The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug used GoPro footage and it jars so badly

Some viewers felt knocked out of the movie's narrative because of it

The Hobbit series has pretty stylised cinematography - overly-stylised you could say - all smooth edges and colourised environments.

It stands out particularly egregiously, then, when you throw in some footage shot on GoPro.

There’s heavy use of CGI in the scene in The Desolation of Smaug in which Bilbo and his allies descend a waterfall in barrels and it all looks quite dreamy, that is until it cuts to sharp, lower-res POV shots from the barrels.

I’m all for making use of innovative filming methods to put the viewer at the centre of the action, but…

Director Peter Jackson has priors when it comes to misguided filming techniques, sometimes dropping frames of footage to create a “pseudo-strobe” effect.

“I don't know why he thinks those add to the movie,” a Reddit user wrote. “It feels amateurish and knocks people out of the movie.”

In other ‘production oddities in blockbusters’ news, Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk debuted its first full trailer this week, editing out an extra from the original teaser who fans caught smiling during a battle sequence.