@PaulR said:
Yes - I hate that teen bollocks quick edit bullshit camera movement crap. It all started in that NYPD tv programme.
Yes, I remember watching an episode of that show and thinking that the camera shaking was inserted in scenes that actually had no movement as an attempt to "make it real." But that was actually far more artificial than if a tripod had been used.
There is no relationship between hand-held camera and a person's natural movement, because the human brain FILTERS OUT the little jitters almost entirely. As a result, when you look at a big landscape, you see only the absolute steadiness of the landscape - exactly how John Ford would shoot it with the camera locked down. Likewise, when you are nervously walking toward a doorway that you are scared to enter, your viewpoint is not shaking all over the place like a goofball in the Blair Witch Project, but instead you see the slowly, steadily approaching doorway about to envelope you exactly like Hitchcock would show in one of his slow steady subjective dolly shots - such as Arbogast entering the house in Psycho. When you are in a fight perhaps, or running in a panic, then things would be very unstable and shaky. You see this contrast filmed perfectly in CLockwork Orange where Kubrick switches from tripod shots to shaky handheld in the street fight scene and it is all the more effective because of that switch. If he had done EVERYTHING handheld it would have had NO EFFECT.