Putting aside the many shots edited in a way to make it look like a long take, the movie is really two long shots. The second shot starts when it turns nighttime. I don't know why people keep saying it's a series of edited shots to make it look like one long shot when it's really two long shots.
share"Although the film looks like an uninterrupted shot, with only one obvious cut, it actually contains dozens of cuts “The shots lasted anywhere from 39 seconds to six minutes” he said."
shareThis needs to get more attention. The movie starts in daylight, ends in daylight, with night scenes in between. But it's only two hours long, and the setting is not above the Arctic Circle. That math does not add up to “continuous”, not even in simulated form.
shareI think a lot of people know that there are little edits. I found it fun to try and guess where they were. They'd go inside a bunker and the screen would be bathed in shadows and darkness for a second and I'd think, "Probably cut right there." You are right, though: there is an obvious "second act," after the hard blackout.
First, people probably say "one shot," because they either don't realize that there are cuts (they are hidden really well) or because they don't want to say, "made to look as though it is one shot," every time they're talking about the film.
But that still leaves us with the obvious second shot and why people would still say "it looks like one shot," even if they know there are cuts. I think people probably are recognizing that we get a continuous narrative that is mostly in real time. It starts in early evening and goes to night. Then we get the blackout, after which we have early morning, slowly brightening, for the rest of the film. The only speed-up is during that blackout.
(MINOR SPOILERS BELOW)
Most pertinent to this is that the film is from one soldier's "viewpoint," and when he is unconscious during the blackout part, we're still following his viewpoint, we're just "blacked out" with him. So he falls unconscious and we experience his lack of awareness with him. Time passes, but from the soldier's perspective - and from ours - it's a brief moment or two of darkness. Or, speaking more to the perception of "this is one-shot," the fact that the soldier stops seeing the world around him and is in darkness, maintains the verisimilitude of the "one-shot" from his perspective. Our perception is his perception, so it appears to a viewer that the narrative, the perspective, and the shot are all continuous.
Yeah, that's probably why they wanted to black it out. They wanted us to be in his POV. The funny thing is that if they wanted to have that whole "one shot effect" narrative, they easily could have done it. All the needed to go was make the whole screen blurry and slowly come into focus where we also subtly see the lighting change.
shareI feel like they accomplished what they wanted, though, since the main character's "POV" is unbroken for the whole film, and I'd rather they tell the story in the best way possible (blacking out with him) than make everything specifically about "one shot".
shareBecause most movies jump around every few seconds. Tracking the action for an hour at a time is impressive.
shareKinda. I've seen a lot of live theatre. While I recognize that the camera adds an element to filming that makes one-take/shot harder, seeing people perform for an unbroken hour is a lot less unique an experience after you watch Macbeth.
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