Some Long Takes

With London Nautical last week, we tried out long takes, where the camera wanders off for a bit, then comes back to the focus of the shot – centring, decentring, then centring again. We watched the opening of Welles’s Touch of Evil – the version restored by Walter Murch following an infamous memo by Welles, attempting to mitigate the worst of the studio’s butchering of his original footage. We also watched the sequence from Sunrise, where the man comes to meet the girl from the city by the river.

Alid’s group chose to shoot around the entrance to BFI Southbank, picking up stray characters along the way, and switching camera position from following to shooting face on.

And Darren’s group took an ambitious path through benugo riverfront restaurant, with a ‘look away’ moment from the camera during which new characters join the shot. The take changes from being a ‘following’ shot of Othniel, to becoming a chase. There’s a lovely sleight of hand when Tuggy hands the camera to Darren, who joins the chase, just before the stairs.