Long Takes in Filmmaking: Techniques and Impact

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[00:00:08]If each cut in a movie can be compared to taking  a breath, then doing a long take is like closing   your mouth, pinching your nose and seeing  how long you can go on one lungful of air.

[00:00:19]On average, editors and directors will cut to  a new shot around every 3 seconds. However,   sometimes filmmakers prolong this  by shooting and holding on a single   shot for 3 minutes, 5 minutes or even  an unbelievable 87 minutes at a time.

[00:00:43]In this video let’s take a look at  what makes long takes effective,   why filming these shots can be challenging,   and identify the various ways and pieces of  equipment which can be used to pull them off.

[00:00:59]If you’ve been on a film set you’ll know that  sometimes even the simplest looking shots on   paper, can be incredibly challenging to  pull off. So, what are some reasons why   filmmakers make their lives more difficult by  even bothering to try ambitious long takes?

[00:01:17]The longer a shot plays out in real time, the  more of an immersive experience it provides.   This allows audiences to engage with sequences  with a sense of real-time continuity. This can   feel a bit more realistically representative  and true to how we experience time in real life,   rather than movies which chop up actions into  loads of tiny little pieces and fragments of time.

[00:01:46]Like this famous 4 minute long take from Children  Of Men, which plays out some lighthearted,   human moments, before gradually  ramping up the action into a tense,   immersive chase sequence - which all  takes place in real-time in a single shot.

[00:02:03]“Part of the reason we chose to  tell Children Of Men in very fluid,   long takes was to take advantage  of the element of real time.” For this reason, long takes are sometimes used  in action or even dialogue sequences to make   audiences feel engaged and like they are watching  things unfold more viscerally in real-time.

[00:02:26]At the beginning I compared editing to breathing  - which can either be done with slow, deep,   relaxed breaths which are spaced apart, with  short, choppy, panicked gasps for air, or,   in the case of long takes, by holding a  breath for an extended period of time.

[00:02:47]How filmmakers space out cuts has  an unconscious emotional impact on   audiences. Prolonging cutting - or withholding  the audience from taking a breath - can be a   great tool for building a feeling of tension,  anticipation and intensifying emotional moments.

[00:03:06]Hunger holds on a locked shot of a key  dialogue scene between two characters   for an incredible 17 minutes - intensifying  the drama, giving the dialogue a real-time   rhythm and locking the audience's focus in  as the scene builds a powerful atmosphere.

[00:03:26]“Once you cut away then you give the audience an  excuse. It’s no longer real. It becomes a film at   that point. But if the shot carries on then there  is no escape. The audience, if they’re engaged   with the story and engaged with the characters,  are drawn deeper and deeper into that scene by   not cutting. It actually heightens the emotional  impact of the story, by giving you nothing else.” Another effect which long takes may  have is to build the world of the story,   the space it takes place in, and the characters  which inhabit that world. By having the camera   flow with characters through a space, it can both  introduce the location itself to the audience as   well as how different characters interact  with each other, what their relationships   are and the hierarchy or power dynamic that  exists between them all without interruption.

[00:04:28]Filmmakers can also use long takes to tell the  story in one of two styles: a more subjective   style, where the camera is latched mainly onto  one, or a couple, of characters, as they move   through a space, like this 4 minute shot from  Goodfellas, or in a more objective style like the   opening shot of Boogie Nights, where the camera  flows from an establishing shot, into showing   various different members of the ensemble cast as  the camera progressively roams around a nightclub.

[00:05:04]These two ways of shooting long takes  are informed by the director’s overall   perspective on the story. One contains  voice over narration by and is mainly   seen through the eyes of a single protagonist.  The other alternates between various storylines   and scenes between various characters and  their relationships throughout the movie.

[00:05:29]Now that we know some of the reasons  filmmakers may have for wanting to shoot   these extended shots, what are the different  ways in which these shots can be pulled off?

[00:05:39]The most technically simple long take technique is  to film a shot from a stationary camera position   which is either locked off, or operated  based on the movements of characters.

[00:05:51]These stationary shots will be filmed from  a tripod head, which could be attached to   various bases depending on the height of the  shot required and the gear available. Most   commonly this base support would either be tripod  legs, a dolly which is locked into position,   or a hi-hat for shots which need the  camera to be positioned low to the ground.

[00:06:15]The second, and probably most  common way of doing a long take   is by employing camera movement. There  are a wide variety of ways to do this and   it’s very situational depending  on the quality of the movement,   the position of the camera and what gear will be  most practical for the operator and technicians.

[00:06:37]The method that requires the least gear  is to film the long take handheld - most   commonly by balancing it on the  shoulder for increased stability,   while being supported from behind by a grip  to make sure the operator doesn’t topple over,   trip, or hit an object when  they are moving backwards.

[00:06:58]If filmmakers want the practical flexibility  that comes from being able to move a handheld   camera through various spaces at different angles  but with movement that is more fluid, smooth and   has a bit more stability, then a great option is  either a Steadicam, a Trinity or a 3-Axis Gimbal.

[00:07:21]For overhead long takes, a camera mounted  on a remote head to a crane, a technocrane,   or a cable-suspended Spidercam could also be used.  This allows a camera to move pretty much anywhere   vertically and horizontally within a dedicated  volume of space. However, a large crane arm or   overhead cabling will sometimes be limited by  objects like ceilings, which means, outside of   a studio, it isn’t always the best tool for long  takes that need to move through an environment.

[00:07:57]Another method that offers maximum stability is  to commit to only moving the camera along one   straight line. This can be done with the camera  mounted on top of a tripod head on top of a dolly,   which is pushed along a series of straight track  lengths which are connected and levelled by grips.

[00:08:17]Although this movement is supremely smooth it  does limit the motion to one straight axis,   unlike shooting handheld, with  a gimbal or a Steadicam where   the operator can turn corners, loop around  and easily change their directional line.

[00:08:37]An exception to this is if the long take  is shot using a dolly in a soundstage or   a location with a perfectly smooth,  levelled floor where the dolly can be   wheeled around without needing to use  tracks to get it over uneven terrain.

[00:08:54]Finally, some filmmakers who want to employ  different kinds of movement within a single shot,   such as starting with a jib which moves  into stabilised movement on the ground,   can be done by using combined camera movements.

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[00:10:08]A popular combined camera movement  is called the crane step off. This   is where a Steadicam operator starts by  standing on a platform on a rideable crane   to which they are harnessed. The crane is  then jibed around or down to the ground.

[00:10:27]At this moment grips will simultaneously   unharness the operator and secure the crane to  ensure the change in weight doesn’t cause the   unbalanced crane to shoot up. The Steadicam  op will then step off the platform onto the   ground and continue the rest of the required  motion, such as tracking with a character.

[00:10:49]Another combined camera movement is a gimbal  pass off. Depending on the situation the gimbal   or stabilised head can be rigged onto a bar  and attached to some kind of tracking rig,   such as a Technocrane which does a telescoping  motion or a cable rig that the camera slides   along. Once the gimbal comes to ground, it can  be unhooked from the first rig by an operator,   who can then grab the gimbal off the bar  and begin a smooth motion along the ground.

[00:11:25]Some high budget filmmakers wanting a  long take with movement in unusual spaces,   can enter the world of custom grip builds,   such as this 2-axis dolly rig from Children of  Men which was built onto the roof of the car.

[00:11:42]This rig could move an underslung remote head  along a track both forwards and backwards and   left and right. This was mounted onto the  car’s cut off roof. While an operator,   stationed on top of a space rigged  onto the car’s roof, could also   pan the camera around 360 degrees on a  Sparrow Head inside the car’s interior.

[00:12:06]The car was placed on a low loader platform that  could be driven forwards and backwards by two low   mounted professional drivers at the front and rear  of the car, who sat out of sight of the camera.

[00:12:19]Something interesting happens right at the end  of the long take. The camera swings around,   somehow exits the car door,  operated with a handheld motion,   and pans over without seeing any  of the rigging gear or drivers.

[00:12:37]How is this possible? The camera is hard mounted   onto a remote head inside the car  and cannot be easily detached?

[00:12:46]I’d argue it was done with a  technique called an invisible cut.

[00:12:52]This is quite a widely used trick when it comes  to long takes. The idea is to actually break   these sequences down into a number of different  shorter shots, which are more manageable to shoot,   then stitch them together in the edit. These  transitions are hidden by using invisible cuts,   which, if done seamlessly, will mask  that there was an editing point at all.

[00:13:17]The easiest method of performing an invisible  cut is by ending a shot on a block of solid,   dark colour, cutting, then resume filming a new  shot which starts on that same block of colour.

[00:13:30]Some invisible cuts, like the ones in  Rope, are quite easy to identify as   they almost always involve tracking  into a dark close up of an object.

[00:13:41]However, when this technique is combined with  a wipe it can hide the cut quite effectively.   A wipe is where, unlike a regular cut, the  second shot gradually moves across the screen,   usually from side to side, until  it takes up the whole frame.

[00:14:00]If shot one ends with the camera tracking  or panning quickly from side to side,   and shot two begins with the same quick  motion, and a wipe is then applied to this,   sometimes with some added CGI work,  this is called an invisible wipe.

[00:14:19]This technique has been used in  movies such as Birdman, or 1917,   to break up the longer takes into more  manageable and easily filmable smaller shots,   while maintaining the illusion  that it was shot as a ‘one-er’.

[00:14:37]Another reason that these invisible cuts were used  to stitch together shots in movies from the past,   was due to the running time of 35mm  film cameras. Although it depends   on the film gauge and magazine size,  shooting on 35mm with a 1,000ft mag,   gave around 11 minutes of run  time at 24 frames per second.

[00:15:01]So the longest that a single shot could  be when shooting on film was 11 minutes,   unless a special magazine was used, which  could accommodate more than 1,000ft of film.

[00:15:13]Nowadays digital cameras, which record onto  large capacity cards or hard drives, offer a   much longer running time than physical film did  and have largely made this issue irrelevant.

[00:15:27]However, there are still plenty of  technical challenges which come with   shooting long takes. One of those  is wireless transmission. This is   required both to transmit a video signal  to a monitor for the director to review   the take as it unfolds, as well as  for the 1st AC to evaluate focus,   and to then transmit a signal from the wireless  follow focus to the camera to pull said focus.

[00:15:56]In ordinary setups this isn’t a problem,  however if the camera needs to move a great   distance during a take away from where  the monitor and focus puller is set up,   then either a stronger transmitter will be  required that transmits a further distance,   or the focus puller and director will need to be  close to the camera at all times during the take.

[00:16:20]Another technical challenge is light.  The more spaces a camera moves through,   the more continuous lighting  fixtures will need to be set up,   to illuminate and balance the exposure  levels, so that no area is too dark or   too bright and so that the levels of natural  light do not shift too much during shooting.

[00:16:43]One way to aid with balancing exposure is to do  an iris pull, where a motor on a lens’ aperture   ring can be shifted during a take to either open  up and make the image brighter, or stop down to   darken it. If this is done slowly and subtly this  effect will likely not be picked up by audiences.

[00:17:06]It’s especially necessary when  shooting exterior long takes,   where the sun may go behind a cloud and darken,  or come out and brighten half way through a shot.

[00:17:17]Another consideration with lighting is to  plan the lighting and camera moves so that   there is never a light source between the  camera and the subject, to avoid casting   a camera shadow. This is why long takes  through interiors will often rely on rigging   light from a higher position on the ceiling,  so that shadows will be cast straight down.

[00:17:41]Once all of these technical challenges have  been figured out the real biggest challenge   is actually shooting the shot: by getting both  the performance and blocking of the actors,   as well as the motion of the camera operator  to happen, simultaneously, in perfect harmony.

[00:18:03]Hope you enjoyed the video. As always thanks to  all of you for supporting the channel by watching,   commenting and especially to those  that get the videos early on Patreon.

[00:18:14]Otherwise, until next time,  thanks for watching and goodbye.