Camera move.

Nothing says 'computer animation' more to me than an overly dramatic and complex camera move. Sometimes a story necessitates a simple pan or push to link movement or make up for lens limitations. There's something so lovely about a subtle Kubrick-style push in, a movement so slow you hardly notice it's even happening. But a gross misuse of extravagant motion seems to generate a more diluted sense of tension. It's not really more exciting or hectic, just more complicated.
We shot this test with an older frame grabber to see how smoothly a Mitchell head, that we mounted on a borrowed track, could move. To make things worse, this image was filmed with a camera phone.