Why are the camera angles on the Victory Tour so awkward?

[Themidwestcowboy]

Looking at all the professionally recorded footage from the victory tour (Dallas, Kansas, Toronto, Billie Jean Promo) I just can’t escape the fact that the camera angles were horrible. It’s either too close so that you only see from his torso up to his body or too far away. Then there is this other angle from the bottom sides that makes everything look so crowded on stage. That particular angle makes everything look so crammed and it makes the stage look so tiny. I feel like there was no balance. I don’t know if this is because of how they chose to film it or because of the stage but this was corrected with his subsequent tours.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because in many instances where he does one of his signature moves the dance is obscured by the camera angles. It’s like you miss the best part la because of that. Does anyone else feel like this?

 

[kai]

well, those shows were not shot for a release.. they were shot for MJs private archive and for the big jumbotrons.
MJ on his solo tours had the full control over how the camera-crew would shot the shows but probably he was not that much involved in that back in the jacksons days?

But i actually like the fact that the far angels are very far away.. that way it would be no problem to crop in to make a widescreen version.

 

[SmoothCriminal1995]

I was watching Human Nature from Toronto and I thought this exact same thing. It's like they do know where to film and what they're trying to focus in on.

It's very distracting, perhaps this is why MJ wasn't satisfied with the tour

 

[Hudson112]

I’m pretty sure this was the first tour of Michael’s that had jumbotrons so his (and by virtue The Jacksons’) team was probably just testing out and experimenting with the technology, seeing what shots worked and what didn’t.