Long Takes In the Movies, Antidote To CGI? 295
brumgrunt submitted a Den of Geek story about long takes in movies. The premise is that CGI has made so many things possible that it all rings sterile now. Long shots are a better way to be flashy. Personally I absolutely love long takes, and I always elbow my wife excitedly when they happen. She probably hates them now! Some of the examples cited here are probably unfamiliar but maybe that'll just give you an excuse to queue them on Netflix.
Re:Rope! (Score:2, Informative)
The Player (Score:3, Informative)
Any list without the long take that opens The Player is suspect.
Re:Henry V (Score:3, Informative)
Scanner Blog [suntimes.com]
Re:Rope! (Score:4, Informative)
If you ever watch it, pay close attention to when the screen is blacked out for a moment by someone with a black jacket (or equivalent black object) is either panned across, or stands in front of the camera. It happens so smoothly it doesn't disturb the flow of the scene at all. In reality that was when they had to stop, change film, and start up again. The 'blackground' is actually a means to hide the jump. Since your view of the rest of the scene is momentarily interrupted, and then continues as if nothing happened, you assume that nothing did happen. Kind of like blinking, but on a larger scale.
Considering his creativity and genius with the far more limited capabilities of his equipment, could you imagine what he'd do with modern gear & software? (Probably not, but I bet it would make Lucas and Spielburg wet themselves.)
Re:And the opposite (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Russian Ark (Score:3, Informative)
No love for Russian Ark?
Or for Tiempo Real [imdb.com] (Real Time) which "Holds the official Guinness World Record for being the 'First One-Take Movie in Film History'"
The entire movie has no cuts.
Re:Disappointing a geek article would omit "Sereni (Score:4, Informative)
Forgot another good one (Score:3, Informative)
The opening sequence to Serenity. It's two long takes stitched together, but it is still impressive. Long tracking shot through the ship, timing of the actors, and some of the lines are in Chinese. Whole crew nails it. Impressive as hell.
I can only find the stupid video in French though. [youtube.com] Most annoying.
Re:Henry V (Score:3, Informative)
Re:And the opposite (Score:4, Informative)
One thing I will mention about it for our friends out there in
Another film that exploits the long-takes example: Irreversible [imdb.com] . Like Momento it plays out in reverse-chronological order, and each ~14-minute segment was done as a single take. Why 14 minutes? That's about one reel of 35-mm film.
As a film editor (Score:5, Informative)
There is no single answer to any of this. Computer generated effects are not bad. Quick cuts are not bad. Long takes are not bad. Handheld is not bad. None of these techniques are bad in and of themselves. They become bad when they are used inappropriately.
When cutting a scene I ask myself what is trying to be conveyed in that scene. Let's say the character is sad, and we want the audience to know that. My job then becomes finding the best way to show that. It could mean using a close up to show them crying. It could mean using a locked off wide shot to show them surrounded by a lonely environment. There's never a single best answer, and that's in part why I enjoy my job so much.
Likewise when it comes to long takes and special effects, both have their place but both are misused. Again, ask yourself what it is you are trying to convey. If your character is in a fast paced fight in a warehouse, with bad guys all around from above and below coming at him from many directions, it's quite possible that quick cuts can give you a better sense of danger, as well as actually show the action better. One of the drawbacks to long takes tends to be that you are limited in what you can show. If a bad guy drops in through the glass on the other side of the warehouse, in a long take you'd have to pan the camera, and see that action small in the frame. With a cut, you can easily bring the audience across the warehouse to show this action in a medium shot, then instantly bring them back to the hero's reaction.
Another issue with long takes is that they tend to follow the actors and show their backs. You're in a hard spot on this, because we're most interested in where the actor is going, not where they've been, but at the same time seeing someone's back is not very intimate and is a bit disconnecting. This is why long takes work best when nobody is really going anywhere, or when the environment itself is the most important thing to show.
Long takes can be beneficial for action in small spaces, such as a Kung Fu fight or a dance routine. These elements are about physicality and continuity of motion, and being in a small space a long take can easily capture the entirety of that. I love seeing fights with a smoothly flowing camera that preserves the action, just like I love seeing wide shots of musical numbers where there is dancing. All too often, quick cuts are used in these situations to hide things, like the fact that the actor can;t fight or a bad piece of choreography. I think in general any time you use an edit to HIDE something rather than SHOW something, then the quality of your film goes down.
I see a lot of long takes in some films, which appear to have no motivation other than to be long takes, and that hurts the film just as much as if someone threw in a fury of cuts just to make it exciting. Like all techniques, you've got to be really conscious of the implications of using a long take, and what effect it will have. The worst reason to do it is to do it because it's the new cool.
Re:Henry V (Score:1, Informative)
Or there's Mike Figgis's "Timecode", which is not just one long take from start to finish, it's four concurrent long takes, shot and displayed simultaneously.