I get the need for another take if there’s a problem— actor flubs their line, or breaks, or a prop fails, or what have you. And I get that the director may want a particular line delivery, or whatever. But on the podcast I listen to, an actress* describes a family dinner scene in which she and the four other actors who portrayed the family put in a 15-hour day, with dozens upon dozens of takes, for about 180 seconds of TV.
Are the directors going for some version of perfection and they’ll only stop when they get THE PERFECT take? Or do they want multiple takes to choose from and they’ll pick the best one when they edit?
*In this particular case, the actress I speak of is Eden Sher, who played Sue on The Middle. After she explained a bit about how they needed this specific angle here and that specific angle there, and the actor who was a minor at the time had to be replaced by his stand in, and yada yada yada, I could begin to understand the long day. But I’m lost on the dozens on dozens of takes bit.
Yes, and yes. In TV shows, and in movies, it’s uncommon for an entire scene in the finished, edited cut, to be comprised solely of one shot/take.
Multiple takes often also mean multiple camera angles – sometimes shot simultaneously, but often shot separately. For example, in a scene where there’s a conversation between three actors, there will be shots taken with a focus on each of the actor’s faces (typically used when that actor is speaking), as well as wider shots of two or all three actors, from different angles. Often times, those different angles can’t be filmed simultaneously, because the angle of one shot would show the camera being used for a different angle.
Those all get woven together in the final edit, using footage from the particular take that best works in each moment of the scene. (And, as you noted, in takes that focus on one actor, stand-ins may be sitting in, in place of the other actors.)
As illustration, here’s a clip from a scene from Young Sheldon, in which the five members of the Cooper family sit down for dinner.
In just the first 30 seconds, I can count 10 different, discrete shot angles – various combinations of different characters in frame, different angles of those same characters, close-ups, etc.
During production, they probably shot multiple takes of the entire scene, from each of those different angles, which would have meant dozens of takes.
Whenever I’ve edited something, which I’ve only done a few times, having more takes and more angles means I could dramatically alter a scene and take it from something pedestrian and dull, to dramatic and powerful. Cutting from one angle to another not only means focusing on a different actor for their reactions or dialogue, but also gives you an opportunity to tweak timing, build tension or sustain a joke, or more simply fill in a quick cutaway between two different takes that work better. The more takes, the more opportunities to tweak and improve the final scene. There’s a reason there is a Best Editor award at the Oscars.
When people die, they sometimes immediately find themselves at the Pearly Gates of Heaven. Sometimes though they spend some time in a sort of suspended animation which they don’t know they are in, so that although they find themselves immediately at the Pearly Gates, they don’t realize that it’s often months or years after their deaths. Saint Peter is the guardian of the Pearly Gates who tells each person who arrives there whether they will enter Heaven or go to Hell. Frank Sinatra was famous for insisting that he should do very few takes of his scenes. Frank Sinatra and Stanley Kubrick arrived at the Pearly Gates the same time, although they died almost ten months apart. Saint Peter said to them that they would make a movie together. He said that Kubrick could make as many takes for each scene as he wanted. He then explained, “Kubrick, you’re going to be in Heaven, while Frank is going to be in Hell.”
Hitch could be a one-take director at times. I read a bit of trivia when they were cutting Rear Window the editor saved all of the bits that literally wound up on the cutting room floor. They totaled about ten minutes.
OTOH after the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy were locked down Peter Jackson ceremoniously burned all of the unused footage. It amounted to ten times what was on screen.
A lot of the times, it’s something purely technical - the lighting isn’t exactly right, the sound isn’t exactly right, the angles are wrong, stuff like that. I read somewhere that that’s one reason why Clint Eastwood makes movies so quickly and usually under budget: he’s worked with the same basic technical team for decades, and they’re very tight and coordinated. They know exactly what he wants, and they do it right away with minimal trial and error. That means that with him, if multiple takes are needed, it’s solely because of the actors.
I recall when I was an extra in Horrible Histories - one of the actors had to do a long monologue about the causes of WW1. It didn’t make much sense so he just had to reel it off parrot fashion, and he kept fluffing his lines, and we did take after take before they finally got something they could use, and wrapped for the day.
I art direct TV commercials. Having only a 30 second film means everything needs to be perfect - every eyebrow twitch, every movement. So I need multiple takes to (a) make sure I’ve got THE shot and (b) give ourselves options in the edit suite if the scene isn’t clicking right. No matter how many takes we do, I always end up wishing we had more options.
Sometimes the things that went wrong or were suboptimal aren’t noticed until the edit - long after the actors have all moved on to other things, the set has been dismantled, the costume and props have been discharged; reshoots are hellishly expensive (when considered cost per footage) and are really prone to introducing continuity errors. Shooting multiple takes even when the first take seems OK is not a terrible investment.
‘Fix it in post’ is a lot easier to do nowadays than it was in the past - so for example you can just reshoot later then maintain continuity by CGI-ing Henry Cavill’s chin to remove the beard and moustache, and nobody will ever know. Right?
There’s a movie that illustrates this quite well. It’s called Timecode, and is just 4 separate shots from 4 cameras filming simultaneously. Each view is shown in one quarter of the screen. It’s 4 continuous takes of the actors as they perform in real-time, and the shots gradually start interacting with each other. But long stretches of each one are just useless filler.
It’s also worth noting that most films are not like stage plays which would have the cast and director rehearsing together for weeks or months. On a film set, it could well be the case that the first time a director sees his actors giving an all-out performance (e.g. not just a read-through of lines) is when they’re actually shooting, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the director expected something different and asks for another take.
