A handy tip on better filming in a motion, but by way of introduction, a quick discussion first about two films: compare and contrast the videography in Man of Steel (2013) and Marathon Man (1976) - have we taken a step forward or a step back?

Marathon Man was the first commercial film to use a new invention from cameraman Garrett Brown - the Steadicam. This allowed a cameraman to keep the camera rock steady even while running. Before the invention, you could only have got similarly smooth shots  by mounting your camera on a dolly and putting it on rails. Today you'll see Steadicams in all areas of film and TV. Just look at any football match and you'll see cameramen running up and down the line supporting even the heaviest of cameras with absolute ease to get the smoothest of action shots.

So what's the link to Man of Steel? Well, take a quick look at the official trailer. This is the latest in a stream of films shot with what I like to call shaky-cam. The idea here is to deliberately introduce a lot of camera movement to mimic the way the eye and brain work together in the collection of information, and so make the viewer feel more engaged with the action.

The shaky-cam effect is quite a recent development. You might have seen it on the TV series remake of Battlestar Gallactica and on the JJ Abrams' directed Star Trek movies.

The interesting thing is that it's quite a difficult effect to create. The optical image stabilisation technologies in modern cameras are so good that you have to work really hard to create shaky-cam vision. You can either throw money at special effects in post production, or you can do what Abrams did in Star Trek which is to drum his fingers on the camera while filming.

And what will you have at the end of the day? Statistically, you'll have a production makes 25% of your audience feel ill.

So where am I coming to on this? In any video where you want to look even vaguely professional and don't want to turn off a quarter of your potential market, either use a tripod, a shoulder mount or a steadicam – readily affordable these days for handycam style cameras (you can check them out here). Also, make sure optical image stabilisation is turned on - it probably is because that’s typically the camera’s default setting.

And that quick tip I promised? If you're shooting on a tripod, turn the optical image stabilisation off. If you don't, and if you do a pan, then the motion will carry on after the camera has stopped moving, and that's another effect that makes the viewer decidedly queasy.