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. as well as in
Battle Royale. In 1981, the "shaky cam" style was named, and given new energy. Another shaky camera effect invented on that film was one the crew called "Blank-O-Cam", where the cameraman would lie on a blanket and be carried in it by four grips, the camera pointed forward near ground level to track people's feet. In 1984, the
Coen brothers and their cinematographer
Barry Sonnenfeld used shaky cam techniques in
Blood Simple, then again in 1987's
Raising Arizona. Reviewers joked that
Dramamine was required to prevent motion sickness. The 1993 police drama
NYPD Blue is recognized by many as the first television show to use shaky and swooping shots for most of its camera work. In 1994, the TV series
ER employed shaky camera techniques, as did the 1996 disaster film
Twister. Danish director
Lars von Trier used shaky camera, called 'free camera', in his movies. The
Dogme 95 movement he co-created in 1995 was partly based on the technique.
Janusz Kamiński, cinematographer for
Steven Spielberg on 1998's
Saving Private Ryan, used a traditionally shot scene of a modern-day cemetery to open the film. For the initial action sequence, he used the hand-held camera technique to depict the gritty intensity and brutality of the
1944 Normandy beach assault on D-Day, from the boat to the beach and beyond. The 1999 film
The Blair Witch Project made extensive use of shaky cam to make the film look like recovered
documentary camera footage. In 2009, the Dutch film
Winter in Wartime made use of the shaky cam. The 2007 films
The Bourne Ultimatum and
The Kingdom and the 2009 films
Rampage and
Darfur make much use of the shaky camera. ==Reactions==