Just had to share this. I’d never heard of this film before, and when I first saw this 20 second clip I assumed it was a modern computer animated thing. It’s astonishing, so beautifully done, and I was amazed it was a genuine shot, years before Goodfellas or Hitchcock, or even Citizen Kane.
And as a bonus, spot the lesbian couple on table three!
Fantastic movie. If you’re up for a bit of piracy, it’s out there …
I intend to watch it, yes. I had honestly never heard of it and from reading the description of it, it sounds amazing.
Winner of the first Best Picture Oscar.
Yeah I read that. And apparently the first Oscar ceremony was a simple affair with no pizzaz or long speeches, lasted about 15 minutes, and all the winners were already announced in advance! Where did it all go wrong?? The past is a strange country sometimes.
The plural of “pizza” is “pizzas”, you dimwit.
‘Is there two g’ s in “bugger off”? ‘
(name that quote!)
@Arthur-Cowslip
Given the comestible theme of Gary’s correction, your rejoinder should really have been “burger off!”
Pies off.
Nice little musical cue as well, adding the melody to “I’m forever blowing bubbles” as the champagne is poured into his glass!
Also available on the Internet Archive…
https://archive.org/details/wings-silent-trimmed
Not sure what ‘trimmed’ means, since it’s as long as IMDB says it is.
This version lacks the three minute lesbian sex scene deleted by censors.
Yeah, there was the same issue with Hobson’s Choice
Here’s another classic tracking shot from Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, as he famously once said “a film set is the best model railway a boy could ever wish for”
Not on YT but well wrth checking out is Robert Altman’s fantastic one take ensemble shot of a movie studio at the very start of The Player.
An early adopter of Steadicam, Kubrick also did a few classic tracking shots in the corridors of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining
The most horrifying thing in The Shining is that carpet.
I doubt I was alone in thinking more bloody Macca, eh?
Ha!
The ‘impossible crane shot’ from Soy Cuba (1964)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7fSOuisDus
Magnifico. Viva Fidel!
’tis a pity they didn’t consult @fentonsteve about their choice of microphones though.
I was curious how the shot was achieved.
“ These shots were accomplished by the camera operator having the camera attached to his vest—like an early, crude version of a Steadicam—and the camera operator also wearing a vest with hooks on the back. An assembly line of technicians would hook and unhook the operator’s vest to various pulleys and cables that spanned floors and building roof tops.”
Much easier with a drone these days.
That is astonishing. New to me.
It’s quite amazing to have 8 different stories conveyed within 22 seconds
(I thought it was a McCartney clip as well)
A remarkable clip. Here’s a short doc about how they made Wings.
A tracking shot that I really Iike from the far off olden days of cinema that never seems to get much mention is at the end of Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing:
https://youtu.be/1mr8Hy6tLYk
Kenny! Dear, dear Kenny.
For another remarkable shot, at a faster pace, there is the window jump in The Bourne Ultimatum, where the camera tracks Jason Bourne. How to film Matt Damon/a stuntman leaping through a window? Get the camera operator to do the same stunt, right behind him.
I can’t help thinking that when this was first discussed, the camera wiz must have said, “You want me to do WHAT?”
Nothing is going to top Soy Cuba’s mega shot, but this sequence from ‘Children Of Men’ is sensational cinematography. Warning: it is violent.
That whole movie is constructed around a series of outstanding long takes; it’s one of my favourite films of all time ever.
A few years ago now, my eldest daughter watched my DVD of it & a few weeks later was again looking for something to watch. I asked what sort of thing she fancied & she said ‘ something like Children Of Men’. I had to reply with a sigh that there’s almost *nothing* like Children Of Men.
Once it sunk in, it dawned on her that’s why she’d been so blown away by it.
Roma is perhaps the film pick from the golden age of Netflix when they had more money than they knew what to do with. Cuaron spent it on a host of tracking shots that border on the decadent including the opening shot of the household, the street scene when the family walk to the cinema and the slum scene when Cleo gets off the bus and walks through muddy wastes in search of her deserter boyfriend. In the last, purely for texture, a human cannon in the far distance fires a man into a net surrounded by a vast crowd.
Great choice, Moseley. A thoroughly remarkable film.
I was lucky enough to get a chance to see it in a cinema. Our film club were at short notice, given the option to screen it. We did not say no!
If ever there was a film that deserved to be shown on a big screen, Romas was it.
You won’t be surprised to hear I googled! I was well-rewarded!
An interview with the maestro.
An overview of his long-shots.
I actually love a great tracking shot. I didn’t really intend this to be a thread about tracking shots in general, but that’s all good – a couple I hadn’t heard of here! I don’t even mind when there’s obvious cgi used to hide the joins, like in 1917 (the movie).
One tracking shot I never hear mentioned, and is maybe a minor one (but it was unexpected and I enjoyed it) was the boxing match in Creed – best moment in the film:
And another great single long take fight scene is in Oldboy –
Because of Goodfellas this gets overlooked, but this is a masterful sequence from Raging Bull:
Wow, totally forgot about that. Will need to watch Raging Bull again. Haven’t seen it in about 20 years!
Another hypnotic piece of camera work. Ending shot in Antonioni’s The Passenger with Jack Nicholson