Long Takes!

Oh do I love Long takes! Children of Men, True Detective, Birdman, Russian Ark, Old Boy, Boogie Nights, Rope, GoodFellas, most of Speilberg and Kubrick and many more! There's a reason for a long shot. For suspense, to show the atmosphere, create the emotions of the character visually, etc.

For the film opening, I wanted to show the world that Frankie Gibson lives in while also showing the impact that his alter ego has. This is also a way to introduce the characters too. We start off a phone, slide into another, and pan with the man walking into the fight. Although this isn't necessarly such a long take, I did want to achieve the feeling.

When Orson Wells was working on Touch of Evil, they were behind schedule. To create suspense and fasten the workload, they decided to do one long take. This cut hours short and made them move on to the next scene. The beauty of it is that it became on of the most notable shots.

Why else would a director use a long take? Martin Scorcese used it when Henry Hill and his wife go into the Copacabana Cafe. This introduces the power that the character has with everyone, as we are introduced to this world along with his wife. P.T Anderson used in a familiar fashion in Boogie Nights.

In conclusion, long takes are to achieve a particular emotion visually, all in one take. This saves production time too. Here is the long take for our film opening. Notice how I cued the actors and some of the errors I did while focusing(DSLR on a glidecam makes it very hard to focus btw). Audio is horrible since it is a DSLR.

Here are some research into long takes:

http://nofilmschool.com/2014/05/study-steven-spielbergs-cinematography-help-you-master-long-take
http://nofilmschool.com/2014/11/how-birdman-was-made-to-look-like-film-shot-in-one-take http://nofilmschool.com/2014/12/how-light-film-looks-one-continuous-take-chivo-talks-birdman