Tomorrowland, Avengers and How the Long Take Died a Death by 1,000 Cuts

[grim22]

Pretty good article looking at why single take shots no longer hold the audience in awe: http://screencrush.com/history-of-long-takes/

 

 

 

For Tomorrowland director Brad Bird, the answer to that question was a show-stopping, six-minute unbroken take that follows its heroine as she explores this magical wonderland for the first time. She watches men in jetpacks zoom overhead, rides a floating monorail, and nearly accepts an invitation to board a rocket ship headed for outer space — until her invite runs out of juice and she’s returned home.

All told, the jetpack shot took a team of a dozen artists “almost 10 months” to complete. It’s an incredible technical achievement.

And no one’s noticed it.

Avengers: Age of Ultron begins with an elaborate sequence that tracks all six main heroes as they approach a Hydra base in Eastern Europe; without a single cut, the camera connects Hawkeye, Black Widow, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, and Hulk in rapid succession. In this week’s San Andreas, Carla Gugino’s character finds herself trapped on the top floor of a skyscraper in the midst of the worst earthquake in recorded history; in a single shot, the camera zooms through the chaos into a window, and then follows Gugino as she races for her life through debris and a screaming mob to make her way to the roof where her ex-husband (played by Dwayne Johnson) will rescue her in his helicopter.



All of these shots are lavish, intricate, undoubtedly expensive — and they’ve all been met with a collective meh from audiences. 15 or 20 years ago, any of these single-take sequences would have been the focus of magazine articles, extensive DVD featurettes, and glowing critical hosannas. Today, they come and go with almost no impact on a near-weekly basis. What the hell is happening to the long take?

 

Edited June 6, 2015 by grim22

[Dementeleus]

I haven't read the article yet, but when long takes are done well and used appropriately, they're kind of invisible. The showoff-y ones draw a lot of attention, but that can also take you out of the movie (because you're noticing how clever and/or epic the shot is). "Every Frame a Painting" has a segment on Spielberg's regular use of "onesies", which are basically mini-long takes... and they're almost completely un-noticed.

[Blankments]

I liked all the long takes mentioned in that article (Except Poltergeist but that's because I haven't seen it)

[dashrendar44]

My take is if you put a long shot in a big pile of VFX-fest and trite material, it won't be outstanding because audience get numb fast of being shoved with special effects and cardboard characters that they no longer have the attention to notice the editing as in a long take if there's no build-up culminating to that sequence. It's just another VFX sequence instead of being an exhilarating rush of adrenaline spousing the character(s)'s POV and the action in real time. If the long shot is impressive, people won't analyze it like "Oh that's a long shot!" but they will feel it in their bones emotionally that something is happening even if they can't pinpoint it, they'll register on a subconscious level that they're fusing with the movie's space/time continuum, it will hold their breath and keep their senses on the edge.

 

I mean how can you be impressed with long takes anymore after what Lubezki has achieved with the trifecta of long takes (Children Of Men, Gravity and Birdman), they were impressive because it was visceral, you were stuck in there with the characters and was not a videogame cut scene made of multiple blended VFX shots comped to the max to make it seamless*.

 

(I'm not saying it's "cheating"* since cinema is illusion at the core but if you don't really make us care about the characters AND the long shot is actually multiple CG shots artificially blended into one in post to show off, that lacked the "impressive" achievement the long shot is in reality)

Edited June 6, 2015 by MADash Rendar

[Jake Gittes]

A long take can still be awe-inspiring provided 1) it's not just showing off, but is used for tension, character development, etc.; 2) you actually realize how much work and care went into capturing it, how many details needed to be in the right place at the right time for it to be seamless.

 

Now, long takes done with CGI can still be effective without adhering to that second part, but IMO they should at least follow the first rule, which is why the opening scene of Gravity is amazing while, say, the long take in the beginning of Age of Ultron is just a camera flying around with no real purpose.

 

Most of the greatest long takes, though, are still those accomplished thanks to the incredibly precise timing of many people involved - Touch of Evil, I Am Cuba, Goodfellas, Boogie Nights, etc. Those can also be done and provoke a great reaction today - just look at all the praise and discussion surrounding the single takes in True Detective and Daredevil. 

[dashrendar44]

Soy Cuba and The Cranes Are Flying are technical tour de force strenghtening their narrative's power. Those are incredible feats made without steadycam and CGI 50 years ago and they still hold up. Russian directors got a long history of being technical cinematography wizards.(Eisenstein of course). No wonder the likes of Scorcese and PTA were so much in awe that it inspired their own cinematography and narrative style.(De Palma owes them too)

 

Nowadays, those which got the most memorable impact are long shots in asian cinema like Old Boy, Ong Bak and the likes.(Hard Boiled was the first asian movie I saw and actually realized it was a long shot well after the fact, like 10 years after!) The choregraphy, the precision, the acting, the grittiness, the actual danger of shooting it, it's just mind-boggling and riveting in the sense that it totally immersed you in the pulse of the sequence on a sensorial level.

Edited June 6, 2015 by MADash Rendar

[4815162342]

I think when long takes are done more for sheer spectacle and through computer-aided wizardry, they lose a fair amount of their luster unless it is really, really choreographed well (like in Gravity).

 

As Jake said, long takes can still get big wows and kudos when it is easy to appreciate onscreen the skill and difficulty required in pulling off the precise timing necessary. True Detective's long-take was what really kicked the show from very good to must-see drama/thriller of the summer for a lot of people because it excited them.

 

 

Game of Thrones last season had a really nifty 360-degree longshot about 50 seconds long that worked great because it really helped the audience take in the chaos and desperation of one of the places people have gotten accustomed as a home base of sorts getting assaulted.

[DeeCee]

I put my my hands up. I didn't notice that scene in Tomorrowland as one long take.

[AniNate]

I think it's a combination of Cuaron/Inarritu/Lubezki setting the bar too high for everyone else and the long takes coming off now as just a way for a blockbuster to get some artsy cred. It may look cool, but if the rest of your movie is the conventional frame change every 5-10 seconds, it just feels pointless.

Edited June 6, 2015 by tribefan695

[RobinHood26]

The Berg is low key the true master at oners 

Edited June 7, 2015 by Jay Hollywood

[Dementeleus]

The reason no one's talking about that SAN ANDREAS shot is there's nothing particularly special about it: a steadi-cam basically follows Carla Gugino around for a couple of minutes while a couple dozen extras race around frantically and a bunch of CG plates are comped into the background. Sure, it takes some logistics to plan but there's nothing revelatory or even that interesting about the shot.

[grim22]

Just watched a hindi movie which had a one take song. The full song isn't on youtube but the edited video below is

 

 

Only realized it was a one take song because of this thread/article. Couldn't help but notice it actually, very well choreographed to maintain one continuous camera move with so many actors dancing.

[baumer]

Funny enough, a few nights ago, I was watching Porky's ( bear with me here).  For the first time, I noticed how many scenes were done without any cuts.  This doesn't happen at all anymore in movies.  There's one scene in particular in Porky's that would have taken a lot of rehearsal.  In it, you have two actors up front doing the dialogue and then you have three actors in the background trying not to laugh, in character of course.  The scene goes on for almost 4 minutes and it's really funny, and I wonder if the laughter in the scene isn't partially real.  The point is, to the point of the thread, nothing like this is filmed anymore, it's all quick cuts, even in comedy.  But check this out, see how it turned out while using just one camera and letting the actors do their thing.

 

https://youtu.be/75yAH9hWrZ0

 

Edited June 7, 2015 by baumer

[AniNate]

The Last Airbender uses a long take and it looks awful. When you do multiple cuts it leaves it ambiguous whether a wide-scale fight is occurring chronologically or if the movie is cutting to a bunch of different events occurring at the same time. With Last Airbender it's painfully obvious that a bunch of people are just standing around while two adversaries flail magic attacks at each other.