From a review of 'Laguna Beach,' 2005

“Laguna Beach” is ingeniously shot. With photography by Hisham Abed, this reality series looks like no other; it is the best-looking show on television. One recent anxious sequence, a party at which Stephen flirted with L. C. only to try one more pitiful time to win Kristin back, was particularly gorgeous and suspenseful. With supersaturated, almost Mexican-looking colors — shades that make every minute look like sunset on the beach – the drama is recorded using multiple Panasonic camcorders at some distance from the action. The camera is nervous, avid, searching and excluded from the action, inflicting the kind of non-nonchalant scrutiny to which you might subject a celebrity or someone you are in love with. In more confident moments, the camera also manages to look askance: withering disdain or a catty, what-are-you-doing-here glare. Against the odds, “Laguna Beach” has something of the visual momentum of great Italian film. (Zachary Sachs on www.plan-c.net has compared it, with only light irony, to Luchino Visconti’s “Terra Trema: Episodio del Mare.”)