Camera Abuse: Difference between revisions

[[File:haruhi camera abuse.png|link=Haruhi-chan|frame|Ouch, now [[That's Gotta Hurt]].]]

 

 

How does one show that the on-screen action is getting out of control? By having it hit the camera! The entire screen will [[Jittercam|shake]], or be obscured by gunk or debris. If the impact is really bad, it will crack the lens or even break the camera, treating the audience to a screenful of static.

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{{examples}}

* A station identification-cum-promo for ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' showed Dr. House peering straight out at the audience, then tapping the camera lens with his cane. There's even a soft thunk of cane-on-glass when he does it.

* An ad for Scalpicin scalp treatment showed the screen getting scratched up while a man scratched his scalp.

* At one point in the Dr. Strange trailer for ''[[Batman: Arkham City]]'', the mook he's torturing for info on Batman coughs up blood (or something) onto the camera lens.

 

* The opening credits of ''[[Detroit Metal City]]'' end with Krauser II seizing the camera and spinning it violently around to face... the show's logo.

* Unusually for animation, ''[[Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex]]'' often mimics the look of a hand-held camera by having the picture shake slightly.

* In his ''[[Lucky Channel]]'' appearance in ''[[Lucky Star]]'', Anime Tenchou violently shakes the camera while claiming the show is too slow-paced. [http://youtube.com/watch?v=AjgsNSMG7Bw See it for yourself.]

** And in a different ''[[Lucky Channel]]'', when {{spoiler|Minoru finally snaps}}, he ends up toppling the camera and cracking the lens.

* Blood splatters the camera during a Benizakura storyline fight sequence in ''[[Gintama]]''.

* [[The Stinger]] in the ''Spring'' [[OVA]] of ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' has the [[Chupacabra]] some students were looking for throwing a rock at the camera and smashing it.

* In ''Le Portrait de Petite Cosette'', whenever there's a lot of blood flying around (which is pretty much twice an episode), the camera ''will'' get splattered.

* Blood splatters on the camera whenever someone gets [[Sinister Scythe|scythed]] in ''[[Ookamikakushi]]''.

 

== Film ==

* ''[[Saving Private Ryan]]'' had a lot of bloodsplatter get onto the camera.

* Happens unintentionally in ''[[Children of Men]]'' during an extended shot of a gunbattle, when a drop of blood from a squib happens to spatter onto the lens. Because the continuous shot is actually a number of shots stitched together with CGI, the blood discreetly disappears when the camera goes through fog.

** In ''[[Robin Hood: Men in Tights]]'', While Maid Marian is singing in the bathtub, the camera smashes through the window, interrupting the song. It then cuts to a shot of the camera, which moves back outside. Later on in ''Men In Tights'', we see the Abbot called to marry Maid Marian to the Sheriff walking down the aisle towards the camera until he ends up loudly hitting the lens with his staff.

** ''[[Spaceballs]]'' has a similar joke, where the camera zooms in too close and hits Dark Helmet in the helmet. During Dark Helmet and Lone Star's schwartz duel, Helmet accidentally kills a camera operator on the set.

{{quote|'''Helmet:''' Um... He did it.

'''Lone Star:''' ''What?!'' }}

* Twice in the animated [[Mockumentary]] ''[[Surf's Up]]'', the cameraman is attacked by natives.

** Also, in the subway tunnel escape scene, blood splashes on the lens and Hud has to wipe it off.

* In the ending of ''[[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]]'', {{spoiler|a policeman covers the camera with his hand, shutting it off. It's the last thing ever seen in the movie; there are no end titles or credits.}}

** {{spoiler|He put his hand over the lens as the cameraman came towards him. It still "broke" the camera}}.

* An early scene in ''[[Scary Movie]]'' has Cindy being attacked by Ghostface. At one point, the camera zooms in on her screaming face... only to conk her in the noggin.

* In ''[[The Incredibles]]'', the "camera" aboard Mrs. Parr's jet quavers very slightly to mimic the small turbulence bumps encountered in flight.

* ''[[Fight Club]]'' features not so much "camera" as "film" abuse, from the subliminal message insertions of Tyler Durden and artificial 'cigarette burn' marks, to when the film appears to jitter right off the spokes during Durden's "you're not your fuckin' khakis" monologue.

** [[Metafiction Demanded This Index|Meta abuse?]]

* ''[[Quarantine (film)|Quarantine]]'' takes this to a literal extreme when a character uses the in-story camera ''[[Crowning Moment of Awesome|to beat a zombie to death]]''.

* In ''[[Cars]]'', one of the little VW Bug bugs flies into the camera and smudges it with dirt.

* Subverted in Tim Burton's ''[[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory]]'', where it appears that Willy Wonka has walked into the camera, but it was actually the doors to the glass elevator.

* During the climax of ''[[Transformers]]'', the fight between the Autobots and Decepticons abuses the camera to the point where it is sometimes nearly impossible to tell what is going on.

* In ''[[District 9]]'', nearly every time one of the alien weapons is fired, we end up with bits of... [[Ludicrous Gibs|things better left unidentified]] on the camera.

* ''[[The Nutty Professor]]'' (1963) ends with the principal cast members walking up to the camera one by one to take a bow, theater-style. Jerry Lewis walks up last, stumbles wildly, and falls onto the camera.

* A spoiler reveals that ''[[Paranormal Activity]]'' would have ended with {{spoiler|the possessed heroine beating her husband to death with his beloved camera ''Quarantine''-style, but they didn't have the time or money to figure out a way to do this without sacrificing their only camera.}}

* Played surprisingly straight in ''[[The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou]]''.

* An in-universe example occurs in [[Happy Gilmore]], the viewer is shown home videos from the protagonist's childhood, and footage is shown of his father being struck by a hockey puck while operating the camera, complete with a broken lens.

* ''[[Crank|Crank: High Voltage]]'' shot the tricky/dangerous parts of the action scenes with $1000 [[High Definition]] camcorders because if they were damaged during the shoot, it wouldn't cost too much to replace them. They went through 15 of them.

* In ''[[Fletch|Fletch Lives]]'', a camera gets knocked askew during a car chase scene.

* ''[[Apollo 13]]'' has Fred Haise slightly puking on the lens after launching. Yummy.

* In ''[[Earthquake]]'' blood spatters the camera lens when the overloaded elevator plunges down the shaft.

* In ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]: New Moon'', CGI werewolves knock over the camera as they charge past it.

* The entirety of ''[[The Troll Hunter]]'', given that it is shot entirely using a handheld DV [[In-Universe Camera]] carried by one of the main characters. Several shots devolve into meaningless shaking, shots take time to focus, {{spoiler|and the lens of the first camera cracks its lens when it falls to the ground when a troll eats the cameraman. Several of the next shots are done with a cracked lens until a new camera (and camerawoman) is brought in.}}

* The camera in ''[[Chronicle]]'', among other things, is kicked around by bullies, has a drink spilled on its lens, and gets exposed to some mysterious phlebotinum that causes all kinds of interference.

 

== Live Action TV ==

* The ''Walking With...'' series of mockumentaries by the Discovery Channel and the BBC love this bit. Something strikes at or splashes mud into on or snarls into and steams the camera every episode. Perhaps the most alarming was in ''Walking With Monsters'', where the three-foot scorpion jumped out of nowhere and cracked the lens with its sting in the Silurian period.

** Used even more in the documentary-esque ''Chased by Dinosaurs'', usually when Nigel Marvin and the camera crew are doing [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]. In one scene, an unseen crew member is shown using the boom mic to encourage a Protoceratops to back off. In another, {{spoiler|the cameraman is eaten by a Deinosuchus}}.

** This may have been an intentional reference to [[wikipedia:The Web Planet|one First Doctor episode]] where an [[People in Rubber Suits|insectoid creature]] accidentally headbutted the camera, and it was [[Throw It In|left in]] to avoid the time and expense of a retake.

* In the ''Pee-Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special'', Pee-Wee's yo-yo hits the camera lens, putting a very large crack (not unlike safety-glass) into it. His response: "Better add a 'new camera lens' to the Christmas list, Conky!"

* ''[[The X-Files]]'' episode, "War of the Coprophages", has Scully and Mulder dealing with mysterious cockroach-related deaths. At one point, a cockroach scuttles across the TV screen. ''Your'' TV screen. This was a real cockroach, unscripted; some of the little critters they were using had escaped from their cages and gotten everywhere. It wasn't noticed until after shooting had ended, so they decided to [[Throw It In]].

** According to Kim Manners on the DVD commentary the bug was added in post, which is why it is unaffected by a cut.

* This happened during a fight scene on Na'Toth's first appearance on ''[[Babylon 5]]''. This was because Na'Toth's actress accidentally kicked the camera during the shoot of the take they kept.

* In ''[[Canada's Worst Driver]]'', it's not unheard of for a camera to be sent flying. You can bet footage from that camera will be shown.

 

== Music ==

 

* Also shown in the music video of "Genie", by Korean group SNSD, where the group smashes a cake onto the camera, which is intended to be the viewer of this music video.

 

== Professional Wrestling ==

* As with [[Professional Wrestling]], a lot of Camera Abuse in football comes from players accidentally running into the cameramen after being forced out-of-bounds. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkL4HoWLJFk Here's one example.]

 

* Some ''[[Killer Instinct]]'' finishing moves involve smacking the opponent into the camera.

* In ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the Arcade Game]]'' and ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Turtles in Time|Turtles in Time]]'', you can throw foot soldiers into the camera. The Super Nintendo version of the latter game uses this as part of a boss fight: when you encounter Shredder in the fourth level, he's manning a giant gun. After he taunts you, the camera spins around so that he's in the foreground. The only way to hurt him is to throw enemies into the screen... and thus into Shredder's gun.

* In the old Apogee kart-racer ''[[Wacky Wheels]]'', a head-on collision would result in your car being smashed into the screen, leaving several cracks as your chosen cartoon animal slides down the glass.

* In ''[[Escape from Monkey Island]]'', you can ask the dart players in the Scumm Bar to throw one at 'that guy over there'. They throw the dart at the screen, which appears to crack where it's hit, literally [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]].

* Similarly, in ''[[Quest for Glory II]]'', throwing a dagger at Julanar will cause it to bounce off and crack the screen, killing you.

** In the snow level of ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'', the camera ices over if you stay outside for long. The screen also frosts over in Raven's warehouse in the GameCube remake of ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]''. And in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]'', the camera fogs up if the player moves from the cold outdoors to the warm inside of the tanker, and raindrops will splatter on the camera if you look up in First Person View while it's raining.

* In the ''[[Metroid Prime]]'' series, the game is played from behind Samus's visor. Thus, long falls or other heavy hits shake the screen, raindrops bead up on the "camera", condensed steam obscures the view, ice attacks frost the screen, electric attacks and shockwaves cause [[Interface Screw]]s and so on. Bright lights even allow you to see the protagonist's face reflected from the visor.

* In ''Brain Challenge'' the Authority games in the Stress category feature men from the slopes of the [[Uncanny Valley]] who deliver the twist on the games' usual objects (instead of writing the answer to an arithmetic question, for example, you'll have to write it in the box he tells you), and if you get it wrong or take too long, berates you and headbutts the screen, "cracking" it. It's swiftly and unobtrusively repaired, however.

* The boss introduction cutscene for the Golem in ''[[Video Game]]/Mabinogi'' takes this particularly far. Near the start of the introduction, the flying camera crashes into the Golem, knocking them both over and causing the camera to malfunction, with periodic audio and video distortion. As if this weren't enough, your character then further interrupts the action by wandering into the shot and giving the broken camera an awkward look.

* The 3D ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' games have had some fun with this, including severed heads ricocheting off the camera, Scorpion spearing the camera and dragging it toward him for a closeup (then kicking it away again), and, of course, omnipresent blood smears.

* Even ''[[Battletoads]]'' busted this one out, after a fashion: the boss of the first level is a giant robotic walker, and the battle is viewed entirely from the perspective of its red-tinted camera. To defeat the boss, you need to grab the spheres it occasionally shoots and toss them back at the camera, cracking its screen.

* In one scene in the original ''[[Command & Conquer]]'', resident [[Big Bad]] Kane goes to an extreme end with camera abuse, ''destroying'' one that was filming him.

* In the [[PlayStation 2]] game ''[[Primal]]'', you see the raindrops hitting the screen when you look up or into the wind in rainy areas. You also see trails of water running down the screen when surfacing from diving.

* In ''[[Star Wars: Republic Commando]]'', an FPS, killing an enemy at close range always resulted in some pattern of oil, ichor, or blood spattering over the screen and being wiped away by what could be called an electric windshield wiper. In this case, though, it's the visor of your character's helmet, not the camera itself.

* In ''[[Halo: Reach]]'', the HUD will flicker and fill with static when you get near a Covenant jamming device.

** {{spoiler|In the final mission, whenever you take health damage, the visor becomes cracked and the HUD fades. Take enough damage, and you lose your entire HUD except for your shield and health display.}} When Noble Six is finally taken down, the coup de grace is shown from the now-discarded helmet's point of view.

* After the credits of ''The Maw'' finish rolling, Maw ''eats'' the camera.

* In ''[[Left 4 Dead]]'', the camera reflects certain statuses. If you've been vomited on by a zombie, the view turns green, and distorts and blurs chronically. Seeing as the character puked on literally can't see anything more than indistinct blurs in front of them, shooting is a very bad idea. Camera turns red when you've been hit hard. Being on fire ignites the bottom of your screen. Being incapacitated will drop the camera to ground level (complete with tilt and bob) and the more you bleed, the darker your view gets until you bleed to death. If you've been incapped and revived so many times, your view turns monochrome (and with a steadily accelerating heartbeat) to show that you ''really'' need medical attention. Conversely, having your character realise they're about to be mobbed by a Crecendo or Panic Horde will make everything turn slightly sharper and brighter (resembling an adrenaline spike), and chugging a tub of ibuprofen makes everything '''super'''bright for a second (resembling getting slightly high).

* In the ''[[Resident Evil]]'' games, particularly the ones on the [[PS 1]], and particularly the Director's Cut of ''Resident Evil 1'', lining up a shot perfectly with the camera and shooting right at it will cause a bullet hole to appear briefly on the screen. This may be doable in ''RE2'' and ''3'' but memory is fuzzy. The hardest part is finding a room or hall where the camera is positioned perfectly for the shot.

** It can be done in 2. The corridor with the first Licker contains such a camera positioning. And the turntable elevator during the battles with G's second and third forms.

** At one point, you turn on a security monitor to find that <s> Trenchcoat Man</s> Tyrant is in the hall behind you, then he smashes the camera.

* In ''[[Okami]]'', Hasugami, the god who gives you the Water Lily Brush Technique, will [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE0fcGeN-PY belly-flop into the camera, cracking the "lens" of the "camera"] in his intro (skip to 2:23).

* In ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'', some of the consumptions are brutal - like beating them to death with such vigor that blood spatters on the "camera".

* ''[[Silent Hill Homecoming]]'' rewards certain actions, such as tearing through the occasional [[Organic Technology|fleshy wall]] or executing a [[Finishing Move]] with a bladed weapon, by spattering the screen with droplets of blood.

* [[Canabalt]] has the camera shake when... bad things happen.

* When you die in ''[[Iji]]'', the title character screams as the display "cracks" before it goes black.

* In ''[[F.E.A.R.]] 2: Project Origin'', if Beckett is killed, the game over screen shows cracks running down the screen - indicative of his [[Cool Shades]] being destroyed.

* Happens all the time in [[Split Second]] with the camera constantly being covered in muck and gunk.

* In ''[[Die Hard]] Trilogy: Die Hard With A Vengeance'', [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|running over pedestrians]] in first-person view splatters blood on the camera/windshield.

* In ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon]]: Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky'', the touch screen appears to shatter when {{spoiler|Primal Dialga reveals Celebi and the others' attempt to reach the Time Tunnel under cover of her powers}}.

* In ''[[Red Dead Redemption]]'': Skinning an animal will splatter blood all over the camera.

* In ''[[Metal Marines]]'', whenever one of your attacks (or occasionally counter attacks) sufficiently upset the enemy's only female commander, she would stand up and kick the camera screen in anger, with cracks showing on her end of the transmission screen...of course, since each of these mini-cutscenes uses the same intact starting screen for its animation, this implies they go through a lot of cameras with her around...

* On the main menu of ''[[LEGO Racers]]'', the LEGO character on it will eventually bang his/her hand on the inside of the monitor if you leave the menu sitting long enough.

 

* During the warthog chase in ''[[Red vs. Blue]]: Reconstruction'', some mud splashes onto the camera. Also during explosion effects, since that what ''[[Halo]]'' does, and ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'' is made using the ''Halo'' engine. Also used if to show something heavy falling, even when the engine wouldn't force them to do so. Such as when Casboose's [[Berserk Button]] is pushed in the original series.

* The ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' fan video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avU5onrWfYo "Yeah Toast!"] features this when one of the characters dies.

* In [[Smile HD]], blood gets on the camera lens for a few seconds. Its gone when the camera changes perspective.

 

 

* In Chapter 25 from ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'', we see from a cam-bot's perspective as he's [http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=654 thrown across a room].

 

== Western Animation ==

* In one episode of ''[[Strawberry Shortcake]]'s Berry Bitty Adventures'', during a food fight, a piece of bread is flung toward the camera, completely covering the screen for a brief moment.

** In another episode, a load of oranges overflow, covering the entire screen for a brief moment.

* In ''[[The Smurfs]]'' episode "Reckless Smurfs", Snappy Smurfling throws a pie into the camera, covering the screen before it transitions to Gargamel chasing the Smurfs in his castle.

* In ''Cranberry Christmas'', the camera zooms in on the villain and gets a little too close, as the lens bumps into him, cracking it.

 

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