Saturday Long Take

I was excited about the long take from the minute we started planning it out in class. I love challenges and shooting a long take of any scene is usually some sort of a challenge, wether trying to keep the camera steady or keep the audiences attention. Long takes have always interested me too. Stanley Kubrick utilizes  long takes quite a bit in most of his well known films like The Shining, 2001, and Eyes Wide Shut. Some times a lot of cutting can be a bit ridiculous thus its nice to shoot long takes every once in a while to see the action play out in a different kind of way.

My group had a lot of ideas at first, like a kung fu fight sequence, to a ridiculous dance sequence. We finally settled on an idea. We planned to shoot a sequence that would resemble a phone call across campus (or chancellor's walk) via tin cans. Like a phone on a string that children play with. We would have a super long dolly/tracking shot where the camera operator would sit on the dolly (which eventually became Chris' moped) and ride down the campus filming the scene. Starting on one person, then following their string, and ending on the person they are talking to. I think the basic story behind the scene was that the first person was telling the other person something important yet since the phone line was so long when it finally got to the other person they couldn't hear it at all. ITo me it definitely resembled something from an early silent film, relying more on body language than any sort of dialogue.

Although I had to leave early on Saturday I was able to stay long enough to see the whole shoot take place, and even act in it! Casey was the camera operator and Nate and I acted. It was a pretty simple sequence the only issue we had was that there were tons of prospective students on campus that day for some sort of tour or orientation event. It took a while to clear out chancellor's walk but we eventually got it cleared and got the shot. From what I heard it came out really well. Even for the brief amount of time that I was there I had a lot of fun shooting the long take and I would call it a nice warm up challenge to the video race that is coming up.