Open letter to TV commercial directors of photography:

Shaking the camera will not make what the ad is saying more true. It will only make your viewers seasick. This is espe­cially so on larger screens. No one wants to buy a product whose ad made them barf. It doesn’t make your subject more “real,” or “raw,” or “edgy,” or “relevant.” It’s also such a Commie thing to do. Cinéma vérité, Dogme 95, reality tele­vision, docu­mentary film­making — all are direct ideo­logical descen­dants of Soviet agitprop and dialec­tical mate­ri­alism. The idea that shaking the camera makes the subject more realistic, by analogue to “the human expe­rience,” is straight out of Kuleshov, who was just applying Marx to film. It’s also wrong. I for one do not expe­rience the world in a bouncy, jittery, spinning blur. Human phys­i­ology doesn’t work like that. Better to avoid the dishonesty alto­gether and put the camera on something. Cut it out with the handheld crap. We’re all getting dizzy.

Yours with love,
Qwertz