This is one of the most elaborate shots
you will ever see in a film.
It is, simply put, almost impossible
from a structural perspective.
Filmmaking has come an insanely long way over the last century.
It's a little strange to think that as our cameras have gotten
smaller and easy to use, the rigs used
to move them around have gotten larger, and, well, more
complex.
Like, absurdly complex.
When it comes to immersing an audience
in a cinematic experience, filmmakers
have a ton of old tricks up their sleeves.
Dollies get used to create long, flowing shots.
Tilting evokes a feeling of grandiosity.
Rack focuses are great for letting the audience know
who they should be focusing on.
Steadicam, [INAUDIBLE] lenses, the list goes on and on.
All these techniques can be combined
into creating an immersive, impressive,
also extremely difficult to pull off single shot.
We've seen it in a ton of movies,
most notably the 6 and 1/2 minute phenomenally intricate
hand-held shot in Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 dystopian epic
Children of Men.
Today we're going to take a look at the art of the single shot,
what goes in to making it happen,
and why we, as audience members, are
so mesmerized when we see it.
Moviemakers continue to push the boundaries of what
can be accomplished in a oner.
It's hard to have this discussion without talking
about Children of Men.
Evan over at Nerdwriter did a great look at Children of Men
a few years back that dove deep into why
the camera focuses on what it does throughout the film.
You should watch that vid, by the way.
But what I'm more interested in is how it does it,
and what it accomplishes.
So, there are 16 shots in the film that are over 45 seconds
long, many of which involve carefully
choreographed gunfights, car movements,
and timed explosives.
Today we're going to take a look at two of them.
The first shot from Children of Men we're looking at,
well, let's just call it the ambush sequence,
is one of the most beautiful moments in the film,
and there are a ton of moving parts here.
I mean that in the most literal way possible.
Everything in this scene is moving.
In fact, this entire sequence was
thought of as being impossible to pull off
by many people on the production crew.
The only way it was able to work was number one,
by customizing a vehicle to allow a camera to move freely
inside the car's interior.
To do this, they had to remove the roof
and attach a Two Axis Dolly in its place.
This allowed the camera to be controlled remotely,
and move anywhere inside the cab.
Number two, the production team also customized
the seats of the car with hinges,
so the actors could get out of the camera's way
when they weren't on screen.
Literally.
Faster, faster.
What's happening?
Are they coming back?
I don't know!
Just go faster!
Huh?
God, can't you pull off--
The completed vehicle looks like some strange high-tech go-kart
with a camper attached to the roof.
There's a ton of engineering at work
here to make this shot happen as well.
And that's outside of the fact that they still
need to coordinate about 50 extras, a car
crash, a motorcycle chase, a broken windshield, a gunshot
wound, and a motorcycle crash.
Let's look at that.
The scene starts with some playful fun with a ping pong
ball and with one simple turn of the camera,
the entire tone changes in an instant as a flaming car
comes barreling down a hill, blocking the road,
and facilitating an ambush.
We still didn't see a cut yet.
As a crowd swarms around the car,
pelting it with carefully timed Molotov cocktails,
which I'm pretty sure are CGI?
But still, look at the size of this crowd.
Now we are tracking this motorcycle
and the camera really needs to be in the perfect spot
here to nail this gunshot wound, which, it is.
Look at the positioning here where the motorcycle flips.
The movement of violence for impact and boom,
here's where it gets impressive.
After these cops get shot, the camera actually leaves the car
and begins tracking Clive Owen.
Turning around, we see the car with no rig on it whatsoever.
I have zero idea how they facilitated the
swapping the vehicles here.
If there's a hidden cut somewhere,
I have no idea where it is, but I
think it might be when the windshield breaks?
But the fact that I have to guess is, well, telling.
The whole sequence is a carefully and elaborately
choreographed dance and the end result
is that we, as viewers, feel like we
are in the car with the characters
during an extremely chaotic moment.
We go through an entire gamut of emotions in this four minute
shot.
Endearment, amusement, confusion, fear, mortification,
panic, sadness, relief, grief.
I mean, to make an audience feel so many intense emotions
in a single shot is difficult, but also, the point of film,
almost structurally.
That's the magic of a perfect oner.
It makes us feel like we are right in the middle
of the action, and experience it alongside our characters.
It's almost like viewing live theater when done well.
But to reinforce this, I want to quickly take
a look at another great shot.
This here is six minutes and 17 seconds,
all one shot, again, and yes, very difficult to accomplish.
In fact, shooting this sequence required
two full weeks of rehearsal focused on this shot
that if anyone screwed up, at any point in time,
it took the production team over five hours to reset.
And they had to reset the sequence three times.
Not to mention the fact that the director of photography, Chivo,
or Emmanuel Lubezki, had to carry around a 10 pound camera
for the duration of the shot.
They nailed it on the third take,
and the result is, kind of awe-inspiring.
Going back to Evan's video, he pointed out right
before the shot, just before the sequence begins,
there's a breakaway from our main characters
to focus on a woman cradling her now-passed son.
This emotionally evocative image sets the tone
for the entire sequence, which carries that tone throughout.
Alfonso Cuarón himself has stated that the image came from
a photograph of the Balkan Wars, and is a reference to Pablo
Picasso's painting Guernica which contemplates the horrors
of war.
It's a lot of detail, and a lot of substance to a shot
that most people didn't think much of.
And we haven't even started the single yet.
We almost feel like we, as an audience,
are some silent character following
a protagonist through a war zone for the duration of this oner.
The camera moves as cautiously as the characters do
while hiding from an envoy of military vehicles,
and then it sprints with them as they make their way to cover.
Smartly, we, the personification of the camera,
are on our knees with our characters
as they face execution.
This is simply done incredibly well.
It doesn't matter how technically difficult
it is, what matters is the results.
I mean, seriously, we're looking at a oner like this that
requires a set up, but there are live animals in these shots
as well.
That requires an entire team of people
who just deal with those animals, who
can also screw the shot up.
The timing and efficiency with which this scene plays out
on camera is incredible.
There seems to be something unintentional that
happens when Clive Owen enters the bus here, for example.
A blood squib pops and the camera lens gets spattered.
It's likely highly intentional, but how accidental it feels
is what gives things like these oners their gravity.
It adds the intensity of the scene
as now we feel like we have blood on ourselves.
We are very personal in this moment.
By the time this sequence is over,
we're as physically and mentally exhausted
as our main character.
That's what oners can do for us.
And a lot of films misunderstand these principles.
They use them for visual punches,
but forget that the punch needs to land somewhere.
The shot needs to serve a narrative, or character
function.
These shots add a level of immersion and urgency
to the viewing experience, while at the same time
allowing actors to convey a depth of emotion that
just isn't quite achievable with traditional filmmaking setups.
Iñárritu's 2014 film Birdman is designed to look like
the entire film is done in a single shot.
In reality, there are only 28 cuts in the entire film,
but the use of these extended cuts elevate our experience,
and especially Oscar viewer's experience,
as it attempts to remove some of the artificiality
of the viewing experience.
The oner takes us from a place of simply watching a film,
and puts us in the place of experiencing it.
In these moments, we are transported
from the seats of our theater and into the depths of space
and gravity, or the trenches of World War I in 1917.
It can make us feel bitterly alone, desperate, triumphant,
nervous, or completely terrified.
For a moment, when done well, we the audience aren't just
watching the movie anymore, we're a part of it.
We make what used to feel stagnant and choppy
into something that feels a little alive.
Well, guys, that's it for today's episode of Nerdstalgic.
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