When it comes to film and television, there are so many things one tends to take for granted. A non-diegetic soundtrack can play without viewers giving it a second thought because it’s something viewers have come to expect is part of the package. A studio audience can feel like a natural part of a production until viewing a show that operates without one. All art is made up of conventions that seem like natural inclusions until somebody flips the expectation on its head.
Such conventions can even be something as basic as camera cuts. When characters have a conversation, generally the camera will cut back and forth to focus on who’s talking or giving an important reaction rather than having the camera manually turn its viewpoint back and forth. Sometimes a camera cut is used to show the passage of time or a transition to a new location. They can also save the filmmakers a lot of effort because if something goes awry while filming they can just edit around it.
What about when the camera doesn’t cut away and viewers are given just one long continuous shot? This is commonly referred to as a “long take”. Sometimes it can be the highlight of the movie because long takes are not only impressive and a massively-difficult undertaking, but they also tend to be especially engaging since the viewer is left with an uninterrupted view of the action, and it will frequently carry them along the scene if the action and camera work is particularly mobile.
Compiled below is a non-comprehensive list of some fantastic long takes worth watching.
Of any piece of cinema, this is a scene that successfully makes beating the crap out of a room full of people look as exhausting as it probably is, and the fact that it’s a long take really helps to amplify that feeling. In this scene from revered Korean neo-noir film Oldboy, the main character Dae-su starts on one end of a dark, grungy corridor, and by the end of the scene he is on the other side of it. What the scene intentionally lacks in flashy choreography it makes up for in raw grit and feeling. Enemies don’t just stand around waiting to attack one at a time, and the main character doesn’t make it through the fight unscathed. There are lulls in the action as people catch their breaths and consider if the fight is worth continuing. It all adds up to make one of the more impactful action scenes to watch.
Of any piece of cinema, this is a scene that successfully makes beating the crap out of a room full of people look exhausting for the cameraman. In this scene in The Protector, Tony Jaa’s character Kham is so mad about his elephant being kidnapped that he beats up 4 floors-worth of people. As soon as the scene starts, Kham is throwing people through doors and off balconies and doing Tony Jaa’s signature Muay Thai to knock the living daylights out of people. Tony Jaa’s movies are known for hard-hitting fight scenes where the blows look brutal and like they really hurt the stunt performers, so pulling that off in a scene such as this makes it even more impressive. One of the stunt performers almost died, as during filming the safety mat he was supposed to be thrown off a balcony onto hadn’t been placed quite in time for his big fall, so Tony Jaa stopped them from falling mere seconds before a tragedy could occur. A camera operator trained specifically for this scene, as other camera operators were not able to keep up with the action as it traversed ever higher, and even then that camera operator had a rough go of it.
In the first season of Netflix’s Daredevil, the show featured a roughly 3-minute long take of Daredevil literally knocking the teeth out of a group of ne’er-do-wells in a corridor with lighting and color-grading very reminiscent of Oldboy’s corridor fight. In the third season’s fourth episode, it appears the show’s creators decided to up the ante, and Matt Murdock finds himself in a battle for life-or-death in an 11-minute uninterrupted shot. The scene takes place in a prison and involves both prisoners and heavily armored guards on Wilson Fisk’s payroll. As the fight ensues, a prison riot breaks out and Murdock negotiates for his life and is eventually escorted out of the prison through a series of snaking hallways as calamity envelopes the penitentiary. It’s a shame the show was cancelled because viewers were no doubt looking forward to an episode in the future that would probably feature a 22-minute long single shot fight scene where Matt Murdock spars with an entire criminal organization before escaping on a rocket headed for the International Space Station.
This scene from the Orson Welles film Touch of Evil shows not only how to pull off an impressive long take, but what the benefits of attempting such a monstrosity of an undertaking can be. In this opening scene, a bomb with a very short timer is placed in the trunk of a car. Viewers then watch as the car slowly makes its way down a thriving street, not knowing when the bomb will go off or who might be caught in the blast radius. Even when the camera shifts focus from the car to a couple walking down the street, the car is never out of shot for long. It’s a true masterclass in dramatic tension, stakes, and staging, as the shot is dense with movement and extras. The camera is constantly rising above the action before coming back to the ground, weaving between the throngs of people as they pass by until the moment of finality.
Speaking of scenes of incredible tension, Episode 4 of True Detective’s phenomenal first season is packed with it. Matthew McConaughey‘s character Rustin Cohle infiltrates a gang of white supremacists to gain access to their meth supplier, and to get the information Rustin has to agree to take part in a robbery in the projects the gang has been planning. The entire robbery 6-minute scene is done in one shot and spans multiple rooms in multiple houses as the scene travels across the neighborhood. Throughout the scene, the plan goes awry, characters fight each other and the entire neighborhood erupts into chaos by the end. From the lead-up to the scene itself as it unfolds, it can be hard for one to find a moment to breathe, even after the credits roll, and the long take really gives viewers a sense of just how quickly a high-stakes situation can go intensely sour in mere moments.
The opening scene of John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 film Halloween is another example of a long take being utilized for the sake of giving viewers a sense of anxiousness and tension. The scene starts out voyeuristic as viewers are shown the scene through somebody’s point of view as they spy on two teens getting frisky with each other. The as-of-yet to be seen figure makes their way to the kitchen and grabs a knife from the drawer, letting viewers know that things are going to take a turn for the worse for the people in the house. What solidifies that ominous feeling is when the assailant puts on a clown mask, as nothing ever good comes from somebody holding a knife and looking even clown-adjacent. The scene is not only about keeping viewers on the edge of their seat as the events unfold, but also about obscuring the true nature of the killer until the deed is done. On top of that, it also keeps the viewer in the dark about the motivation behind this sequence of events even after the scene has concluded since they never see the perpetrator’s facial expressions as the events play out.
Sometimes a long take looks the director decided to do as complicated a shot as possible in one shot on a dare. In this classic Goodfellas scene, Ray Liotta and Lorraine Bracco’s characters, Henry and Karen, go on a date at the Copacabana nightclub, taking the back entrance through the kitchen to reach the show floor. They pass through multiple hallways and a hectic kitchen on their way there, the entire way Henry saying hello, patting backs, and rubbing shoulders with a plethora of people and slipping $20 bills to many of them. The uninterrupted nature of the scene gives the viewers a real sense of the access Liotta’s character has to the inner workings of the nightclub, how glamorous and powerful his mobster lifestyle is making him feel, and how quickly he’s able to get a table set up at the front of the show special for him on what is clearly a wildly busy night for the venue.
Directed by Steve McQueen, Hunger is a historical drama about the 1981 Irish hunger strike. The scene in question is lacking the fanfare and intense camera movements of the other scenes mentioned above, but is rather a scene of just two people talking to each other. Michael Fassbender and Liam Cunningham, portraying Bobby Sands and Father Moran, respectively, discuss life and the impending hunger strike, which the priest attempts to persuade Bobby Sands not to go through with. The shot is composed symmetrically, exemplifying that despite their stations in life there is little different between the two men aside from their convictions. The lighting is stark and dramatic, with the characters backlit and almost fully silhouetted. As the priest tries to break through to somebody willing to die for a cause they believe in, it’s one unbroken shot of two people having a smoke and sharing a table. It’s an emotionally powerful scene purely because the subject being discussed is emotionally powerful. There’s no music to force the mood, letting the scene speak for itself. The unbroken nature of the shot instead makes the viewer pay attention to what is being said and what is at stake.
The Argentinian crime drama The Secrets In Their Eyes spans several decades and features a backdrop of the country’s politics over the many years it encompasses. It won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film among other accolades. In it, the main character makes a promise to a grieving husband to solve the murder of his wife, and from there a complicated mystery unfolds. In a pivotal moment in the film, the characters track the killer to a soccer stadium, though the sport is referred to as football there, which feels worth mentioning. The chase that follows is a 5-minute long single shot in the crowded stadium, complete with aerial view, over 200 extras, and some digital effects to make the stadium look totally packed as they attempt to apprehend the killer. It’s a tense moment, made claustrophobic by how squeezed in everybody is by the bustling nature of the stadium and the fanfare of the event everybody not involved in solving a murder is there to see. Making the scene was an huge undertaking, reportedly taking over a year to finish from pre-production to editing, but it helps the viewer get a sense of how hectic and desperate the chase is.
This movie is difficult to describe without giving too much of the charm away, but it does manage to pull off the impressive feat of making its opening shot 37 minutes long. One Cut of the Dead is a zombie film from Japan that goes a step further than the other entries on this list and breaks the fourth wall by giving an in-film explanation for why the sequence is being done all in one take. The point of the film is to constantly subvert expectations, and questionable occurrences in the first third of the movie are eventually given a thoroughly satisfying explanation in the final third, and what is revealed makes the viewer understand things that happened that they were not aware needed explaining, and it vastly improves the film by doing so. The movie takes a gamble with long-shot odds on viewers’ attention spans, but it absolutely pays off, especially considering the film earned over $250,000 from its $25,000 budget. The actors in the film were no doubt surprised by the film’s success considering it was actually the final production of an acting and directing workshop they paid to take.
Long takes are risky business. Some things are simply improved as a result of competent editing, otherwise it wouldn’t have its own category at the Academy Awards. Eschewing the rudimentary aspect of film making can result in some very stilted cinema if mismanaged. However, when done with skill, precision, or even simply a solid amount of cleverness, it can create some of the most memorable sequences of all.
![\"IT電腦補習](\"http://itteacheritfreelance.hk/test/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/logo2-2.png\"){kind=logo}
www.itsec.hk
www.itsec.vip
www.itseceu.uk
Leave a Reply