ONER TECHNIQUE
NOT CUTTING AWAY BUILDS unrelenting tension as the viewer waits ”
A crane shot of an unidentified figure placing a bomb in a car opens the film. The camera then gradually cranes out to reveal a Mexican-US border town, and follows the vehicle through the streets for roughly three-and-a-half minutes before the inevitable explosion. Not cutting away builds unrelenting tension as the viewer waits for the bomb to go off, and makes the first cut arrive like its very own blast. The technique dates back to early- Hollywood cinema, although there’s fierce debate over which was the very first film to use it. One contender is the 1927 silent film Wings , which features an early example of a long tracking shot. To capture it, cinematographer Harry Perry used an inverted rig on an overhead rail to move through a bustling café. The continuous take required meticulous planning and choreography, and it still looks impressive to this day. Meanwhile, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 Rope is widely regarded as the first whole feature-length film designed to appear as a single take. However, due to the
technical limitations of the time, filming was restricted to roughly ten-minute segments – to the length of a film reel. DOPs Joseph A Valentine, ASC and William V Skall, ASC cleverly concealed the cuts to make it look seamless. In his 1962 interviews with François Truffaut, Hitchcock later dismissed Rope as a ‘stunt’, describing the experiment as ‘quite nonsensical’ because it broke with his belief in the importance of editing for cinematic storytelling. The technique has, however, continued to flourish in contemporary cinema, with films such as Birdman and 1917 . Both appear as a continuous take, despite the presence of invisible cuts. SHOW-OFF DEVICES While the oner has a long history, cinematographers and filmmakers remain divided on whether the technique is a powerful storytelling tool or simply a filmmaking exercise. Seamus McGarvey, ASC, BSC, ISC believes filmmakers sometimes want to make something ‘symphonic’ for
NO ONE-HIT WONDER Between 1948 and 2025, imaginative oners have appeared in Rope (top right), Touch of Evil (top middle), The Studio (bottom) and Adolescence (left)
the sake of it. “I love telling stories with a camera,” he begins. “The two oners I’m known for – Life and Atonement – I do think serve the story in a way that combining separate shots wouldn’t.” Regarding the oner in Atonement , McGarvey recalls how director Joe Wright persuaded him to get on board with the idea. “I initially thought it was just calling attention to the structural side of cinematography when cinematography should only be in service of the story and narrative,” he says. Wright explained to McGarvey the psychology behind the shot. “It’s like a near-death experience or an almost about-to-die experience. It should feel sort of celestial and carnivalesque. “Robbie, the protagonist, expires at the end of the scene,” he continues. “The shots that follow show that, as he dies,
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