Battle: Los Angeles."

To call this approach amateurish would libel amateurs. A quick check of YouTube will reveal many taped records of spectacular and terrifying events where the camcorder or flip phone is rock-steady, there's depth of field, everything is in focus, and the shot holds for 10 seconds, a minute, two minutes or longer -- characteristics that actually intensify the level of fear, awe and helplessness, because they let you imagine yourself into another physical space and see where objects and people are in relation to each other.

This isn't possible when a shaky camera is combined with very rapid cutting, the default style of modern blockbusters. It's the fad style that dominates filmmaking in the early 21st century, just as excessive and unmotivated zooms dominated the psychedelic late '60s and early '70s. The filmmakers' unspoken (in some case probably unconscious) agenda is to deny the audience a fixed vantage point on anything, for any reason, ever -- not just to jack up their adrenaline level, but perhaps to cover weak storytelling, acting, writing or special effects with visual clutter and waste motion. It's the style that directors embrace when they have no style -- a substitute for vision.

Simply put, this crap is transparently cynical and opportunistic and has become totally played-out since 1999's "The Blair Witch Project," arguably the hit that made home video panic-cam an official, approved technique in mainstream productions. But 12 years later, directors who keep treating it as an aesthetic security blanket -- especially at the big-budget level -- should be required to get a tattoo across their foreheads that reads "Hack." Get yourself a tripod. Make a shot list. Think about where you're putting the camera and why you're putting it there, and try to redirect the audience's attention by moving the camera or refocusing rather than cutting every three to five seconds. Stop covering action. Start directing again.

I should back off from my attack for a moment and say that I'm a bit surprised to find myself blasting the shaky cam school of cinematography. In certain cases, I have defended it when many of my colleagues were calling it evidence of the death of cinema aesthetics. Critics David Bordwell and Jim Emerson, in particular, have mounted blistering attacks on the shaky camera/fast cutting style as seen in the films of Paul Greengrass ("United 93," the "Bourne" trilogy). And we've seen similarly intense attacks on other films and TV series that adopt a pseudo-documentary style, such as "24" and "Cloverfield" and "Gangs of New York," "Gladiator," "Black Hawk Down," "Kingdom of Heaven" and other movies that were too obviously trying to ape the combat sequences in "Saving Private Ryan."

"Gangs," "Gladiator," "Black Hawk Down" and "Kingdom" used shaky cam in a way that was boring and disappointing considering their directors' track record of displaying visual imagination elsewhere. But I defended "Blair Witch," the "Bourne" films, "Cloverfield," "24" and "Ryan" because the style seemed to have dramatic or contextual justification, and because the camerawork, though outwardly rough, showed grace and intelligence; it wasn't shaking all over the place at all times, and cutting every few seconds just because. The "Bourne" films would have been just as exciting, maybe more exciting, if they'd been shot in a more traditional way, but at least you can defend their jumpiness as an extension of the hero's paranoid mind-set and his ability to process massive amounts of information in a short timespan. Matt Reeves' "Cloverfield" -- which was presented as "found footage" by an honest-to-goodness amateur -- is wild during the running scenes but comprehensible elsewhere, and it relies on long takes and moves to reveal things; its timing is expert. The brain-dead aping of "Ryan" by lesser filmmakers suggests poor visual comprehension on the imitators' parts. The battle sequences in "Ryan" are quick-cut and chaotic, but there are some very long takes mixed in there, too, and when the bullets aren't flying, director Steven Spielberg moves the camera patiently, elegantly, always with a purpose, never cutting unless he absolutely has to, and there are times when he nails the camera to the floor or mounts it on dolly tracks and observes people moving through the frame in wide shot, framed from head to toe. Spielberg doesn't apply shaky cam to every moment, only when he thinks it might add a newsreel-like immediacy.

Not so with "Battle: Los Angeles." The shaky cam, shallow focus, tight close-ups and fast cutting don't just deny us a good look at the space creatures or the mayhem they commit, they deny the viewer a chance to study the anxious, thoughtful faces of the Marines the story is allegedly about. And the shaky cam isn't just used in moments of intense action. The filmmakers apply it to everything: Staff Sft. Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckahart) doing sit-ups on a beach or having a touchy conversation with a superior officer; the men playing a quiet game of golf on a closed course at night. We're supposed to mistake this for documentary realism. But the longer you watch, the more you begin to suspect that the movie has no personality of its own, just a bag of tics, and is made in the style that happened to be popular in 2011. The current "Red Riding Hood," directed by Catherine Hardwicke of "Twilight," is nearly as worthless, but at least the bob-and-weave camerawork is slower and more genteel; you might get mild motion sickness from watching it, but that's a step up from "Battle: Los Angeles," which comes on like a prankster sneaking up behind you and shaking you violently by the shoulders.

I've decried the shaky, shallow-focus, cut-cut-cut, all-exclamation-points style of Michael Bay ("Transformers"), but I'll say this for him: He can frame a shot. He understands depth, balance and the concept of blocking physical action in a way that is dynamic and attractive to look at. You cannot say the same for "Battle: Los Angeles," which looks as if the cinematographer strapped cameras to the heads of a dozen baboons and fired pistols over their heads when the director called "action."

Show some craft and wit, filmmakers, please. Or get yourself a new fad. This one's over.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 03-16-2011, 12:09 PM:

quote:
Simply put, this crap is transparently cynical and opportunistic and has become totally played-out since 1999's "The Blair Witch Project,"

Dude, it was utterly played out after the first season of Law & Order.

Is there now some tech position on Hollywood shoots whose job it is to put his finger on the camera and make it bounce for no obvious reason?

Shakey Cam has its place (see The Celebration), but it is so cliched now as to give Ken Burnisng a run for its money.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-16-2011, 12:35 PM:

Yeah, the indictment of shaky cam is very long overdue. We've been bitching about it for a long time here at Film-Tech. I think I started complaining about it in the 1990s when NYPD Blue and Homicide were on TV airwaves.

Think about what has been going on the past 20 years. In the late 1980s and early 1990s a lot of music video directors and guys who made TV commercials were moving into feature film production. They caught plenty of flak from the "old guard" would couldn't stand all the rapid edits and artificial looking camera shots. Grad filters anyone?

Now those former music video directors are the "old guard" and many of their bad habits are now institutionalized ways of movie-making. The "new guard" is building on those music video inspired bad habits with reality TV inspired bad habits. You know what you get when you take some shit and stack it on top of some other shit? You get even more shit!

I think Brad Miller summed it up best in his 2004 review of The Bourne Supremacy:

quote: Brad Miller
I am going to have to find this director and clamp his head in a paint shaking machine for two hours so he can see the kind of shit he is making.

Of course I get a pretty funny visual from this:

quote: Matt Zoller Seitz, Salon
You cannot say the same for "Battle: Los Angeles," which looks as if the cinematographer strapped cameras to the heads of a dozen baboons and fired pistols over their heads when the director called "action."

The Bourne Supremacy was definitely hurt by its over-use of shaky cam. The technique made action sequences very difficult to follow. I remember one fight scene between Matt Damon and a bad guy that took place inside a house. It was absolute crap. Unintelligible. As usual, Paul Greengrass had the camera shaking and swishing all over the damned place. Worse yet, the shots were composed way too tight. And I guess the crew didn't want to screw around with any studio lights. In the end you're trying to follow a fight between two blurry silhouettes. They're lit by the daylight coming in through the windows, daylight of a cloudy, dreary day. I could shoot available light video of my toilet bowl and it would look more pleasant than that swill.

I don't consider Saving Private Ryan to be a standards bearer of sorts for the shaky cam technique. SPR doesn't need any blame for that. Sure, some shots are hand held. But we don't see any of the shaky shaky bang & quakey nonsense slathered on as "visual style." The camera man isn't having frequent ADHD brain farts letting the shot composition drift left or right then trying to regain it. The look of SPR only meant to mimic certain clips of combat photography. I think the visuals in SPR that got more attention (some of it negative) was the movie's grainy, gritty look and Janusz Kaminsky throwing those vertical streaking reflections into a few shots.

Also look at a movie, such as The Rock, made a couple years before Saving Private Ryan. It has a fair number of seizure cam style shots I found very distracting (shaking camera zooming in/out of actor's face was a frequent visual gag during a car chase). Luckily Michael Bay liked dolly and crane shots enough to use those quite a bit instead of shaking the camera the entire movie.

It's scary to think of what could happen if a movie like Lawrence of Arabia were re-made today. We can all forget about that 12 minute long scene involving Omar Sharif's unforgettable entrance out of the desert. There's absolutely no way any modern director could stand to hold shots that long. Forget about the camera being mounted to a tripod or dolly system. Gotta throw the color balance into some dreary urine colored look. And it might as well be shot on video!

Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 03-16-2011, 12:54 PM:

I saw Battle: Los Angeles and followed it completely and understood it thoroughly despite the shaky-cam footage. I understood at all times where and when the action was taking place, who had the upper hand and when, and I noticed plenty of “anxious, thoughtful faces” on the players. Also, despite what is written in the article, the film has a strong, compelling “personal redemption” story that is easily discerned, rapid cutting notwithstanding.

Shaky-cam is simply a stylistic choice, as was: the low angle, deep focus shots of Citizen Kane, the colored filter shots of South Pacific, the long interstitial shots of Floating Weeds and Tokyo Story, the motion capture replacement of live actors in Avatar , the first-person floating overhead shots of the recent Enter The Void, the phony dirt, scratches and gate weave of Grindhouse, the on-camera onomonopia of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, the alternate handheld and locked-off tripod shots of Paranormal Activity and on and on and on.

I’m not a big fan of the technique, but if a director wants to use it to make his movie, he should be allowed. Matt Zoller Seitz, on the other hand, should go back to yelling at kids to stay off his lawn.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-16-2011, 01:17 PM:

I think it can be effective if used sparingly. To me the movie should look as if it's professionally photographed, unless it's a purported handheld documentary like Blair Witch or Cloverfield. A shakey-cam shot is OK if it looks like (for example) an explosion shook the camera.

One of the good things about an older action movie is you can get a good idea in your mind of the environment the film is set in. Take a movie like "Die Hard." By the time that movie is over you have a really good idea of what that building looked like, inside and out -- floor layouts and all.

These new shakey-movies, you're lucky if you can even follow what's going on, let alone figure out the environment.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-16-2011, 01:26 PM:

quote: Mark Ogden
I’m not a big fan of the technique, but if a director wants to use it to make his movie, he should be allowed. Matt Zoller Seitz, on the other hand, should go back to yelling at kids to stay off his lawn.

I think the viewer, which is often the paying customer, has a right to say shaky cam is shit. And much of the time it is indeed shit.

Gratuitous shaky cam use in a throw-away alien invasion movie doesn't deserve any sort of placement alongside Gregg Toland's deep focus cinematography and dramatic camera angles in Citizen Kane. As ground-breaking as Citizen Kane was in its "style" and ability to redefine the visual language of film-making, everything in that movie was done to serve the story.

There's nothing ground-breaking at all in Battle: Los Angeles, including the use of shaky cam.

Posted by Mark Ogden (Member # 43) on 03-16-2011, 02:19 PM:

quote: Bobby Henderson
As ground-breaking as Citizen Kane was in its "style" and ability to redefine the visual language of film-making, everything in that movie was done to serve the story.

Which makes it different from Battle: Los Angeles in which respect? Wells and Tolland felt that shooting from low angles and maintaing deep depth-of-field served their story. Liebesman felt that shaking the camera around and cutting rapidly served his story. Ozu felt that breaking up scenes with seemingly meaningless shots served his story. Tarkovskiy felt that shooting long, meandering scenes with little action or dialogue served his story. Bunuel and Dali felt that writing down whatever images came to their heads, throwing the slips of paper into a hat, and filming whatever they pulled out at random served their story, or lack of it. We're not talking about the film being ground-breaking, not every film is required to be. We're talking about the filmmaker being allowed to use whatever technique he wants to to fulfill his vision.

The movie-goer has the right to say shaky cam is shit. The filmmaker has the right to say: "Perhaps you'd like to see Mars Needs Moms instead". Or, wait, that movie ALSO has a heavily stylized visual look . . .

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-16-2011, 02:45 PM:

quote: Mark Ogden
Which makes it different from Battle: Los Angeles in which respect?

The fact the visual techniques used in Citizen Kane were new and were NOT subscribing to a certain of school of style done many times before.

BTW, sprinkling in bad movies or bad filmmakers in a list with acclaimed classic movies or artists does nothing to elevate those bad movies or bad filmmakers to some better level of legitimacy.

Battle: Los Angeles isn't using shaky cam merely because the story called for it. The technique is being used so its visual style fits in with other current movies over-using the technique. I actually suspect the movie's producers and studio chiefs for calling on the technique to be used so much. It's like the long parade of hair band metal music acts that overstayed its welcome into the early 1990s. So many people were sick of hair band metal and how silly it had become. Yet more Poison clones kept appearing and making the pop charts. Then the fad suddenly (and finally) died in 1991.

Matt Zoller Seitz's negative criticism about Battle: Los Angeles sounds well deserved. I see no reason for shaky cam to be used on a shot of someone doing sit-ups.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 03-16-2011, 03:13 PM:

Forget shaky cam is shit, the audience (at least here) says shaky cam in nausea inducing - and we don't show action flicks. I literally have people leaving some movies early because they get motion sickness. Some regulars even check in advance.

I know John Waters said he considered it a compliment if an audience member threw up during one of his films, but at least he got them to vomit without relying on cheap tricks like shaky cam.

That shaky cam has been accepted by Hollywood and the audience is also a major insult to those cameramen who used hand held cameras and got rock steady images, especially in the days before the Stedicam.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 03-16-2011, 03:23 PM:

I can forgive seizure cam on one condition - that it make sense that the camera is shaking. Blair Witch worked just fine for me when it came out. A bunch of teenagers walking through the woods with hand held cameras to shoot stuff - makes sense that the cameras were shaky. And the shots of them actually doing the documentary that they set out to make - were rock steady as they should have been.

If I ever see Cloverfield, I might say the same thing about that movie.

Bourne doesn't work for me. It's over played. When two guys are sitting in a room talking and the shots on guy #1 are rock steady and the shots on guy #2 are all over the place - that doesn't compute in my head. It fails.

As for 24, I don't buy that either unless we're standing next to a car that blows up. Then, yes, the camera will shake. I saw a behind the scenes clip with one of the cameramen where he was talking about the shakey cam and he said something to effect of, "I keep everything moving... I'm always searching for the frame." Hey, buddy. Find the frame BEFORE you start shooting.

I get sucked out of movies and TV shows so often because of cameras shaking all over the place. This ridiculous, unwarranted, unjustifiable, lazy, pathetic, unprofessional, idiotic, infuriating technique has cause me to hate more movies that I should have liked than I care to count. And at some point I firmly believe that people will look back on this era in film making and marvel at how many movies were made that could have been great but are almost completely unwatchable or at the very least un-enjoyable.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 03-16-2011, 04:13 PM:

I remember watching one of the Bourne movies by the hack director known as Paul Greengrass with a friend. It was just a scene of people talking about something in a big room, all characters were calmly seated. There was no intense drama being discussed. The camera was shaking all over the place. We just started laughing our asses off. It was beyond pathetic.

Anyone who likes and especially wants to use this kind of shaky-cam deserves to be punched in the face. I usually don't condone violence, but there are a few situations where it seems to be the only answer.

Posted by Damian Thornton (Member # 5971) on 03-16-2011, 04:21 PM:

I agree DPs tend to overdo movement in a lot of cases, but I definitely prefer films that aren't composed entirely of static, tripod-mounted shots.

In my opinion, the bit of subtle movement when shooting hand-held/shoulder-mounted/etc. helps the audience gain a sense of identity for the camera's perspective--but unnecessary intentional shakes tend to come off as more of a personality disorder.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 03-16-2011, 04:24 PM:

There is a definite difference between a handheld shot and a shaky-cam shot. The main difference is that one of them isn't annoying.

Posted by Damian Thornton (Member # 5971) on 03-16-2011, 04:35 PM:

Exactly. I don't see why it's necessary to constantly remind the viewer they're not actually part of the action, when they could have been getting lost in the story if given a reasonable perspective.

Posted by Ian Parfrey (Member # 5122) on 03-16-2011, 04:40 PM:

Film School 101.

Question -: Is there a REASON for the camera motion?

Answer -: Not if the shot is of a guy doing sit ups.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-16-2011, 05:49 PM:

Camera movement is fine if the camera movement has relevance to the energy of action being shown on screen.

One of my favorite examples of this is a scene from The Shining -a movie that kicked ass on a number of different fronts in terms of its cinematography. Late in the movie Jack Nicholson's "Jack Torrance" character has flipped his lid and is intent on chopping Wendy and Danny into pieces with an axe. I love the shot of Jack chopping into the doors. With each axe swing the camera pans left as Jack draws back the axe and then rapidly pans right following the swing of the axe into the door. The shot amplifies the energy and terror of Jack taking the axe to the door. What impressed me technically about the shot: the sudden stop of the shot as it panned right. It matched the sudden stop of the axe blade as it hit the door. How DP John Alcott keep the camera from bouncing back to left or moving around at all at the end of that rapid pan to the right?

I've seen plenty of other camera movement tricks that helped rather than hurt a shot. In Born on the Fourth of July Tom Cruise is firing a rifle just before he gets shot. The camera does a rapid left-right pan repeatedly to follow the recoil of the rifle shots.

Odd camera angles are good when they serve the story. How about the overhead camera angle in Psycho when "Norman Bate's mother" rushes out of a door and stabs the investigator at the top of the stairs? There is a certain insanity to the camera angle and it makes the fall the victim is about to take down the stairs even more threatening.

The use of camera shake just to keep a talky scene from being boring is outright bullshit movie making. If the director thinks the scene is boring he needs to do something about the script or actors' performances rather than trying to use camera movement in an attempt to polish a turd.

The same thing goes for really elaborate camera angles and moves. I often criticize Tony Scott for some of his crazy dolly shots and other camera tricks that take me out of the movie thinking about the camera shots rather than the damned story. He used 360 degree dolly shots in Unstoppable in a manner that couldn't naturally exist on a railroad locomotive. In Spy Game he had Robert Redford and Brad Pitt talking on some city rooftop with the scene being inter-cut between circling helicopter shots of the rooftop and circling close-up Steadicam shots. Distracting!

Posted by Jim Henk (Member # 3628) on 03-16-2011, 07:54 PM:

Yes.

Normally I find myself giving people the benefit of the doubt in things like this. I think I'd do the same in this instance.

If only there *was* one.

Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 03-17-2011, 11:34 AM:

Bobby, the crane shot in PSYCHO also makes the viewer feel helpless, seeing "Mother" attacking is almost like watching a crime on a surveillance camera. This angle is used again when Norman carries "Mother" to the cellar, it also helps to camouflage the fact that he is carrying a stuffed body, not a living person.

Glad you mentioned Kubrick, because there is a good use of handheld camera movement in EYES WIDE SHUT. Remember the scene with Cruise and Kidman arguing, with her sitting on the floor? It is played in static setups, with only slight framing changes on both actors. Until the moment when Kidman breaks up laughing, as she cringes, there is a short - maybe handheld - camera movement.
On a big screen, this has an enormous effect. After seeing minutes of locked-off shots with only the intensity of acting building up, the sharp movement is really powerful, as if the foundations of their marriage had been hit by an earthquake. Kind of hard to describe, but very effective.

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 03-17-2011, 03:26 PM:

The trend of shaky cam is indeed bullshit. I don't go to see movies much anymore because of it. And try running changeovers watching for the cues in shots with violent camera moves/shot changes...it is a challenge.

The other thing that I absolutely HATE is the lens flare...used WAAAAYYYYY too much in the "Star Trek" film. It ruined an otherwise visually pleasing film.

Posted by Bruce Hansen (Member # 281) on 03-17-2011, 08:43 PM:

Shaky-cam means that there was nothing interesting to show you, so we will just shake the camera around so that you don't figure that out. Just like 3D means that they could not come up with a plot or story line, so just watch all these goofy 3D effects instead. Hollywood is going to be in trouble when they have to go back to making REAL movies with a plot, story line, and interesting visuals. Will they be able to do it?

Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 03-17-2011, 09:46 PM:

AMEN Bruce. Hollywood is responsible for poor boxoffice for the very reasons you mention.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 03-17-2011, 11:17 PM:

quote:
Just like 3D means that they could not come up with a plot or story line,

While I agree that Hollywood is responsible for the low grosses lately, statements like this are just dumb. Didn't you see Toy Story 3, Despicable Me, Up, or about a dozen others I could mention? 3-D cannot rescue a bad story but its presence doesn't mean there ISN'T a good story.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-17-2011, 11:36 PM:

quote: Tony Bandiera Jr
The other thing that I absolutely HATE is the lens flare...used WAAAAYYYYY too much in the "Star Trek" film.

Yeah, I have to agree the artificial lens flare thing is pretty annoying. It's arguably as cheesy as the Photoshop lens flare filter. There's really little if any need for that stuff to be thrown into visual effects shots unless it occurs naturally.

With Douglass Trumbull's visual effects for Close Encounters of the Third Kind the lens flares on the 65mm visual effects occurred naturally. This is kind of where the acceptable lens flare visual effects thing begins and ends.

I began to be distracted by bullshit lens flare effects nearly 20 years ago by a couple of effects shots in Alien³. It wasn't so much the appearance of lens flare that took me out of the movie as much as it was the attempt to imitate the anamorphic photography look of oval shaped halos and horizontal flares.

Modern science fiction movie visuals were NEVER filmed anamorphic. As least not the old school optical effects in the good movies. They were all shot on VistaVision or 65mm based plates. Nothing anamorphic. ALL spherical and larger format.

Fast forward to the ADHD generation version of Star Trek, a movie I disliked for a number of different reasons. JJ Abrahms or whoever chose to pile on the artificial anamorphic styled lens flares in many of the visual effects shots. So what if Star Wars had its visuals lensed in 8/35mm spherical or Bladerunner had its visuals lensed in 5/65mm? We're copying the anamorphic look! We're copying all those oval looking thingies that were so popular in the live action plates of Die Hard!

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 03-18-2011, 05:08 AM:

The lens flares usually weren't artificial unless it was a space/CGI scene. They had a dude that actually shined light into the lens specifically to get the lens flares. It was shot on film in scope. The guy was paid more in 3-4 months to shine light into the lens than you will ever make in your entire... year.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-18-2011, 10:36 AM:

I was complaining about the overuse of lens flares in the CGI stuff. Not the live action footage. Babylon A.D. is another show that went completely ape shit with lens flare stuff on visual effects shots, again often trying to imitate the anamorphic look.