Two comments,

First, on the music discussion (which we might want to take to a separate thread): filmmakerfromwv, nobody (I think) was talking about music for film, which benefits greatly from changing meters among other things, but rather, music in general.

Music for film can sometimes benefit from no change at all, adding smoothness to a fast paced editing of seemingly unconnected events.

About music in general, one cannot define whether changing meters affects the audience's perspective one way or the other, unless you're Britney Spears. So, assuming you're someone else, you can make those changes evident and blunt, purposely trying to be weird/original/different, and if you're trying to market yourself as an artist in a certain style, those changes better be what's expected in that genre (i.e: those changes in the music of Dream Theater are a part of why audiences like 'em). But you can handle those changes in subtle ways, and get away with them with only a small portion of the audience being aware of it. It helps to put emphasis on other things, like Zappa would do with the humorous lyrics, and having strong melodic material and a good song in general backing up the changes is key (I'm thinking about some of Sting's not-so-recent material).
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And now, for the non-musicians, a more general statement:

Imitation can be a way to develop technique. But more importantly, emulation is a great shortcut to work on your ability to develop (yeah) your work. This can give you a structure (or many) that you can use to work on your own, original ideas, but knowing how to pace yourself, and basically where you want/need to take them.

It can also make you look like an unoriginal bastard, but if you happen not to have ideas of your own, pretending to be original will only take you so far.

And then we can resort to the Nth conversation about Tarantino, and how combining influences can become a style of your own. But do we really want to do that again?

E.

p.s.k, so maybe those weren't exactly two comments...

I wasn't really talking at all about scoring music for a film. I was referring to generic pop emo punk bands trying to be original with different time signatures which simply don't go over well with the teen crowd due to general lack of musicianship.

I'm sure, however, that with orchestral music time signature changes are crucial.

I have seen the requiem for a dream time lapse technique many times over in student films and never to any effect. I think student films about drugs almost always suck.
Chris, what is the platoon overhead shot?