Long Takes In the Movies, Antidote To CGI?

brumgrunt submitted a Den of Geek story about long takes in movies. The premise is that CGI has made so many things possible that it all rings sterile now. Long shots are a better way to be flashy. Personally I absolutely love long takes, and I always elbow my wife excitedly when they happen. She probably hates them now! Some of the examples cited here are probably unfamiliar but maybe that'll just give you an excuse to queue them on Netflix.

Comments

And the opposite

[fyngyrz]

...is part of why I abandoned TV, and even the news -- I *despise* the tiny little takes, the snappy transitions, the sound bites. I find them deeply unsatisfying, shallow, and in the end not a good use of my time.

Re:And the opposite

[jackbird]

Russian Ark. Filmed in the Hermitage, no less. They nailed it on the 4th take.

CGI was exciting at first

[commodore64_love]

CGI was exciting when I first saw them adapt it for Babylon 5's spaceships (instead of models) and of course Jurassic Park's dinosaurs. It provided a new means to do things that had been impossible before.

But now it's old hat. Like the space shuttle launches I never watch. (yawn). Let's get back to focusing on the story so that, even if CGI did not exist at all, the movie or show would still be entertaining.

I agree

[Monkeedude1212]

I scrolled through his list saying to myself "He better have Children of Men on there" which of course was the very bottom. Now I mean you can like that movie for a lot of reasons but one of the things that I Really like about it is the fact that they do the Long Takes and execute them well.

It creates a greater sense of immersion - when the camera cuts from scene to scene too often - I don't feel like I'm in one place and subconsciously get jarred and reminded that I'm watching people acting out a scene. With a long shot that follows the actors around or pans to each character instead of cutting to each character - I feel like I'm actually standing there, as a passive observer, watching these things unfold.

Now - when I see a long take in a movie, I feel like I can enjoy the movie more itself in that I feel more immersed in the story, but reflecting upon it I also admire the difficulty directors and Actors have with such scenes. Especially when you've got a bunch of explosive rigs and dollys and whatnots all lined up - and getting extras to do what they're told... These kinds of shots aren't the kind that you can just say "Cut! Try it again from the top!" - you have to get it just about right the first time to film.

As a side note, the opening scene to Children of Men, after watching some of the bonus content on the DvD it looks like Clive Owen's character was meant to grab his coffee and then turn and run for cover, but in the actual film he is so jarred that he spills it - I have always wondered if that was a last second change or decision - or if that was just a nice side effect of only getting 1 take on film.

Henry V

[hedronist]

Let's go for the really long takes.

In Kenneth Branaugh's Henry V there is one of the most amazing tracking shots ever filmed. It happens after the battle and starts when Henry picks up the dead boy. The next 5+ minutes are of him carrying the boy through the blood and gore of Agincourt to the soaring sounds of the Kyrie Eleison. It gives me chills just to think of it.

Disappointing a geek article would omit "Serenity"

[TofuMatt]

Joss Whedon's Serenity features a nearly ten-minute long scene with no visible cuts (there is technically a seamless dissolve half-way through for technical reasons -- watch the DVD commentary and you'll see what I mean). Whedon didn't do it to show off or grab attention, but actually to make the audience feel safe and trusting after the rapid cuts and scene/flow changes found at the very beginning of the film.

I find rapid cuts annoying and a way to draw the viewer away from a lack of detail or a scene that can't carry itself on the acting/sets/dialog/action alone. I don't seek out long takes though -- like most things in movies: if they're done really well you shouldn't be thinking about them, but rather about the plot.

Re:The opposite...

[Yvan256]

Yeah but you can' really - SQUIRREL!

You think long takes AREN'T CGI?

[Bruce Perens]

My favorite long take is the Genesis Effect scene in Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn. It's a long zoom toward the Genesis planet and a descent around it, flying between mountain peaks, while it morphs from a lifeless planet to something covered with fractal plant scenery. All in one very long CGI take. This was made at Pixar really long ago when CGI was much more difficult because computers were so much slower. The computer involved was a VAX 780 (I still have the front panel from that VAX in my office) and it ran with the diagnostic command "SET CLOCK FAST" for over a month to do that scene. At one point they realized that they were flying THROUGH a mountain, and they backed up a few frames and had a notch grow in the mountain range as they approached it. It's clearly visible in slow motion - they just didn't have enough time to redo many frames of the scene and it goes by too fast to notice in real time if you don't know about it. Alvy Ray Smith said that he hadn't met George Lucas (who is famously reclusive) and that after seeing the rush of that scene, George knocked on Alvy's office door and said "Good Take!". And that's all the interaction with George that Alvy said he had. But aside from this old and not very realistic looking scene, a lot of modern long takes are CGI, and you can't tell!

It's a reaction to MTV, not CGI.

[Animats]

That's not a reaction to CGI, it's a reaction to MTV. Music videos pioneered the quick-cut style of filmmaking. MTV had a big chunk of content at about one cut per second, which was an innovation at the time. That moved into TV production, partly as a way to pick up the pace, and partly as a way to get show length down and commercial time up. Then films started following that trend. By the last James Bond film, "Quantum of Solace", the cut rate had reached the point that action scenes were a bunch of blurry clips. There's a database of average shot length in films; "Quantum of Solace" comes in at an average shot length of 1.5 seconds. This is close to the record for big-budget films.

Long tracking shots are usually a gimmick. "The Player" has an 8-minute long take, but it's a visual joke, and even references long takes. Very few directors use long takes well. "The West Wing" was famous for long tracking shots which advanced the plot effectively. That's rare.

To the extent that CGI has anything to do with this, it's the fact that action-heavy movies are assembled like cartoons. Traditionally, film directors came from the theater. Production started with a script and a group of actors, sitting around a table and doing a reading. Cartoons, on the other hand, started with a storyboard, a real board filled with rows of cards with sketches. Dialogue was made to fit the action.

Effects-heavy movies require major preplanning. (A Star Wars movie is "three years of pre-production, six months of principal photography, three years of post-production", says one of the participants.) Bringing all the pieces together is a huge logistic job, and improvisation runs the costs through the roof. So directors who get it right on the storyboard, check it out with pre-visualization, and build the movie as designed are favored in Hollywood. I know one successful live-action director who came from stop-motion animation, the most pre-planned of all forms.

This style of production favors short shots, which are assembled in post-production. Action scenes are assembled one bit at a time, pacing can be adjusted in post, and dialogue is re-added using automated dialogue replacement. But that only drives shot lengths down to the 3-5 second range. Below that, it's forced pacing.

Re:It's a reaction to MTV, not CGI.

[onkelonkel]

"three years of pre-production, six months of principal photography, three years of post-production" - don't forget the half hour it took to write all the dialogue.

As a film editor

[DreadPiratePizz]

As a union film editor currently working in Hollywood on independent features, I would like to weigh in on this issue.

There is no single answer to any of this. Computer generated effects are not bad. Quick cuts are not bad. Long takes are not bad. Handheld is not bad. None of these techniques are bad in and of themselves. They become bad when they are used inappropriately.

When cutting a scene I ask myself what is trying to be conveyed in that scene. Let's say the character is sad, and we want the audience to know that. My job then becomes finding the best way to show that. It could mean using a close up to show them crying. It could mean using a locked off wide shot to show them surrounded by a lonely environment. There's never a single best answer, and that's in part why I enjoy my job so much.

Likewise when it comes to long takes and special effects, both have their place but both are misused. Again, ask yourself what it is you are trying to convey. If your character is in a fast paced fight in a warehouse, with bad guys all around from above and below coming at him from many directions, it's quite possible that quick cuts can give you a better sense of danger, as well as actually show the action better. One of the drawbacks to long takes tends to be that you are limited in what you can show. If a bad guy drops in through the glass on the other side of the warehouse, in a long take you'd have to pan the camera, and see that action small in the frame. With a cut, you can easily bring the audience across the warehouse to show this action in a medium shot, then instantly bring them back to the hero's reaction.

Another issue with long takes is that they tend to follow the actors and show their backs. You're in a hard spot on this, because we're most interested in where the actor is going, not where they've been, but at the same time seeing someone's back is not very intimate and is a bit disconnecting. This is why long takes work best when nobody is really going anywhere, or when the environment itself is the most important thing to show.

Long takes can be beneficial for action in small spaces, such as a Kung Fu fight or a dance routine. These elements are about physicality and continuity of motion, and being in a small space a long take can easily capture the entirety of that. I love seeing fights with a smoothly flowing camera that preserves the action, just like I love seeing wide shots of musical numbers where there is dancing. All too often, quick cuts are used in these situations to hide things, like the fact that the actor can;t fight or a bad piece of choreography. I think in general any time you use an edit to HIDE something rather than SHOW something, then the quality of your film goes down.

I see a lot of long takes in some films, which appear to have no motivation other than to be long takes, and that hurts the film just as much as if someone threw in a fury of cuts just to make it exciting. Like all techniques, you've got to be really conscious of the implications of using a long take, and what effect it will have. The worst reason to do it is to do it because it's the new cool.

Full circle?

[TiggertheMad]

You could have a feature length film in one cut without any waste. It would take a lot of skill to do it well -- from both the cast and the crew.

I have heard of this being done before. I believe in the biz, they call this a 'Play'.