By Emily Reuben Shaky, handheld cinematography has become increasingly popular in cinema. Audiences tend to like real, seemingly truthful situations in their media, and what better way to achieve this by using a shooting style anyone can achieve with a smartphone? This style of filmmaking places audiences directly into the action and seems all the more real and relatable. Typically we see this style in the horror genre (think Blair Witch or Cloverfield), but what about other genres? More specifically, what about documentaries? While documentaries are not typically based around fictional characters and elaborately crafted narratives, this style can be seen in documentary film. We call this technique cinema vérité. Cinéma vérité (literally: “true cinema” in French) is a film movement from the 1960s that aims to capture real people and situations in as truthful a light as possible. This is done with minimal editing, authentic dialogue, and minimalistic camerawork (typically handheld).
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"To get permission to film inside Bridgewater Hospital, Wiseman said he ‘told them from the beginning the kind of movie I was doing.’ He said he made it clear that the film would be shown widely and that he’d get final cut. ‘I always make a full disclosure of the method and the procedure,’ he explained. ‘It’s extremely important to make a full disclosure about what you’re doing – not only is it the ethical thing but it also means nobody can come back at you if they didn’t like the movie.'"
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