this courtesy of friend, colleague and actor Angela Dee - thanks, angela. this is a website that offers the chance to see six camera angles on a rock or jazz concert. you can choose among the angles ORRRRR --
the center button of the six cameras is 'all' and hitting this gives you an ongoing multi-cam six-grid, three up three down. blogger won't let me upload this as a .mov - darn.
but it's reminiscent of course of the baseball mosaic options from MLB for online viewers -
inspired by dennis potter's british TV series.
directed by herbert ross, steve martin learned tap dancing in six months in order to perform the role of a miserable song salesman in the depression who wants to believe in the lyrics of the songs he sells.
in the money scene in the bank, which is split horizontally at the very beginning.
superimposition in the 'pennies from heaven' dance - done very slowly in the rain against a backdrop of an old diner, which becomes a stage of shimmering gold and walker evan's photos of the era.
doubling with fred astaire & ginger rogers:
and the male stripper dance by Christopher walken on the bar is amazing, a great moment in American film.
and of course, just for reference, the great take-off on hopper's nighthawks.
carroll ballard said in an interview that he had so much material on the girl flying south with her geese that he put it into a fictional newsroom monitor wall - here's one tiny version of a it.
this is a fairly standard double-screen video which i'm having to click on rather than embed because the music immediately starts up whenever the blog opens.
but worth a look.
are a series of split screens of four-grid satellite surveillence footage, interspersed with titles. have to see how i can get a copy of this, since below isn't it - except for a flash at end
you can see a bit of this at the end in this trailer.
also the flag flying behind di caprio in the window in one of his scenes shown here - very multi.
can't find a good copy of the end credits. not even a still.
you know, it seems to me that the title and end credit designers still aren't credited, even in the end credits now, but i need to check this.
Spring has brought warm as well as cold weather to Manhattan and with the change in air there has been a change in attitude toward digital media. The presentation of digital works ebbs and flows, it is present, then conspicuously absent from the commercial galleries that dot Manhattan. This Spring there have been numerous exhibitions that have invited viewers to sit and look and listen to communications from multiple screens. The awkwardness of walking into the middle of a single screen projection is compounded when entering a space that presents many. Rather than dwell on the pros and cons of scheduled time and a cinema-like setting in a gallery (for example in Eve Sussman's curated film series at Winkleman Gallery (March 27-May 2)), it is the nature of the fragmented narrative that is ripe for discussion. It is curious to note that almost all of the multi-screen works on view are political in nature, i.e. content driven works which begs the questions: Why fragment the narrative across multiple screens if there is meaning to be gleaned from the viewing of the work? and How can a fragmented narrative embellish content?
When imagery is split across multiple screens there is a fracturing that occurs. The advent of two three or more simultaneous projections becomes a distraction for the viewer as they often do not know where to look, when. Amongst the many multi-screen works on view in New York museums and galleries This Spring included: Barbara Kruger "The Globe Shrinks" at Mary Boone Gallery (March 27 - May 1); Adrian Paci "Gestures" at Peter Blum Chelsea (April 2 - May 15); Michelle Dizon "Civil Society" at Cue Art Foundation (March 23 - May 12); Amar Kanwar at Marian Goodman Gallery (March 16 - April 24); "Ouroboros: The History of the World" at Ise Cultural Foundation (March 9 - April 23) and William Kentridge "Five Themes" at MOMA (Feb 24 - May 17). What ties these shows together is the fact that in all the presentations, multiple projections fill a room, requiring viewers to think about how the fragments coalesce as a whole.
Barbara Kruger is a master at choreographing the sequence of projections that fill a given space. For her installation "The Globe Shrinks" she "engages with the kindness and brutality of the everyday, the collision of declaration and doubt, the duet of pictures and words, the resonance of direct address, and the unspoken in every conversation" (Boone gallery press release) through the sequencing of floor to ceiling projections that encircle the darkened space. Viewers can sit on the benches positioned in the center and sides of the gallery but must then turn their heads or bodies to take all the screens during the twelve minute loop. Within the projections, actors speak to the audience and to each other matter of factly, describing real-life situations where they acted badly. Intermittendly textual fragments fill the walls. The larger than life sized talking heads relate carefully scripted scenarios. A head occupies one wall, then moves to another creating a conversation across the space. Sometimes its a monologue other times a dialogue, others a recreation of an event, nevertheless, the experience is one of bombardment, of being talked at and through. Kruger syncopates the fragments with the utmost care, allowing the dark moments in between to resonate. In Kruger's signature style the in betweens are filled with phrases including "Blame it; Buy it; Kiss it; Fear it; Believe it; Love it; Blind it; Temp it; Share it" flash on the walls, guiding the interpretation of the work. As always there is a societal critique embedded in the presentation. The work is nasty, yet realistic. Kruger's installation is purposely fragmentary. She understands the attention span of her audience and creates a looping sequence that can be entered and exited at any point. There is no beginning, middle or end. The floor to ceiling projections engulf the viewer and immerse them in the narrative. The audience is not merely watching but is being assaulted by the projections and the texts. This strategy, often employed by Kruger is consistent with her desire to bombard the viewer.
How a narrative can be read across numerous screens becomes something of a challenge. With simultaneus projections one often does not know how to look or in what order to watch the videos. When watching the eight screens in Amar Kanwar's "The Lightning Testimonies" it is necessary to moving from seat to seat around the room in order to take in all the screens. Once can watch one video for a period time, or through its sequence, then move to anther, but more often than not, one's eyes drifted from one screen to another. In works like this trying to engage with the content of the narrative(s) requires finding a point of entry, without one it is impossible to fully grasp the project's integrity. Sometimes this is the point, but in a work like "The Lightning Testimonies" the combination of fragments are meant to give meaning to the whole. "The Lightning Testimonies" is a haunting work that relates the experiences of female victims of sexual violence. Kanwar collected these woman's stories during his travels through India and Bangladesh weaving them into factual accounts as well as into poetic meditations. The work is about the memories of the traumas, and the power of the will to move on, but not to forget. The work addresses the question: How can one come to terms with such brutality and how can one visualise it? When the works was first shown in Documenta 12 it was at once praised and criticized, less for the subject matter than the commitment required from the viewer. Presented in a small claustrophobic space requiring more than 32 minutes of viewing time, the fragmented presentation of what was for the most part a documentary left many viewers frustrated because they wanted to glean the meaning rather than indulge in the aesthetics. In Kanwar's new work at Marian Goodman Gallery he further fragments his narrative creating an installation that plays across 19 small screens. The required hours of viewing becomes less the point than taking in what becomes a moving collage. The display that holds the works takes precedent over the content. In an installation of moving images, especially in one presented as a montage, it is never assumed that the viewer will actually watch all the videos from beginning to end. If this is the case, then what is the artists intention and when is enough, enough to understand the work. In Kanwar's "The Torn First Pages" it is virtually impossible to see the entire work from beginning to end, so one relies on the textual description. While the installation is stunning, does it do service to the content of the work?
In an exhibition such as Adrian Paci's "Gesture" The multi-screen project is an element within the larger context of the exhibition. Although "Last Gestures" can stand alone it is informed by the other works on view. "Last Gestures—a rear projected 4-channel video installation—shows four different scenes of the Albanian wedding ritual in which the bride spends the last moments with her own family before she leaves to start her new life. Unaccustomed to the presence of a video camera, the family positions themselves as if for photograph, allowing the camera to capture some unintentionally tender and awkward moments." (Gallery press release) The intimacy of the silent piece allows one to recreate the scene in their mind's eye, thinking about the past, present and future life of the family. If shot as a single channel work the simultaneity of the gestures and expressions would be lost. Ths work, because of its short duration can be seen again and again and on multiple viewings the nuances of the moment shine through. There is a difference between standing and glancing at the screens and the commitment made when sitting. Each of the four screens is suspended from the ceiling and illuminated by a rear screen projection. The viewer's body does not interfere with the projections upon close examination making the installation something akin to a moving painting. The four screens work in concert with each other, presenting a slightly different point of view or a shifted moment of a particular event observed in realtime but presented in slow motion.
Although Michelle Dizon's triptych "Civil Society" loops indefinitely, it has a beginning, middle and end. The elegantly choreographed piece flows between the three screens allowing the action to unfold individually as well as collectively. "Civil Society" is a meditation on urban violence, using text and images that depict the global crisis. Beginning with the LA Rodney king beatings in 1992 and moving to the unrest in Paris in 2005, Dizon creates a work that speaks about displacement and loss drawing from both documentary and experimental film traditions. The use of the triptych allows her to not only show three scenarios at once, but also to take advantage of the larger wide screen format. The pacing and use of projected texts guides the journey of unrest. The use of voice over directs the narrative, but it is the beauty in Dizon's imagery that while depicting images of violence carefully avoids the trap of aestheticizing it. "Civil Society" is a powerful work, one that resonates beyond its three screens embedding itself in memory. What sets Dizon's three screen work apart is that it is meant to be watched as a whole. The single bench positioned in front of the screens and the films eighteen minute duration ask the viewer to commit to its duration rather than floating in and out of fragments.
In addition to seeing multi-screen works in galleries, the Museum of Modern art was full of projected imagery. Was it coincidental that Joan Jonas had an exhibition at MOMA, Location One and Yvonne Lambert simultaneously; and that her work was on view at MOMA concurrent with William Kentridge and Marina Abramovic? Jonas creates installations that combine numerous projections, monitors, objects and drawings that surround viewers and immerse them in her world. The duration of the works vary and often when viewing her installations it becomes about taking in multiple fragments that hopefully become a whole when digesting the experience. Kentridge creates single channel as well as multi-channel works that become immersive environments. In his MOMA exhibition audiences could see the works chronologically and trace how the ideas evolved to become installations that encompass multiple projections. In works like "7 Fragments for Georges Melies" the action unfolds across seven screens. How to view the installation becomes a question. Is it necessary to watch each projection all the way through or is it enough content gleaned when wandering from one to another? Because Kentridge's visual are so seductive, it is easy to get lost in his installations.
Art viewing that requires a time commitment is often rebuked by audiences who are used to taking in a wall full of painting a few seconds at a time. Installation/video artists who fragment their works perhaps are referencing the traditional mode of presentation where one looks are multiple works a bit at a time, but more likely they are pushing the boundaries of the form. More often than not, when greeted by a darkened space a viewer will choose not to engage with the works, siting it would require too much time and they'd rather get the DVD later and watch it at home. Perhaps this excuse could work for single channel pieces but never for an installation. Looking at multi-channel multi-media work isnothing like taking in a show of paintings.Today most boundaries have already been pushed to their limits, so the display of multi-screen works is not about how to seduce a viewer, but rather about how to display provocative and intelligent content in a way that maximizes its effects. That this takes time is given. In an era that embraces the new, it is curious that the taking in of a video installation is not celebrated. Most art audiences are experienced viewers, yet they are often amongst the laziest. The commitment to the new, is a commitment of time. The investment more often than not is rewarding. The challenge is in the reconstruction, albeit in the minds eye and the making sense of the disparate fragments that brighten a room.
of course, there's my lecture on letterboxing, which lives i'm not sure where. the basic point is the irony of wide-screen having been developed to compete with television, itself having been created with the exact same aspect ratio as fimls in 1939 had: 4:3.
just randomly watching the natinoal geographic channel -
i'm seeing four different kinds of letterboxing -
the show itself "journey to the center of the universe" has an aspect ratio of looks like 16:9.
the chase ad actually has a Cinemascope aspect ratio - at least 2.85:1.
then the america online has a hand-drawn line and white letterboxing in an animated commercial
and a Nat'l Geo promo has another aspect ratio
and then there's a funny direct tv ad where all the guys in a diner are watching a ball game on their iphones.
let's see if i can find them. hm. actually these are not online. i might ahve the ad wrong.
this is the widest I've seen: logitech, although i suspect it's for the web, which is the widest aspect ratio of all as per the billy elliot ad which i think i posted already.
i just think it's kind of amazing that Di Caprio can go from Revolutionary Road to ridley scott's body of lies in the same year -- both of which i watched only because i have HBO for the summer. the description of how ridley scott shoots is informative. I first saw him in Marvin's Room and it was obvious he was going to be one of the great actors of his generation:
This espionage operative you play in Body Of Lies is a pretty mysterious guy. So what can you let on about Ferris?
LEONARDO DICAPRIO: To put it simply, there's this dilemma that this character has, of where he's asked consistently to do things he doesn't believe in, for the betterment of his country and this war on terror. He's being manipulated by both sides. And so besides this being a great political piece that's pertinent to this time, it's this fantastic cat-and-mouse, espionage thriller that works on its own.
Did you find out stuff from real spies?
LD: I got to talk to some people who worked in that field. But unless you're talking about the CIA in the context of history and what they've done historically, which we are only now starting to learn about, the fact is that it's shrouded in secrecy. So there is a certain leap of faith that you take with all of this stuff. And it takes on a life of its on.
Okay, but what about all the physical ordeals Ferris has to go through, did you do all those stunts yourself?
LD: I did most of my own stunts.
You mean like dialing up all the time on your cell phone for further instructions on dodging danger?
DICAPRIO: That, I didn't do, I didn't do any of the dialing! Yeah, I absolutely refused. But we had beautiful hand doubles!
And I guess you skipped the finger smashing too. Were the stunts you did really difficult?
LD:Yeah, it was difficult. It was a very, very difficult shoot. But that's the nature of working on a Ridley Scott movie, you have to sort of embrace that. The pace in which he shoots is really intense, really fast-paced, so you have to be prepared for anything at any given moment. And he'll be like, let's not do any of that other crap because this is the moment that I am going to choose .
Like he literally has helicopters on standby, circling around and ready to get an overhead shot of you running through an entire city. And he's like okay, why don't you walk down block and we're going to have three helicopters chasing you down an Arabic street in real time. Of course, we will block off some traffic, so you'll be fine, you'll be great. Okay? You just have to be prepared for that.
And that was just the biggest adjustment. I had just come from this other movie, called Revolutionary Road, where it was like doing a 1950s play or something. You know, where we were talking about our feelings for months at a time! Then, I end up in Morocco, with missiles being shot at me.
But Ridley's just this filter, this bulls**t filter. And he trusts his instincts on such a gut level, that it's great to work with somebody who will say, okay this entire scene is wrong. Let's get rid of three pages of dialogue, or move this outside. You know, whatever it is, I'm not believing it. Or I am believing it, so push it to the extreme.
So it's amazing to watch him But it was a bizarre transition. Though once you sort of become accustomed to that pace, you would embrace it and enjoy it. And it would start to become this adrenalin fueled work environment that he loved. Oh god, even thinking back, it was tough, but Ridley enjoys that kind of stuff.
People always ask me, was it fun? And I don't know if fun is the operative word. But it was challenging and interesting, and all those other things. But, fun isn't always the operative word!
What was it like to get tortured, even if it was just a movie?
LD: It was one of the more complicated scenes. And it was tense, because we knew we had to knock it out of the park. So, I actually got sick after the scene for three days, because there was so much intensity put into that.
Did they really blow up that stone house behind you, Leo?
LD: Oh, yes, that was a big explosion.
What are you memories of working before with Russell Crowe On The Quick and The Dead?
LD: He had done Romper Stomper, and I had done Gilbert Grape. So we were both bright-eyed and bushy-tailed! But Russell couldn't be more professional and more of a normal guy to hang out with. He's a good pal, he's great and all that stuff, blah, blah, blah! And he hasn't changed, and that's it.
And what about getting together with Kate Winslet again, for Revolutionary Road?
LD: Kate has remained one of my closest friends, and is the best actress of her generation. We're these two people in the movie who are basically torn apart. And they feel like they have become cliches of what they're expected to be like, and have lost their identities.
Kate and I basically knew that we could push each other's buttons, performance-wise. And we knew that we could pull stuff out of each other. I mean, we've known each other since we were teenagers. And it was something I felt I wanted the opportunity to do.
Do you and Kate get to be lovers?
LD: Lovers? Do we play lovers! We play husband and wife. So hopefully, we're lovers!
What have you learned about life, hanging around Hollywood?
LD: When I first started out, I had these images of these cliches, of what movie stars are. You know, that they're egomaniacal pricks and tyrants. But, in general, for the most part they're nice people, to tell you the truth.
Leo, everybody knows about your commitment to the environment, but we're getting ready for the biggest bailout in economic history. How do you feel about a lot of the money that was earmarked for the environment, that will now be going to save Wall Street executives?
LD: If you're talking about the environment and our country shifting to alternative technologies and ways to power the country, I've been profoundly disappointed for years. So it's no news to me. We should have started eight years ago to be less dependent on foreign oil, and started to invest in some of these new technologies.
But we are way behind the curve again, and the United States should be the one to set the example for the rest of the world. Brazil is doing it and other countries are adapting these principals. And the only thing I want in this new election , my new thing, is to say alright, look. Obviously people don't want other people to tell them how to think or what to believe, or to tell them what's right politically and what's wrong. But the only point for me in this election, is I just want enough young people to go out to the polls, and to register and vote.
Because then we'll get a real consensus of what this country needs. We'll be able to understand where morally our country is. And these young people will dictate policies for the next fifty to a hundred years. So it's about time we do that. And that's my only wish, that we get a real representation of the future of this country until the next election. Whoever wins.
i had completely forgotten about this place which was, indeed, creepy, seldom artful and is now closed.
from a review in the NY Magazine Bar Guide:
In theory, Remote Lounge is pretty cool: A high-tech wonderland of cameras and Cosmopolitans, in which the '50s-kitsch console at your table lets you spy on people throughout the bar, and contact other tables through the built-in telephone handset. In reality, however, Remote is an occasionally awkward theme bar, in which the attention-grabbing technology is the only thing to talk about, your neighbors aren’t worth spying on, and those Cosmos? At $10-12, a bit overpriced. Still, there are times—early evenings, Sundays, certain events—when Remote transforms into something otherworldly. You sit among the lights and monitors, catch flashes of color on the plasma screens, absorb some avant-garde DJs abstract beats, and wonder if this blissful cyber-scene will last forever.— Matt Gross
One of the attractions at the club are 50 cameras and remote control consoles. You can sit down at a console and with a joystick, control any of the cameras in the club. You have a monitor and a phone in addition to some other buttons to do things like take a snapshot that is put up on the web, send a message to a remote user, and talk with a remote user. It is pretty fun.
We watch the show for a while. It has been arranged by Repellent, a local zine and Micromusic, a user group based in Germany. The video content is being generated by two Amiga computers and run through a Edirol V4 mixer. We get John to give us a behind the scenes tour. The video cameras are all run into separate receiving units that are akin to channels at a Cable TV provider. They have 96 “channels,” which can be accessed with a VCR or similar device. A server is running the software to control the consoles, so it is fairly easy to update the whole system. They also have some custom systems to control various sets of monitors throughout the club. [from a 2003 blog]
the split screen is 'subjective' - i.e. in the fourth version of what happened -
1 hour in - split screen although we are in both an omniscient reality - AND her POV.
it's only about a minute long, then we go into split screen again after a single of Lt. doing the shooting briefly.
and then to the staircase with the two of them - cage & girl
Having only recently scored his biggest career success to date with Mission: Impossible, DePalma is enjoying more creative freedom than he has had in years. It comes as little surprise, then, that he should seize the chance to once again return to the genre for which he is best known, the psychological thriller. Starring Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage and Oscar-nominee Gary Sinise, Snake Eyes is a highly-stylized, claustrophobic, real-time thriller set during and after an Atlantic City boxing match where the United States Secretary of Defense is assassinated. Sinise plays Navy Commander Kevin Dunne, the head of the security detail charged with protecting the Secretary. Cage is Dunne's childhood buddy, a tainted Atlantic City police detective forced to rise to the occasion when the murder literally falls in his lap. Together they must race with fate and an impending hurricane to unravel a labyrinthine puzzle meticulously designed by DePalma and his preferred screenwriter of late, David Koepp (Mission: Impossible and Carlito's Way).
Still, all due labors on the script notwithstanding, it wouldn't be a true DePalma film without the director's trademark visual fireworks. And on that count, DePalma makes it clear that, if nothing else, Snake Eyes is a way of celebrating his own personal independence day. Just when you finally appeared to have left the Hitchcock comparisons behind, what drew you back to doing a thriller?
The thing you can determine from me and my career is that I never gave a damn what anybody thought. I always did what I thought was best for myself, and if anyone else thought it was like Hitchcock, too bad! I was there, basically, to learn something, or else I was interested in a piece of material. And if I wanted to make that kind of movie and everybody else thought it wasn't the right thing for me to be doing, or if they had some kind of comment about it, it never made any difference to me. As long as I thought I could get the movie made, I didn't care. Could you talk about designing the visual map of the film, specifically conceiving the complex visual and flashback structure?
Hopefully, because we thought of it from the ground up, we came up with a strong visual idea for the film. David [Koepp] wanted to write a movie from multiple points of view. Well, when you do multiple points of view, how do you do that? Also, the big problem of going back and forth over a crime is that you're at the same place all the time and you just keep going back and forth. So you ask yourself, "Does it feel repetitive?" and "Are our flashbacks going to stop the story from going forward?" So I had to come up with a visual way in order to do that.
The whole trick of it was to get the characters back to where they started and make it look different and let them find out information they hadn't had before. That was a big physical challenge. Plus there was the whole challenge of whether I could make a movie where we're basically indoors the whole time, working in these very limited spaces. Could I get away with that? It's that Rope concept of trying to box yourself in aesthetically. It's like Rear Window where you can't move the camera outside the room. How do you make that work? It forces you to come up with all kinds of ingenious solutions and pushes you into a visual area that would have never even occurred to you before. How hard was it to execute that elaborate opening tracking shot?
Basically you have to find the spaces to do it in. You start on the boardwalk with the television interview which is on the monitors. And from the monitors you have to follow Nic upstairs and then he's got to see Luis and chase him down the escalator and sort of beat him up. And then you've got to start this voyage of the bloody hundred-dollar bill. I think we did that in three sections. Then you've got to find a place to wipe the frame so that you can go from one section to another so it'll look seamless. And then once you get them downstairs, there's the stuff in the arena. We actually go around the arena twice—once he walks around the arena and then he goes once around with Gary. And then you've got to sit them down and you have to have them look at all the places around them and try to make that work as a shot, make it visually and aurally exciting so the audience is listening to stuff so that later on it's going to drive them crazy when they're hearing the fight but not seeing it. Nobody's been to a fight where you never saw the fight. Then they're going to really want to know what happens when the fighter tells his story. Are we going to see the fight now we just heard? And after you do the fight, then that reveals the woman in red, and who the hell is she? But I'm taking you all the way through the movie now. Did you conceive that the first shot was going to be continuous or did that evolve from the script?
As we laid out all this exposition in the beginning, and I was wrestling with the idea of how to make it visually different from the different flashbacks. It occurred to me to do it like one steadicam shot, make it all on Nic, his world, his life, and make it move as fast as you physically can, make him talk a mile-a-minute, just get the energy pumped up to the max and make it look like a freight train going by so fast the audience can't take everything in. I find movies so redundant in the way that they're photographed. I mean, you're like, "Oh, please. Get me out of here." The ideas are redundant. The visual ideas are hopelessly redundant. So you want to give them just a taste, and then you're going to force them to go back.
One of the big problems with detective movies is it's basically going from place to place and getting information. Well, that may work great in a novel but it's kind of boring in a movie. But not in this movie.
Because we made it so that it's not that place you've seen before. It looks a little different because you're in an entirely different place in the arena. And the other reason is you've got some clues from the first time you went through and now you're starting to put the puzzle together yourself.
How hard was it to work out the flashbacks and the splitscreens so that the simultaneous threads all intersected just perfectly? I'd say the trickiest part was the splitscreen because there's so much information that it's hard to follow both sides of the screen simultaneously. [The film] was a lot longer in earlier cuts, and there was a lot more of the splitscreen stuff. But you can't absorb it all. There's too much going on. So it's like, "Whoa! Wait a minute." I worked on that for a very long time. I couldn't even follow it there was so much going on. It is very tricky and, again, like with the end of the movie, we kept pulling stuff out, pulling stuff out, because it becomes too much to take in. You get confused. And once you get confused, you're dead in a movie like this.
[also with snake eyes - as in 'missing' - we're seeing a lie in one of the POVs, the Lt. ]
As long as you brought it up, why was the tidal wave sequence cut from the end of the film?
When we did the water sequence, we had a big wave and it just took people out of the movie. It was too big for the story, dealing with this confrontation and then suddenly they were looking at this big wave. This isn't a meteor picture. It was my mistake, basically, because I thought we needed the storm to be "The Storm," and it got a little out of hand. So we cut it all out. Wasn't that hard to do?
We can make mistakes. It's possible. That almost seems antithetical to present Hollywood thinking, where the end always has to be beefed up with bigger and bigger set pieces.
It's quite ironic. The trouble is you begin to find the shape of the movie and when you start putting it in front of audiences they react to certain things and not to others. And it sort of tells you what works and what doesn't. So you change it. It's just like previewing a show. Of course with the press and everyone else watching everything we do, they think, "Oh, my God! They're in trouble! They're changing the ending!" But this happens all the time. When you read 400 preview response cards and 399 of them say, "What's up with that wave? That didn't look right!," then you start to realize that maybe something is wrong with your wave. Would you agree that your work falls into two categories: the uniquely obsessive and very personal Brian DePalma stuff—Sisters, Blow Out, Obsession, Dressed to Kill—and everything else like Scarface, Mission: Impossible, Carlito's Way and The Untouchables?
I kind of think it's like a writer that writes under two names. I get tired of making these Brian DePalma movies. You get tired of your own obsessions, the betrayals, the voyeurism, the twisted sexuality. I've made a lot of movies like this, so you're glad to get out there with those Cuban or Puerto Rican gangsters. It gives you a little relief. That's not to say you won't be drawn back to your particular world, but I look upon them as a welcome relief from what's going on in my brain. Does it restore you creatively to switch off between the two?
Yes, it does. When I'm thinking about Puerto Rican gangsters, I'm not thinking about long tracking shots down corridors. Have you ever found yourself at a loss for new visual devices or new ways to keep the style of a film fresh?
No, I've never had that. You are up against your limitations to some extent. So there are certain things I try to keep away from. I try to keep away from comedies. Why no comedies?
Because I just feel that I have a kind of 60s sense of humor and you cannot compete with the kind of comedy that you see on television. It's a mastery of comedic form. You've got all those great writers and those great comedians. And making comedies in movies is almost, I think, one of the most difficult things to do. They're all standups and they train in front of live audiences. That's invaluable for comedy. It's really hard to be directing a comedy on a sound stage and have a sense that this is really funny. So I try to avoid that.
But, quite to the contrary, I'm feeling quite invigorated as I come to the end of my fiftieth year because I've made the most successful movie of my career, Mission: Impossible. It's better to make them at the end rather than at the beginning. And I'm full of ideas, more ideas than I can ever make. My head is just bouncing. I was up until 3:30 this morning working on the Howard Hughes movie that David and I are writing for Nic. And I've got a couple of other ones that are rummaging around in my brain. So I feel like I don't' have enough time now. That's why I have so little patience with everything. Plus I have a couple of children. So my life is basically divided between making movies and my children. Since you are going to go on and work with Nic again on the Howard Hughes biography, is it fair to say that your pairing on this film worked out well?
We're very similar in many ways. Nic is an accomplished performer and he's a dedicated artist. And he loves to work, which is how I would describe myself, basically. Plus, he has no ego. It's all about the work. Which is exactly how I feel. How do we make it better? And he's a real gentleman. That always sounds like something from the nineteenth century, but it's true. He has incredible manners, he's very sensitive to how other people are feeling about things, and he feels real lucky, I guess, that he has all this opportunity, just like I do. How did we get here? This is great. We're going to get a chance to make a movie about Howard Hughes? Wow. And we're both Italian-Americans—maybe that has something to do with it. He's got brothers, I've got brothers. I don't know. Maybe there's a whole bunch of stuff there. Considering all the changes you've seen in the industry, from the escalating budgets to the role of special effects, have these things made your job easier or more difficult?
I think that something new is coming. I really think that the conventional moviemaking world is over and the greatest work is behind us. I really do. The industry sort of peaked in the forties, fifties and sixties. Mainly because of the turmoil, the wars, all that stuff. The European influx into Hollywood. That was the beginning of the movies, and it's over. It's never going to be again. I think the next thing that's going to happen is going to happen on the internet and with interactive media. Now you can have all this video technology, your own little video camera and edit stuff at home. You can make movies like novels now, you really can. You can make them very inexpensively and get your friends together. You can do the whole thing yourself, post it on the internet for everybody to look at and have an immediate audience of billions of people. I think you're going to see some incredible things. Does this mean that the art of filmmaking is a thing of the past?
This form, I think, is over. I really do. I mean, everybody complains about how they're not as good as they used to be. Well, they're not. What would you say has been the downfall of the art form?
Well, again, I feel it has a lot to do with what's happening in history. What's happening now? Nothing. Can you remember the eighties? Do you remember anything? I was talking to one journalist and she said, "Well, I remember the sixties." And I said, "I remember the sixties. Things were happening in the sixties. But the seventies? Disco? What is there to remember? What is there to remember in the eighties? And the nineties? Greed is good. That's what we remember. That's the signature for the end of this century. So if we're moving into a new phase, what is it that keeps you motivated?
Because I'm a guy that used to build computers. I'm right at the cutting edge of what's going on in this whole new revolution. I watch this stuff all the time and I'm fascinated every time some new development happens—and it happens every other month in this industry. Every time something new happens, every time some new technology comes in, you see whole new story forms developing and you go, "Wow. This is exciting."
Some of the scenes in The Cell are inspired by works of art. A scene in which a horse is split into sections by falling glass panels was inspired by the works of British artist Damien Hirst.[2]The film also includes scenes based on the work of other late 20th century artists, includingOdd Nerdrum, H. R. Giger, and the Brothers Quay.[2] Tarsem — who began his career directing music videos such as En Vogue's "Hold On" and R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" — drew upon such imagery for Stargher's dream sequences. In particular, he was influenced by videos directed by Mark Romanek, such as "Closer" and "The Perfect Drug" by Nine Inch Nails, "Bedtime Story" by Madonna, and the many videos that Floria Sigismondi directed for Marilyn Manson. During a scene, Jennifer Lopez falls asleep watching a film, the film is Fantastic Planet.
are very good for showing where your eye goes - without anyone necessarily planning for it, in an otherwise evenly spaced multichannel world.
it goes to the CUT
it goes to MOTION
it goes to LIGHT
these ugly hokey divisions of the screen for off-track betting are also very good. i think if i take the DVD menu from my VHS tape, blogger might upload it.
hard day's night is a nicely designed menu on the new DVD, which blogger wouldn't let me post but which i jsut made a snap-pro video of.
in terms of learning multichannely, the last waltz dvd menu is a great use of six.
and i know there were other six-grid moving image dvd menus, back in the days when they did these. i wonder why they stopped -- taking up too much room?
Saudi policeman monitors screens connected to cameras set up at all holy places in Mina near Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2008, during the annual Hajj. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
uslim pilgrims are seen inside a building where, for three days, they will cast stones at pillars symbolising Satan in Mina, Saudi Arabia on December 9, 2008. More than two million Muslim pilgrims performed a second round of stoning walls symbolising the devil on Tuesday, as Hajj pilgrimage rituals neared their end. (REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah
which they're not letting me rip or embed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnuHVAlpY2I&feature=related
i'll have to rip this on my compute with mpeg steamclip
TONY: That’s funny because Kim called me up right before Sonic Youth did this set of tours three or four months ago and said, “Would you be interested in doing projections for the show?” And I was like, “Yeah, that would be great. How long?” She said two hours, and I asked by when she’d need it, and she was like, “The end of the week.” (laughter) I happen to have this ongoing series that I call my ambient series, that I will show sometime somewhere when I find the right moment, where I just set up cameras, kind of like what you did, where I feel like something good is happening, and I just let it go. Sometimes there’s camera movement, but usually not. It might be a water theme park, and I just find a frame where there are people in fluorescent inner tubes going off a slide, and shoot that for 20 minutes. I’ve been doing this since the late ’80s, since Hi-8 introduced two-hour tapes. So I took a lot of these things and cut them together with Josh Thorson, my editor, and gave them to Sonic Youth for their tour. When I went to see their show at NorthSix in Brooklyn I was totally moved by the experience, it blew me away. They turned off the lights, and the stuff that was happening was just totally insane. It was projected right over the band, with a white wall behind it—birds were flying across the stage, images like liquid appeared on people’s faces. And I couldn’t believe the complexity of the relationship between these randomly put together clips and the music. We had no idea what their playlist was; it probably would have ruined it had we known because as soon as you start to illustrate any kind of music, it’s horrible.
AL Yeah, I had the same realization at one of the early Text of Light gigs in Philadelphia. We had done our show a couple of times before, and up until then I had thought of them as regular improv gigs, where a bunch of name players come together and see what happens. I looked up at some point to see what was going on up on the screen, and the drummer, William Hooker, who was right in front of the screen and couldn’t see it, was doing something with his hand on the drum that corresponded exactly with what was happening on the screen.
Ian White writes about Mike Kelley and Tony Oursler's The Poetics Project 1977-1997 at The barbican and Iain and Jane's File under Sacred Music at the ICA. He opens "Is it film? Live art? Rock? Who cares? Subversive re-enactments are the way forward."
Extract: "If the simultaneous fusion and dissolution of boundaries charaterise The Poetics, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard's latest work occupies a not dissimilar territory. No Strangers to the intersection between popular culture and the spectacles that fuel it, their 1998 re-enactment at the ICA of David Bowie's final Ziggy Stardust concert was an amazing moment of iconic avant-rock as live art. File under Sacred Music pushes their practice further, recreating the Cramp's legendary performance at Napa Mental Institute in 1978 in order to produce the bootleg video of that event. The gig, also at the ICA, though this time in a closed set, was staged for the benefit of carefully controlled cameras, themselves mimicking the original, limited recording equipment with awkward panning shots and fixed positions, to an audience of "users and survivors of the psychiatric system" invited by the artists and mental health charities.
The magnitude and sensitivity of this engagement should not be underestimated. Its terms, beyond any binary, liberal accusations of exploitation, dared to embrace, more extremely than before, the tragic flaw lying between chance and action that makes Forsyth and Pollard's epic structures of re-performance such extraordinary works of art. While The Cramps' anarchic energy was passionately re-enacted by Alfonso Pinto, Holly Golightly, Bruce Brand and John Gibbs, the audience's freedom was collapsed simultaneously onto the pressure of recording. The gap between past and present became the difference between acting and being, a process both facilitated by and commenting upon today's mental health service and a lost dynamic between radical 'pop' and political action - something no less articulated by the coveted, cult-status bootleg video made art object, another facade from that glorious theatre of failure we ought by now to call the truth."
This article originally appeared in Art Review, June 2003
"That’s the weird thing, that John Cage was a teacher in a way. But then all my installations, from the beginning, that had more than one channel going were random. What determined that initially is that there was no way to synchronize decks unless you had a lot of money. With the entire budget of an installation like 1,200 bucks or something, it would take the whole amount to synchronize a couple of decks. Plus I felt it deadened the experience, so I never synched my installations, and that operated on the sound track as well as the visuals. So it’s something I’ve been doing since the early ’80s. Being a hyperactive person, I like that the sound track can always be different. I plug it in, which is really cool, because I’ve always made ridiculously long tracks, so the combinations are many and varied, and make long loops. I can walk into the space and be surprised by my own work, like, Oh that’s interesting what you’re coming up with today. It has a life of its own."
Perfect Partner, a film by Kim Gordon, Tony Oursler and Phil Morrison, starring Michael Pitt and Jamie Bochert with a live sound track featuring Tim Barnes, Kim Gordon, Ikue Mori, Jim O’Rourke and DJ Olive. Courtesy of Tony Oursler.
1. film projected onto a still
2. moving on the image - stills w/ moving images on them
[hmmm. not quite sure what i meant by this]
3. fragments of print - huge letters moving across the screen
4. there was a brief triptych - a three screen, i don't know of what.
oh yes, i remember this - the main character Fela asks the audience, who here has been to jail? My hand shot up -- and then i looked around and realized i was the only one with a hand up! in that entire, white, broadway audience. i guess people who can pay a hundred dollars a ticket don't tend to get to jail.
5. music that works with what the boxes are actually doing (well, i knew this)
6. having different screens automatically makes it the same but different - of his face, and i think i mean projected onto different surfaces, and in different places onstage as well.
7. Three moments on a face. (the same face, obviously)
8. a long frame: with on third or fifth, the rest kept long. i can't really draw it here.
9. projecting on the brick, giving that texture, and also i believe they projected on paint, which i also like a lot, a la gerhard richter.
saw this in FELA, on broadway. Peter Nigrini and andrew, joan's andrew, did the video.
In this post, I invite you to take a long look at long takes. After this introduction, you will encounter a series of short discussions of a number of seminal, important, and/or impressive long takes to guide your exploration of the diversity, power, and beauty of the long take. The discussions vary in length and depth based on each particular long take’s richness and power to inspire. However, in some cases, especially near the end, the long takes are left to speak for themselves.
This post amounts to a long list of long takes for close study and casual enjoyment. Each long take chosen for inclusion has some merit, whether it be a masterpiece of filmmaking or just a wildly impressive series choreographed stunts. A link to each long take has been provided and where possible the video has been embedded.
My specific goals here are to celebrate the long take, to further its appreciation, and to offer some insights into the variety of its uses and powers. Just simply watching the series of long takes included below will provide exposure to the form, an enjoyable watching experience, and, perhaps, a few sublime moments.
If I had to pick a thesis, or at least a consistent theme, for this post that champions the long take, it would be—always have a good reason to cut.
A “long take” is an uninterrupted shot that lasts much longer than conventional editing pace, usually lasting a few minutes or more in length. Extreme examples are Hitchcock’s Rope, which consists of eleven ten-minute long takes and Alexander Sokurov’sRussian Ark, which is one 90-minute long take. Classic examples are the opening scene of Wells’ Touch of Evil and the traffic jam scene in Godard’s Weekend.
When done well, long takes can accomplish cinematic goals more effectively and engagingly than conventional editing or quick cutting. Here are some important examples:
(1) setting the entire tone of the film (e.g., the opening ofBoogie Nights);
(2) introducing the characters quickly and efficiently (e.g., the opening of The Player);
(3) driving the plot forward quickly and efficiently (e.g., the opening of Bon Fire of the Vanities);
(4) creating suspense and tension by interweaving actions (e.g., Touch of Evil);
(5) generating mystery and intrigue (e.g., the ending ofCache);
(6) charging simple actions with energy (e.g., going to the bathroom in Kill Bill Vol. 1):
(7) imbuing a sequence of actions with heightened emotion (e.g., entering the Copa Cabana in Goodfellas);
(8) making a scene seem like it’s really happening (e.g., getting the gas can in Reservoir Dogs);
(9) emphasizing specific details or actions (e.g., playing football in Elephant);
(10) placing the viewer in the perspective of specific character (e.g., walking through Jack Rabbit Slims inPulp Fiction);
(11) immersing the viewer in the action of a scene as if he/she were there (e.g., the car ambush in Children of Men);
(12) amazing the viewer with the elaborate staging of a complex scene; (e.g., the stairway fight in The Protector);
(13) captivating the viewer with compelling beauty (e.g., the funeral procession in I Am Cuba);
(14) conveying compactly the abstract themes and ideas of the film (e.g., the traffic jam in Weekend); and
(15) portraying profound connections not easily put into words (e.g., the burning barn scene in The Mirror).
Often, long takes involve intricate camera movements that follow the complex orchestration of intersecting actors and actions. Nevertheless, long takes can be simple and employ a still camera observing an ordinary scene. Two good examples of simple still long takes are the football scene in Van Sant’s Elephant and the final scene of Haneke’s Cache. Thus, for long takes, rather than camera movement, it’s the uninterrupted flow of the scene that is primary their power.
Long takes can employ several kinds of shots, such as tracking shots, crane shots, long shots, sequence shots, and steadicam shots. The “tracking shot” traditionally meant a shot where the camera was mounted on wheeled platform that moved along a track while filming a scene. In some cases, the dolly that rolled along he track would include a hydraulic arm that could smoothly “boom” or “jib” the camera on the vertical axis.
In the traditional tracking shot, the camera moved perpendicular to the axis of the camera lens, whereas when the camera moved parallel to the axis of the camera lens, the shot was traditionally called a “dolly shot.” Originally, tracking shots did not include complex pivoting movements, such as pans or tilts, or crane shots. An example of a traditional long take tracking shot is the traffic jam scene in Godard’s Weekend.
“Crane shots” are shots taken by a camera mounted on a crane to provide an overhead view, the so-called bird’s eye view. Well’s opening long take in Touch of Evil uses a masterful crane shot to follow the motion of a car through the streets of Tijuana.
“Long shots” (a.k.a. wide shots) typically show the entire object or figure under view and are mostly used as establishing shots but are also frequently employed in long takes. For example, Gus Van Sant uses a long-take long shot in Elephant in which a student walks from in front of the camera toward a school entrance far in the distance.
“Sequence shots” are long takes that involved sophisticated camera movement. The opening scene ofAltman’s The Player exemplifies a sequence shot where the camera follows several intersecting actions while intermittingly eavesdropping outside the main character Griffin’s office.
A “steadicam shot” employs a special stabilizing mount that isolates the camera operator’s movement from that of the camera, allowing an extremely smooth shot even when the operator moves quickly over an uneven surface. Famous early steadicam shots occur inRocky where Rocky runs up the museum steps while training and inThe Shining where the camera follows Danny riding his tricycle. A more recent example would the scene inAtonement depicting the Dunkirk evacuation, which employed thousands of extras.
With the introduction of the steadicam, the distinction between the terms “tracking shot” and “sequence shot” effectively disappeared. Today, the term “tracking shot” refers to any shot where the camera follows the movement of a scene’s action, regardless of the complexity of the camera movement or whether a track is used. Though “tracking” in tracking shot once referred to the track on which the camera moved, it now refers to tracking the action.
Although long takes can be effective, even powerful, they carry the danger of drawing attention to themselves by either being sensational or self-satisfied. A good example is the opening scene in Bonfire of the Vanities, though such an effect may have been intended, as self-indulgence and narcissism are themes of that film. It’s very easy for a long take to become showy, even when shot well by a master. Even the virtuoso long take in Goodfellas where Henry and Lorraine enter the Copa Cabana through the backdoor and kitchen unwittingly draws attention to itself. Notably, Tarantino’s long takes in Reservoir Dogs,Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill Vol. 1 discussed, which become more complex with each film, never become self-indulgent or self-referential, and none, except possibly the one from Kill Bill Vol. 1, could be described as the least bit showy.
Early Lumiere Tracking Shot (1898)
An early example of a long take using a tracking shot is the Lumiere Brothers tracking shot of Lyon, France. They mounted a camera on a train and filmed the scenery as the train arrived in Lyon. For this shot, the train tracks provided the track for the camera. All the motion in the scene derived from the motion of the camera. This early tracking shot demonstrates the flow and dynamism that can be created using long-take tracking shots.
The opening long take in Orson Wells’ Touch of Evil set the touchstone for long takes. In the shot, Wells uses a 3:31 minute crane/tracking shot. First, we follow a man place a time bomb in the trunk of a car. Then, as the camera tracks up, we watch two people get in the car and drive away. As the camera moves higher, we observe the car move through the streets of Tijuana. As we follow the car, Mr. and Mrs. Vargas cross the street in front of the car on their way to the US-Mexican border. The car and Mr. and Mrs. Vargas cross paths a couples of times, finally stopping at the border together. Eventually, just as Mr. and Mr. Vargas are about to kiss on the US-side of the border, the car blows up off screen and Wells cuts to the exploded car.
The shot is noteworthy for several reasons. First, it’s a prime example of modernist filmmaking. Wells tries to produce a reflection of the world by using complex crane and tracking movements to immerse the viewer in the scene and create an air of realism. All sorts of realistic interruptions and crossings occur as the scene unfolds continuously before our eyes. The length of the take and the complex orchestrations of movement trick us into thinking that what we are watching is really happening.
Second, Wells develops the plot significantly during the long take. We find out that Mr. Vargas is a police official who investigates drug rings and that he’s had some recent success of note. We also discover that Mr. Vargas recently married an American women from Philadelphia, that Mr. Vargas is going to the US with his wife for the first time, and that they are still in the “honeymoon” phase of their marriage. Eventually, the bomb goes off during their kiss, ending the long take with a cut of the exploded car, and offering a crime to be solved, which sets in motion the main action of the film.
Third, the scene presents a moving version of Hitchcock’s bomb-under-the-table scenario. We know the bomb is in the car and set to go off at some point. As Mr. and Mrs. Vargas move toward the US-Mexico border, they keep crossing paths with the car. Each time we fear for them because we don’t know when the bomb will go off.
Wells achieves both suspense and surprise with the scene. We are on edge as to when the bomb will go off while the car is in Mexico. However, once the care crosses the border into the US, we forget about it momentarily, as we are drawn into the loving couple’s embrace and kiss. Thus, we feel a jolt when the car blows up off screen.
Fourth, the scene exemplifies Wells’ own dictum that a director should never cut without good reason. Here, Wells does not cut until we need to see something that exists off screen—the exploded car.
Fifth, technically, the long take sets a standard for seamlessly weaving several movements together—the driving car, the walking Mr. and Mrs. Vargas, and the other border traffic—by using precisely timed and choreographed human, vehicle, and camera movements and only diegetic sound (i.e. sound generated within the narrative world of the film).
The opening scene of Altman’s The Player reinvigorated the long take and contrasts nicely with the long take inTouch of Evil. The long take in The Player exemplifies postmodernism, as it offers a reflection on its reflection of the world. As such, it reflects on its reflection of the world. In other words, it presents the reflection and the mirror used to make the reflection. It uses two methods to comment on its mirroring that are common to postmodernism: (1) it’s self-referential or self-conscious of what it’s doing—using a long take—and (2) it’s medium-referential or self-conscious of the fact that it’s a film and of the world of film in which it resides.
The long take becomes self-referential when Walter Stuckle talks about directors not using long takes anymore while he’s walking in and out of the 8-minute long take. He starts by saying “the pictures they make these days are all MTV, cut, cut, cut, cut … .” Here, the film comments on itself as deviating from norm quick cutting that had come to dominate cinema.
Stuckle then praises Wells’ opening shot in Touch of Evilsaying that Wells set up the whole movie with that one shot. Here, the film tells us that in this opening shot Altman will do the same. Later, Stuckle reiterates, “I hate all this cut, cut, cut,” drawing attention to the fact that there has yet to be a cut.
The long take also becomes medium-referential when it opens with the supposedly non-diegetic dialogue “quite on the set,” “scene one take ten, marker” and then “and action,” which cues us to realize we are watching a “take” of a film, the one that happened to be used in the film, though it was probably not take ten. The film draws attention to the fact that it’s a film. Indeed, the painting behind the desk in the opening frame depicts a movie set.
The long take also includes comments on the history of cinema and long takes in several places. Stuckle mentions Well’s opening long take in Touch of Evil, exaggerating its length to six minutes. Later, when he comes back into the scene with another character, he mentions Hitchcock’s Rope being shot without cuts and the character he’s walking with mentions Bertolluci’s long take in The Sheltering Sky. Thus, the scene makes comments on the world of its medium—film history—and, in particular, the history of the technique it employs—the long take.
In addition, when asked to write down a pitch, a character responds, “it’s not about words; it’s about pictures; you’ve got to visualize,” providing yet another comment on the medium of film.
Stuckle references Touch of Evil’s long take twice in the shot, making clear that Altman found that long take to be an important influence and standard. Altman appears to be openly competing with Wells by outdoing his shot in complexity and length. Altman nods at Wells when he moves from a tracking shot to a crane shot to follow a car from above just like Wells did in Touch of Evil.
Like Wells, Altman uses the scene to develop the plot and introduce the characters. In the scene, we are told that the main character, Griffin, may be on the outs because of a shake up at the studio, and we see the paranoid Griffin receive a mysterious note.
The scene is often remembered for its hilarious pitch parodies. First, we get The Graduate Part II, where Mrs. Robinson now lives with Ben and Elaine, but has suffered a stroke. It will be “funny, dark and weird and funny, and with a stroke.” Next, we get “it’s kind of like a Gods Must Be Crazy except the Coke bottle’s now a television actress.” It’s “Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman.” Finally, we get “a psychic political thriller comedy with a heart.” It’s Ghost meets The Manchurian Candidate.”
However, the pitch parodies provide more than just a laugh and serve a larger purpose and function than just comic effect. Similar to the Vargas-car crossings in Touch of Evil, the pitch parodies structure the scene, though they are primarily comic rather than suspenseful. We get ready for a laugh each time the camera gazes into Griffin’s office because as the camera moves into position to listen in on Griffin’s meetings we know we are about to hear another silly pitch. We want to linger and listen to more, whereas in Touch of Evil at each crossing, we want Mr. and Mrs. Vargas to hurry up and move away from the car.
Moreover, during the pitch parodies, the scene develops Griffin’s paranoia and creates a foreboding mood. In the first pitch session, we find out that Griffin wants security to explain how Adam Simon got on the studio lot. In the second, Griffin let’s us know that he’s concerned about the lax security on the lot. In the third, we see Griffin’s paranoia get confirmed and escalate when he receives a postcard with something written on it, including the word “assassins.” He turns to look over his shoulder and out his window to check if someone is out there watching him. Of course, someone is. We have been out there watching him the whole time. Thus, the pitch scenes work double duty, providing humor while at the same time introducing us to Griffin’s worry and concern about something that we will find out about later.
Though the training scene from Rocky is not a long take, the end run up the museum steps was one of the first uses of a steadicam in a released film. The first use came in The Marathon Man, also released in 1976. At the time, most knew nothing about the steadicam. However, the astute viewer notices that once Rocky gets to the top of the steps, the shot curves around and looks down the steps to reveal that there are no tracks or rigs set up along the steps for tracking Rocky’s run up the steps. A cameraman had seamlessly followed Rocky up the steps while running and holding the camera. A new kind of camera was being used that didn’t need to be on a track to follow motion without shaking.
Another early use of the steadicam came in 1980 in Kubrick’s The Shining. It was used in many scenes but most notably in the scene where the camera follows Danny as he rides his Big Wheel-like toy around the empty hotel. It was the first use of a steadicam in the low mode position where the camera is lower than the counter weight.
This long take follows Danny as he rides his tricycle around the deserted hotel. It gives the impression that Danny is being followed, giving the scene an eerie feel. It also demonstrates the emptiness and isolation of the hotel. Danny rides in circles getting nowhere. We hear the sound of the tires on the hardwood floor intermittently interrupted by the silence of Danny riding over a rug. When Danny goes over the rugs, there’s no one else around to make a sound. He’s alone, except for whatever may be following him.
The scene hints at one of the films main themes—the eternal return. Danny returns to the same spot he starts just as the film suggests that Jack has returned to where he’s been before to do what he’s done before.
Much later, a long take was used to create a gimmicky promo for a Kubrick film series shown on television. In the promo, we are given the supposed first-person vantage of Kubrick as he walks onto the set of The Shining to shoot a famous hallway scene. Though probably not the kind of promo Kubrick would have approved of were he alive nor the way that his sets actually looked or operated (or any set for that matter), the long take exemplifies the use of the first-person perspective to give the viewer the feeling that (1) he/she is viewing a world that really exists and (2) he/she is experiencing that world as the main character does.
It’s a cute use of the first-person perspective because the promo ends with “See the world through the eyes of a master. The Stanley Kubrick Season begins July 15th on More 4,” and we have literally been given a view of through the eyes of a fake Stanley Kubrick.
The long take also gives the impression that the set ofThe Shining is a labyrinth of interconnected dressing rooms and sets much like the literal labyrinths—thegarden and the hotel—and the figurative labyrinths—the mind and the past—that play large roles in the film itself. In this way, the long-take promo refers to the overall structures and themes of the film.
[Note: Embedding of the Shining Tracking Promo Disallowed]
Bonfire of the Vanities
In an otherwise mediocre film, the opening shot of De Palma’s Bonfire of the Vanities stands out as one of the most technically savvy shots in film history. It’s too bad the film didn’t follow through on its audacious and auspicious start. Though the shot does a good job of setting the scene and introducing the main character, it strikes us as showing off. We are amazed by the virtuosity of the filmmaking but we are paying more attention to that than the story world. That may have been intentional as the film is about the showy excessive ego-driven 80s, so De Palma may have wanted to reflect that look and feel in an ostentatious opening that turned the spotlight on itself in an act of self-love. In the voice over at the end of the sequence, the main character tells each viewer to “indulge yourself in the extravagance of the moment … .”
Nevertheless, the long take does not have the storytelling complexity of either the opening of Touch of Evil or The Player. It out does both those scenes in orchestration but it lacks their depth and purpose. Its main purpose is to impress. And, aside from a meta-comment on the era and the film itself, it does not provide much else. Indeed, the most pertinent information—that the real hero of the story is not present and that the story concerns a man who wins the world but loses his soul—comes from Peter Fallow’s voiceover.
Furthermore, the most powerful moment in the sequence is literary, not visual, and occurs in the voiceover, when Fallow says, “A phrase from another little best seller: ‘For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? This is a story about such a man.’” But maybe De Palma intended the long take to reflect that phrase through its style at the expense of substance, in its empty self-indulgence.
Godard’s 7.5-minute long take tracking shot in Weekendis almost unbearable to watch. For 7.5 minutes, we are assaulted by loud honking car horns while we watch a car weave around a traffic jam on a two-lane country road.
The long take is a traditional tracking shot where the camera moves along a track perpendicular to the axis of the camera lens. It’s a completely linear shot that slowly tracks the progress of a convertible moving through a traffic jam. It’s truly excruciating but terribly funny too.
Along the way the convertible we follow passes all kind of oddities: men playing cards on the trunk of a car; a ball being tossed between passengers in two separate cars, kids playing next to an overturned car and then running along the road; another ball being tossed between passengers in two separate cars; a car that has crashed into a tree at an odd angle; teenagers sitting on the side of the road hanging out; a parked Shell gas truck with a car in front of it pointing in the wrong direction and inexplicably sandwiched between the truck and another car pointing in the right direction; another overturned car; a couple having a picnic in the road between two cars in the traffic jam; two men just standing outside their parked car while others behind them try to move forward; two men playing cards on the hood of a car; a man in a boat raising the sail; and a man working on the engine of his car.
Strangest of all, some drivers seem to accept the delay, stop, and occupy themselves otherwise, while others try to push forward by honking their way through the blockage but yet don’t try to circumvent the line, with only the convertible making a serious effort to go around the jam.
As the convertible makes its way, people interrupt its progress to argue with the driver. Eventually, the car comes to the reason for the traffic jam—a deadly accident that has left several people dead. Once past the accident, the car speeds away free of impediment and turns off the main road traveling far into the distance in a long shot.
Godard plays a cruel joke on us in this shot. Immediately, like the characters in the convertible, we are annoyed at the noise and disruption caused by the traffic jam. However, when we get to its cause, we see that we are being petty as people have lost their lives and we have only been delayed a bit and suffered only noisy traffic. But, it’s clear that Godard is not being simply mean to us because along the way he allows us to chuckle at the absurd behavior of some of those stuck in the jam.
Godard also exploits delayed gratification to heighten the contrasts in the scene. We are frustrated by the start and stop movement of the cars and want to know what’s causing the jam, but that information is kept from us for a long time. Eventually, when we see the aftermath of the accident it contrasts strongly with the annoying yet comic scene we have been watching. Moreover, as the convertible drives off far into the distant countryside, the release is stronger and we feel extra relief at being out of the traffic jam and on our way again. Godard has made us sit through a blockage in the film and now the film can finally get back underway.
The scene contains little plot development but is heavy on thematic development. The impact of the shot is delayed until we reflect on the scene. We must think about what Godard intends. We witness a couple out for an idyllic ride in convertible in the country. However, they encounter a traffic jam that impedes their progress and disrupts their idyll. Instead of a quiet ride on the open road, the couple encounters blaring horns and backed up traffic.
As the try to circumvent the blockage, they are continually accosted and yelled at by other travelers. Along their way, they witness nonsensical behaviors—a car pointing headfirst the wrong way into a large truck, a couple picnicking in the road, and man raising the sail on his boat—and, moreover, the wreckage around them seems ignored. Society appears to be unraveling. They reach the cause of their brief delay—a serious car wreck leaving several dead victims splayed on the side of the road—and speed away as if they were leaving such troubles behind them and getting back on track with their weekend trip to the countryside. However, with this long take Godard foreshadows what’s in store for the couple—madness, mayhem, and murder.
In this scene, Godard exposes several questionable characteristics of bourgeois life. First, we experience the annoyance the couple feels when the outside world interferes with their leisure time. Then, we observe the couple act on their sense of privilege as they bypass the traffic jam by breaking the rules and driving down the road the wrong way rather than take their place in line and wait. Next, we see the couple ignore the problems of the world around them as they simply drive past the unfolding calamity around them. Finally, we observe the couple actively escape from the darker realities of life as they drive off without hesitation once they reach the horrific accident. Thus, Goddard critiques the feeling of entitlement, the sense of privilege, the willful ignorance, and the escapism inherent in the bourgeois lifestyle and worldview.
The long take in Old Boy contrasts with that in Weekend. Both are long linear tracking shots and both are difficult to watch. However, they are difficult to watch for very different reasons.
In Weekend, the annoying noise of the horns, the frustrating start and stop of traffic flow, and the long delay until the cause of the jam is revealed make the long take hard to watch, even sit though. In contrast, the long take from Old Boy is hard to watch because of its brutality and the clear pain the fighters feel. The fight is so viciously intense and unremitting that it’s hard to watch but also impossible to turn away from.
When watching Weekend’s long take, we feel our ownpain caused by being subjected to the long take and sitting through it; however, when watching Old Boy’s long take, we feel the pain of the fighters. The long take in Weekend makes you want to get up and walk out of the room, whereas the long take in Old Boy makes you wince and cover your eyes for a moment.
Furthermore, these two long takes exemplify two excellent but very different uses of the long takes to express theme. The long take in Old Boy does not share the thematic complexity of the long take in Weekend. InOld Boy, the long take focuses on a single theme as opposed to the long take in Weekend, which develops several interacting themes. Old Boy’s long take focuses the story to the point of a knife, whereas Weekend’s long take weaves together several ideas underlying the story.
Old Boy’s long take depicts a man pushed to the edge who’s willing to do anything to regain his freedom. In the fight, Dae-su releases his pent up will and rage, as if it were a tightly compressed spring. Remarkably, despite overwhelming odds, Dae-su survives the battle. But, because the fight is portrayed with severe realism, it does not seem ridiculous that he remains standing. The pain, fear, and fatigue of the fighters all strike us as real, as does Dae-su ’s resolve. He’s fighting for everything with nothing to lose, so he fights harder, with more commitment, and without any reluctance. Thus, along with being an amazingly tough and intense fight sequence, the long take compactly expresses Dae-su’s will to live free again.
The long take in Hardboiled has the look and feel of a first-person shooter video game. It’s also reminiscent of the shootout that takes place in the police station inTerminator. The sequence place us in the middle of the action, and we almost feel like we are holding the shotgun and blasting our way through the hallways. The sequence, however, does not convey the potent of realism of Old Boy but, instead, offers an intense and impressive ride. It’s a tour de force of stunts and pyrotechnical timing.
[Note: Embedding of the Hardboiled Hallway Fight Scene Disallowed]
The Protector
The long take in The Protector is a masterwork of choreography, stunt work, and camerawork. LikeHardboiled’s long take, the sequence has none of the realism of Old Boy. Indeed, it’s even more over the top than the long take in Hardboiled, but it’s more impressive too.
[Note: Embedding of The Protector Stairway Fight Scene Disallowed]
Reservoir Dogs
In Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino uses a subtle long take to convey a strong sense of realism as well as provide the viewer a respite from the gruesome torture of a cop. As Mr. Blonde goes to get a can of a gas out of his car to burn the cop he has been torturing, the camera follows him through the warehouse and outside into the street.
When he leaves the warehouse the song in the background fades and we hear only the noises outside. In particular, we hear the laughter of a children, which contrasts with the twisted laughter of Mr. Blonde while he tortured the cop. Outside, the world is oblivious to what’s happening inside the warehouse. Kids play and laugh nearby a scene of sick cruelty.
The realistic transition from indoors to outdoors uses diegetic sound and natural lighting to give the impression that we are watching something really happening, which heightens the horror of what Mr. Blonde is about to try to do.
When Mr. Blonde re-enters the warehouse, we are treated to his perverse dance, his theater of cruelty, while the sounds of laughing children still linger in our minds, mingling with the cop’s muffled cries for mercy.
In this scene, Tarantino employs perfectly seamless cuts and illustrates Wells’ dictum—have a good reason to cut. At first when Mr. Blonde turns to walk out of the warehouse, we see him from the back. As he moves farther away from us, Tarantino cuts to catch us up with Mr. Blonde just at the right moment and then begins the long take. The shot continues as Mr. Blonde re-enters the warehouse with the gas can and doesn’t cut again until Mr. Blonde goes to pour gasoline on the cop. Tarantino then cuts seamlessly to give us a view the gas splashing on the cop’s face.
This combination between seamless cut to long take to seamless cut keep us deeply engrossed in a scene that appears to be transpiring in real-time in real life before our eyes. From the beginning, Tarantino knew what he was doing.
Moreover, once Mr. Blonde starts dousing the cop with gasoline, Tarantino begins deftly cutting between close ups and circular tracking shots. Finally, as Mr. Blonde is about to drop the match, Mr. Orange shoots him and right as the bullets hit Mr. Blonde’s chest, Tarantino cuts to another circular tracking shot that focuses on Mr. Orange and eventually circles around to show Mr. Blonde fall down in the distance dead against the warehouse door. It’s those kinds of choices that set Tarantino apart from the start.
[Note: Embedding of the Reservoir Dogs Tracking Shot Disallowed]
Pulp Fiction
In Pulp Fiction, Tarantino uses a long take to follow Vincent Vega as he walks around Slim Jim’s. The camera follows Vincent and pays particular attention to what he looks at. The technique allows Tarantino to give us the sense that we are walking through the restaurant and looking around wide-eyed investigating the scene like Vincent. For instance, following Vincent’s lead, the camera looks down at a toy racetrack and peers over at a Jane Mansfield impersonator, and then follows Vincent past a Buddy Holly impersonator playing on stage and a Marilyn Monroe impersonator that walks by him.
No significant plot development occurs during the shot. The long take simply sets the scene using a wandering eye. Though Vincent would normally play it cool and wouldn’t roam around room and certainly wouldn’t walk past his “date,” we know Vincent is high on heroin, which gives context to his curiosity and the camera’s movements.
[Note: Embedding of the Pulp Fiction Tracking Shot Disallowed]
Kill Bill Vol. 1
In this long take, Tarantino tackles much more complicated movement than in Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction. Essentially, the scene consists of two people walking to the bathroom one after the other. However, because of the use of a long take employing intricate tracking shots, the simple action gets enlivened with energy.
Interestingly, though from Reservoir Dogs to Pulp Fiction to Kill Bill Vol. 1 Tarantino’s long takes became move complicated, the long take in Reservoir Dogs still stands out as the more masterful shot because it conveys a hard-to-capture subtle sense of realism that made the scene even more terrifying, and the long takes in Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill Vol. 1 just made the films more interesting to watch. The long take in Reservoir Dogshad a tactile feel and emotional impact absent from the long takes in Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill Vol. 1.
Scorsese’s famous long take illustrates the emotive potential of a long take done well. It gives us not only the perspective of Lorraine as she enters the club with Henry but it causes us to share her experience. Notably, this long take, though complicated, is not ostentatious like the long take in Bonfire of the Vanities. It’s not excessive, although, as mentioned above, its intricacy and virtuosity draw attention to itself, setting it up for a famous parody in Swingers.
Still, the long take uses each point of progression to drive home the point of the scene, which is that Lorraine is being swept off her feet at the same time she understands that Henry is not a legitimate businessman. This scene sets up her tragedy as she gets allured and warned at the same time. She knows what she’s getting into but goes along anyway as the lifestyle is too attractive for her. It’s a true tragedy, because afforded the opportunity of an informed choice, she chooses unwisely.
Everything in the long take plays ironically in the end. All the money and gifting giving gives the impression of generosity and thankfulness but really just indicates economic and social power obtained illegally through force and intimidation. Henry pretends to hand the money out stealthily but he knows Lorraine notices. Henry plays down paying a man to watch his car, paying their way in through the back door to skip the line, and getting a choice table immediately upon arrival inside the club; however, it’s all to impress her, even his acting like it’s no big deal and his fake embarrassment.
In Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson uses three excellent long takes for three very different purposes. In the film’s opening scene, Anderson uses a long take to set the vibe and feel of the film while introducing all the main characters. Later, in the middle of the film, Anderson uses another long take to establish the end of an era with a bang, when he follows Little Bill into a house looking of his wife, back out to his car to get his gun, and then back into the house to shoot his wife and the guy she’s screwing. (Shortly thereafter, he shoots himself but that’s after the long take has ended.)
In the Little Bill long take, Anderson puts us in the mindset of Little Bill by having us follow him closely into the house looking for his wife, then out the car to get his gun, and then into the house to shoot her and her unfortunate partner of the moment. We are not given his perspective, as we do not see what he sees. We don’t see his wife having sex and we don’t see her get shot. Rather, we ride along with Little Bill and occupy his emotional space.
Note the similarity between the Little Bill’s long take and the long take in Reservoir Dogs. Both long takes use going outside to convey a sense of reality that heightens the impact of the violence in the scene because it makes the violence seem like it’s happening as part of the flow of real life. Reservoir Dogs accomplishes this with greater effect because it uses only diegetic sound. InBoogieNights, the soundtrack continues to play both inside and outside and muffles the effect but does not erase it.
Finally, Anderson uses a third long take in the penultimate scene of the film where he follows Jack around his house before he’s about to shoot a scene. This long take contrasts with the open long take, which set up a cool, fun party scene. In this shot, Anderson creates a sense of a family rather than a party scene as Jack walks around admonishing Rollergirl to clean her room, comforting and complimenting his wife Amber, and checking in on Buck’s new born being held by Reed in the pool . The long take provides closure and summation while conveying a sense unity, alluding to new beginnings, and recognizing irrevocable losses. (Unfortunately, I could not find a video of this long take online.)
Anderson follows Wells and does not cut until he needs to do so. In the opening shot, he doesn’t cut until we need to see Jack setting his eyes on Dirk, so that we know that Jack has come to the club for the purpose of seeing Dirk. He’s there for business, not for the party. For Little Bill’s long take, Anderson does not cut until we need to see the reaction of the partygoers to the gunshots. In the final long take, Anderson does not cut until he needs to show us Dirk in his dressing room behind closed doors.
Two additional points of interest:
(1) During the pool party, Anderson uses a shot that follows a women into the pool and underwater. Most likely, this shot was an homage to an identical shot in I Am Cuba occurring during its pool party long take discussed and shown below.
(2) While making Boogie Nights, Anderson shot Michael Penn’s Try music video in one long take in the longest hallway in the world in a building in downtown Los Angeles. Michael Penn scored Boogie Nights and played a music engineer in the film. Anderson said that he would like to make a film in that a hallway about what goes on in all the rooms attached to it.
In this long take, we are placed in the car with the characters as they are ambushed. Technically amazing, the long take almost defies understanding. The camera moves within the cab of the car making us feel like we are in the car with the characters. The camera neither creates nor follows movement but instead gives alternate views within and from the car.
The scene begins with a playful interaction between Theo and Julian, where they tease each other about their past relationship and trade off spitting a ping-pong ball into each other’s mouths. If the ping-pong ball trick was accomplished without special effects, it was a risky move because it could easily have failed and the scene would have to be shot all over. The moment of playfulness causes us to drop our guard, so the ambush that follows startles and scares us even more. Being in the car, we feel like we too are being attacked. It’s a great immersive effect.
Shockingly, Julia, a main character played by a big star—Julianne Moore—gets shot and killed by assassins riding a motorcycle. While Theo tries to help her, the assassins ride up next to his door in an attempt to kill him. However, he slams his door into the motorcycle causing it to crash into the hood of the car.
The interaction with motorcycles appears to make the long take even more impressive, but the motorcycle was added in post-production. Even though it’s hard to tell, the use of special effects diminishes the impressiveness of the action portion of the long take.
Nonetheless, the camera work inside the car throughout the scene stands out. To make the shot, a rig was built atop the car so that the camera could be controlled remotely to move around the car. As it moved throughout the scene, the actors had move out of its way and then return to their proper positions when it eventually turned on them again. The second video below provides an explanation of how the shot was pulled off.
Much of Elephant was shot in long takes. This particular long take starts with a still medium shot that watches some high school students play football, changes to a steadicam tracking shot that follows one of the players, Nathan, as he walks toward the school building, and finally settles into a still long shot that watches him enter the building. The scene cuts just as Nathan enters the building and then another long take steadicam shot begins that follows the young boy through the school’s halls and around the campus until he meets up with his girlfriend.
The entire sequence follows Wells’ “reason to cut” dictum, not cutting until Nathan enters the school building because transitioning from outside to inside necessitates a cut from the long shot to keep following Nathan inside the school.
The long take is slow, fluid, and mournful, especially given the soundtrack—Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. We are watching what we know will soon be destroyed. The entire film can be seen as eulogy to youth.
The portion of the film that occurs before the shootings consists mainly of long takes of concurrent overlapping sequences that are shown consecutively. We watch John, Elias, Michelle, and Nathan traverse the school and cross paths the morning of the shootings until they each interact with Alex and Eric, the shooters.
The second video below edits Elephant into a Timecode-like format to show some of the main actions concurrently in real time.
Sophisticated and powerful, this long take from Tarkovsky’s The Mirror demonstrates his undeniable genius. Beautifully framed, the scene first shows a fire indirectly through a mirror and framed by a doorway. Then, the camera tracks to frame the fire directly from a porch, as rain drips from the roof contrasting with the blaze. As usually for Tarkovsky, the scene is filled with symbols—dogs baking (animal life); the ticking clock (time); the falling bottle (entropy); the mirror (light); rain, fire, and greenery (the elements); and children and their parents (family). Watch and behold.
These final two long takes are remarkably beautiful in different ways. They illustrate the contrasting ability of the long take, on the one hand, to immerse the viewer in a lively scene and, on the other hand, to carry the viewer away into the sublime. Unfortunately, the clips don’t use the original soundtracks. Nevertheless, the power of these long takes remains apparent. They speak for themselves and need no further elaboration to be enjoyed.
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