Film Courage: Can we talk about the one shot and
how did you do that? How do you break it up or don’t you?
Robert Rippberger, Filmmaker: Shooting Those Who Walk Away in one take or once one continuous
shot was quite a challenge.We really even made it harder on ourselves because we also want to shoot
during golden hour so that meant that each day we were shooting our one shot we only had one or two
goes at it and then the sun would be too low or too high and we couldn't match it.
That was really it so it put a lot of pressure and a lot of stakes on each day that we filmed.
Overall when you watch the film it reads as one continuous shot. There's really only a
handful of cuts (far less) than I think people would guess and there's even some that people
might presume were shot were cuts but actually aren’t. But largely we did that to yeah to sort of
break up the days and to allow for more precision on blocking and camera movements but if we needed
to we could have shot the entire thing in one unbroken cut we just felt like there would be
another way to kind of have more precision more sort of hands-on expression of the film if we
broke it up into more or less kind of 15-minute shots when you compare it to other famous
famous one-shots those are around three or four minutes long and we were tripling that sometimes
four times and so it was really quite a quite an obstacle quite a daunting undertaking and
I really feel like all filmmakers at some point in their career should make a one-shot film I
really feel like it's a an amazing sub genre that lends so much to engaging in storytelling in a
very unique and different way how many production days did it take to get all of the shots that you
needed so we had about a month of rehearsal and then a fair amount of rehearsal and zoom
and then some rehearsal on location and then in total it was about
six or seven production days itself and basically the format would be we would rehearse
all morning and then we would just sort of wait and see when the sun was in the right position
and then everybody would be on and we would just try and get as many takes in as possible
until the sun went down but I was also very conscious of like if things were bad in the
beginning I had to say cut very early on or else we wouldn't get a chance to do a whole other take
so it was it was it was precarious but I mean Booboo Stewart and Scarlett Sperduto and
Bryce and John Steele and Grant Morningstar are actors I mean just phenomenal and so dependable
and really brought their brought everything to these roles and so we we never had an issue every
single day we we we nailed it so if maybe one line of dialogue was off or something was off
you you stopped it right away just because it was so limited for the time you had so anytime there
was dialogue issues we would just roll with it there were there never really were there was there
was definitely space for the actors to improv and and all of that the main things would be
for example the cameraman can't get in the door quick enough and kind of hits it and the camera
bumps right or there's a car passing and there's a noise problem and even those subtle things like
we would have okay cut or at the beginning of the film we basically pass off the shot between
like five or six different extras and then cars and then the person on a bicycle and if any of
those wasn't to my liking wasn't as precise as I wanted and we would cut and take it back
and yeah it was never the actors it was it was always just the the difficulty of trying to
pull off all these things in one spot in one in one take and then for the interior shots
did that actually go much smoother you're not dealing with natural light the interior shots
were just as challenging and it was working with a kid actor he has to be wrapped by a certain time
so we really only had again one or two goes at it per day and on top of that it was such a small
environment to film in and we had to be so conscious of not having shadows
so the camera person moving 360 degrees around the actor
in fight scenes and falling on the ground falling down stairs I mean so much involved
that it was just as just as challenging as handing a camera off between three operators as it moves
into a car and then drives for 20 minutes it was the house was the house was was quite challenging
but yeah the team was right there to pull it off and the exterior of the house was the same house
you were shooting in or no different same everything was everything was exactly as
it appears there were there were really no kind of magic tricks no sets built
you walk into the house as as we we we put it all together and Sonia Foltarz
our production designer just did an exquisite job with it and we largely leaned on kind of
German expressionism and and ways that sort of reality distorts within the real world and and
yeah we we turned that house into so many different different uh sort of mindsets
of what it is to experience an interaction with with the villain rock creep and that was really
a testament to Sonia's vision and and hard work why did you make the decision to do just one shot
the decision to do one shot is because I really believe it's a sub-genre I am I think every
director in their canon of work should have a one shot and and it just hit me as such a a daunting
challenge that asking if it was possible on top of adding these insane story elements and also
adding covet onto it that it really fired me up to think okay well let's see let's let's put together
the best people that i've worked with and and let's go out there and and see but there was
a there was a huge likelihood that we wouldn't be able to pull it off and it was actually after the
first day most of the cast and crew came to me and they were like we saw how confident you were but
we didn't think this was possible like we're all here but we didn't think this was possible which
is also such a nice gesture for all of them to like put their trust in me and and but yeah it was
funny to hear it I was like I always I always saw this that's very doable but there was a lot on the
line even with with the investors I had to sign that if there was a covet outbreak and there were
financial over overages that I personally would find a way to to pay those so it was it was quite
a quite a gamble in a lot of different ways but yeah again just having a phenomenal team around
me I really really believed in everybody and our ability to get it done and and that's the film.