On the 13th of each month, the L13FC analyzes an aspect of the film industry. Please welcome co-host, Jordan at epilepticmoondancer, who wanted to suggest the topic of the EXTENDED SHOT with all of you.
Jordan’s thoughts:
Each time there was an extended take, I find myself leaning forward, as the style seems to be near-extinct within the confines of popular American cinema. How effective is the decision to the narrative? For example, Luzbeki dazzled most with his flamboyant style in Birdman, using a little trickery to make the entire film feel like it was done in one long shot. While this enhanced the experience, it compromised the story it was telling, and upon the third viewing, the camerawork was nothing more than a distraction. (If anyone cares to see a film shot in a single take, one that takes us through the streets of Berlin while also adding to the story and plot, please check out 2015’s Victoria.)
Unlike Birdman, during the early scenes of The Revenant, this swinging, stylistic style of shooting enhances the experience and the story, as not only do we feel right in the middle of the action, with arrows flying in everything direction, we consequently feel the fear and the sense of feeling trapped. In this sense then, the camera almost functions as an unseen, unnamed character.
Moving away from Luzbeki, Orson Welles’s famous crane shot from Touch of Evil (1958) immediately establishes tension within the busy streets as we wait for the car bomb to explode.
It seems then that these extended takes with a lot of movement work better outdoors than they do within. An exception is Son of Saul (2015). A simple hand-held camera follows Saul’s every move in the Auschwitz crematorium and the defocused, claustrophobic horror is captured effectively. Son of Saul was praised for its unique visual presentation. We rarely see anything other than his face or the back of his head, and consequently, we see his reactions to other stimuli. Does this visual approach affect the way the story is perceived by the audience? It is the camerawork itself that tells us the story, that puts us in the shoes of Saul. It is a Holocaust film like no other, where we again feel right in the action.
I could obviously go on with endless examples, such as action films like The Raid or Tony Jaa films where the lack of cut after cut after cut means we can actually see the fighting, blow for blow. We can see that these guys know how to fight, and most importantly, we can see who is hitting who! Compare this to Hollywood, which has long been fond of using innumerable cuts to hide the fact that their actors have not been properly trained.
While such extended, moving cuts will consistently capture my attention, how much do you think it adds to a film? Does it distract you from the story in any way? Or, like me, can it draw you further in, adding another layer of immersion?
Cindy’s Impressions:
One film that stands out recently for me is Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s, The Assassin (2015). The use of the long shot is used throughout the narrative, and it’s one of the more visually striking films I’ve seen.
I agree with Jordan that the choice of the extended cut adds an authentic element to the story-telling. Certain directors are heralded in part because they make good use of the long shot:
Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock, and Alfonso Cuarón. Whether to move the action like Children of Men (2006) or to maximize the dialogue like director Steve McQueen’s Hunger (2008), their decision creates a film where the audience is trapped; it is voyeurism heightened and felt. The film becomes an experience rather than a passive attempt at engagement.
Would you like more examples? I thought this article by Jessica Kiang in 2014, which ranked 20 of the best long shots, was interesting. You can read it here on INDIEWIRE.
Thank you, Jordan, for suggesting this interesting topic. You all have an opinion, so please feel free to join the discussion.
Cindy Bruchman 