r e f l e c t i o n 2 || w e e k 6
..Continuing on from the one shot takes reflection post previously, I wanted to talk about one shot movies.
Most recently, Russian Ark was a 90 minute film that adopts the single shot technique.
2,000 actors were filmed in 33 rooms with 3 live orchestras in the Hermitage Museum.
Rope, by Alfred Hitchcock is a notable mention. Although it wasn’t entirely filmed in one shot because the cameras could only run for 10 minutes at a time, it does appear to have been shot as such.
I really enjoyed this movie, it built on tension really well, as is the mastery of Hitchcock but it was oddly the least favorite of his movies.
Birdman, also shot to appear as though it was filmed over the course of a single day, received an academy aware for its efforts.
I really don’t have an qualms with whether a movie was genuinely filmed as a single shot, or if it was able to mimic the technique through editing – both are really masterful in their own right in keeping with continuity.
Do you think it matters?
w o r k s h o p || w e e k 6
My brother provided the basis of the story for our one shot filming exercise for the week 6 workshop.
We had a really great group, we all gelled and brought some of our own spice to the mix.
Our story was prompted by the theme ‘misunderstandings’, using inspiration from my brother who that morning used a play on words with me, replacing ‘can’t’ to mean something uncouth.
The story played out with a couple of friends talking in the corridoors discussing work they had to finish and one of them mishearing what the other said.
That friend then proceeds to continue about her day, encountering friends along the way, telling them what her friend called her – a trail of gossip.
We filmed the shot next to the old Melbourne jail, behind building 9, wanting to be indoors for the most important verbal cue and then heading outside.
Ideas kept coming to us as we worked through our movements, trying to coordinate one meeting of friends to the other.
Lines were missed, laughs were had and we eventually finished the take and went upstairs to edit.
We hurriedly added bleep noises and some fades to neaten the video up and presented.
We enjoyed the process a lot and I think we were all a little excited to see the end result.
It was unfortunate that we didn’t have the best sound quality because of microphone positioning but it was a great first effort and we can take that knowledge into a next project; learning from mistakes made.
Overall, it was interesting to observe who took on which roles; Jemma managed and coordinated things quite well, which was great because that’s always a running issue among group work, and I know it to be a weakness of mine.
Find the link attached here