Appreciate the Long-Take Sequence
From the earliest days of editing people recognized that its greatest purpose would be to direct the eye to the objects in a scene that the director wanted you to notice; but edits also enable a director to shape the pacing of a scene after it has been shot - any time you make a cut is a chance to remove an extra beat or a line of dialog that you realize isn’t necessary - which makes long, single take shots especially daring… after all, they take forever to set up and once they’re in the can you’re stuck with the results, and it’s this aesthetic danger which spurred the creation of this blog post about the top long uncut sequences of all time, from movies as diverse as TOUCH OF EVIL and HARD BOILED; taking care to mention Brian DePalma, who has never made a movie without a long uncut tracking shot somewhere in it, often employing split screen — which reminds me, did you see TIMECODE, a Mike Figgis movie which employed four single ninety-minute takes in a split screen — because if you didn’t, you should, or at least I should some day, but as a former editor the idea galls me a little, and you can’t blame me; has this gimmick gotten to you yet, that is to say, are you so frustrated that you’re itching for a period or question mark because I can tell you I certainly am. Aren’t I?