by Nick Goundry

Created on: June 22, 2008   Last Updated: June 23, 2008

It would seem that shaky cameras are cool. The recent European release of Spanish horror [REC] is the latest in a series of horror films shot on a digital camera from the perspective of stressed-out operators who are themselves a character in the story. [REC] presents the footage' captured by a late-night news reporter and her cameraman as they follow a team of Barcelona firefighters on a routine call to a seemingly innocuous apartment block. A gruesome encounter with an apparently demented old woman quickly escalates out of control, and suddenly the lives of everyone in the apartment block are under threat. With the news team present, all the action is caught on camera, the images becoming increasingly wild and frenetic as the situation worsens.

The digital format is certainly highly suited to the horror genre, with low production-costs and increasing technical flexibility proving especially advantageous for independent filmmakers. Still, mainstream cinema has taken nearly a decade to catch up with the box-office phenomenon that was The Blair Witch Project. Meanwhile, words like gritty' and real' are bandied about in the press as critics and paying audiences alike respond to the stylish digital aesthetic. Where younger viewers hail the future of filmmaking, and in particular the horror genre, older critics grumble at the motion-sickness-inducing visuals and the lack of anything resembling a good old-fashioned tracking or Steadicam shot.

Whereas the Blair Witch style arose as much from necessity as from inspired editing on the part of the filmmakers, it seems that replicating the shaky-cam look on a mainstream studio production, where traditional techniques and equipment are well-practiced and readily available, can be just as tricky. It was the handheld, amateur style that provided the hook for the recent Cloverfield. Otherwise merely a bog-standard monster movie, director (and pal of Lost co-creator JJ Abrams) Matt Reeves decided to appeal directly to the YouTube generation by shooting the entire $30m film in a shaky-cam aesthetic, notably against the advice of his production team who didn't relish the challenge of having to look like they didn't know what they were doing. Reeves achieved the look by getting his actors to shoot some of the footage themselves, and, indeed, becoming a cameraman himself; "I qualified for the job by being, wellnot qualified!" he told reporters on the press-circuit. Being a studio piece, however, the trick was also in ensuring his

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