Most of my usage was because I did feel as if I popped into the next scene to quickly, like there should be something there, so I added the establishing shots.
To me, THIS is the only important thing.
Okay, you read that "establishing shots are rarely used today". Did the author
say why? Is this a trend; "We don't use them anymore because we believe
in change." Or was this one person's opinion? Or is there something about
movie making today that is different than movie making pre 1999?
I've made a lot of movies. Sometime I drop in an establishing shot because
it's just what we do - kind of like chapters in a book. But some books don't
have chapters and sometimes I have pulled out the shots because my movie
works better without them. Sometimes I (like you) felt there was something
missing so I added an establishing shot that I hadn't originally intended.
It's one of the downsides of the sheer volume of information we have on the
internet. We read that "establishing shots are rarely used today" and second
guess our own, creative impulse. Someone has a strong opinion on a message
board and we think that they be more knowledgeable than me. There are so
many articles and blogs and opinions about why movies fail that we can lean
towards those warnings and lose ourselves.