I don’t have the whole clip, but in the movie Hanna, Eric Bana is in a very long take. The full take is about 4 minutes long and it ends with a really good fight sequence, which would be huge pressure to have at the end of a long take.
Here is just over half of the take and my question is this:
At 1:20, do you think they cheated? He went behind a pillar and emerged out for the fight. This could have been a digital cheat and my wife and I noticed one earlier in the sequence(but it isn’t in the Youtube clip).
Why would it be faked? Three minutes isn’t even remarkable for something like that: The Player had one eight minutes long, Rope used ten-minute takes (though on a confined set), and Russian Ark has a 99-minute-long one (i.e., the entire movie).
If I don’t see it, then it isn’t a cheat, it has its desired effect on the audience. The opening scene in Touch of Evil is the forerunner of all of these.
Using the word “cheated” has perhaps derailed my question. My question, which I don’t see answered in the article linked above, is whether or not this film did cut the two times it went behind a pillar.
Serenity has a longish take in the opening, when they first show Serenity’s crew, but Joss Whedon did do a digital cut partway through and put the two bits together. I wondered if this did the same.
Because if you screw up the fight-scene at the end (which is presumably hard to do correctly the first time, or even the fifth or sixth time), you have to haul the dolly with the camera equipment back up the stairs, down the street and start from the beginning again instead of just starting just before the fight scene.
If you can manage to make a cut just before the fight scene, without it being noticeable, that would make things a lot easier.
In anycase, I can’t see any indication of a cut. If there is one, they did a good job of hiding it.
My favorite recent long take is in the wonderful Oscar-winning film, “The Secret in Their Eyes” (2009). The entire clip used to be on YouTube, but all I can find now is the first few minutes of it and a behind-the-scenes video showing how it was done, which you really shouldn’t watch until you’ve seen the whole movie. There is a lot of cheating to achieve the look of a single take but it is so clever and seamless you’ll never see it. Plus there are some genuine long takes which make up the final longer take that utilize some very clever camera maneuvers which you’ll want to go back and figure out after the movie is over.
“Hanna long take” was the search I used. None of the articles explicitly say there was no cut when he walks behind the pillar, but they all mention the long take involving the subway fight.
Yes, I watched that scene several times to try to find the cuts. Silent House is another recent movie made to look like it was shot in one take. The movie was OK but I had fun trying to spot the edit points.
I recently watched this film with the director’s commentary, and he says it was one take. Apparently they did the whole thing (from the bus to the end of the fight) six times, and chose the sixth take.
The commentary was interesting in other parts of the film, and perhaps pertinent to this thread. Basically, the risk of long takes goes both ways: there is incredible pressure to get things right (the director makes a joke about the look of apprehension on Eric Bana’s face going down the escalator not being just acting), and its expensive to do the whole thing again. But on the other hand setting up lots of smaller shots has a lot more overhead, so you might not have time for it even if it is less risky.
There was another interesting comment about some other scenes, such as where she’s walking through the herd of camels, where most of the footage actually comes from one very long take, but is still cut into smaller scenes just for pacing reasons.