Listen up, Sam Mendes
Here’s how to compose a film out of a single shot — by the filmmakers who pulled it off
Four years ago, director sam Mendes opened his Bond movie Spectre with a daring, carefully choreographed four-minute tracking shot following 007 through a Mexican Day of The Dead parade. How do you top that? shoot an entire movie in this style. 1917, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth and richard Madden, tells the harrowing story of one day in World War I through the eyes of two shell-shocked soldiers shot in one continuous take. “one-shot movies” are notoriously hard to pull off: if a single person misses their mark, the whole production has to start again. Three veterans of this unique filming method offer up their advice.
Don’t Do it unless your story Demands it
There’s no point using this style as a gimmick, says Martin otterbeck, director of photography on 2018 terrorist drama Utøya: July 22, about a real-life massacre in 2011 that left 69 people dead in Norway. “[The terrorist] was on the island for 77 minutes. We really wanted to show how long 77 minutes can feel like,” he says. “We didn’t do it [in one take] to show what great filmmakers we are — it was about letting the audience feel the true horror of this terrible act.”
rehearse like crazy
“It’s like a symphony,” according to sturla Brandth grøvlen, cinematographer on 2015 one-shot bank heist thriller Victoria. “every instrument is playing its part. so if you fuck up, you’re in trouble.” He and the Victoria crew had four weeks to rehearse, ironing out every detail like a stage play. “None of us had done anything like this before. so our escape plan was to prepare as much as possible. everyone knew what to do minute-by-minute, second-by-second.”
make sure you’re fit enough
No edits means no rest for your film’s poor cameraman/woman, who’ll need to be able to endure holding heavy equipment and walking around locations for long periods of time. “I had to become a professional athlete for this film,” laughs otterbeck. “Two months ahead of the film, I was on a training programme for every day, seven days a week, to cope with the physicality.” grøvlen — who held a 5.5kg camera aloft for two hours, without a break, for each of Victoria’s three attempts at filming — agrees: “I definitely needed a massage after!”
assemble a watertight team
“There’s got to be a high degree of precision in every department, from every individual on set,” says cinematographer Michael Fimognari, who helped bring the one-shot spooks of Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House’s sixth episode to life. “The dolly grip, the camera operator… everyone. It gets stressful in the last few minutes of a really good take, when it’s so good and it’s all working but you know there are still a hundred moving parts that could fail at any time.”
reap the rewards
Why go through all this effort? What’s the effect on filmgoers? “I think on a subconscious level, you believe what you see more,” says grøvlen. “It’s happening in front of your eyes. It feels authentic that way, more plausible, because it’s closer to real life.” says Fimognari: “you don’t have the bail-out of the usual cinematic constructions. It’s unrelenting. There’s no place to hide.” sam Mendes, it would seem, has his work cut out.