Long Take Quotes

The film camera's ability to physically move through space, not zoom through space - every time we have a video camera the movement is through zoom; every time we have a film camera it is a physical movement.

In a normal movie, the director controls what you look at. The shots don't last very long because you're getting the audience to look at specific things. An IMAX shot, on the other hand, can be twenty or thirty seconds long.

'Bruce Lee' is the fastest film in my career. But the quality is also very high. The last song was shot continuously for 24 hours. We worked like robots for that song, but the quality is outstanding.

If I can play a scene in a master shot, I always prefer it. And the actors always prefer it. It's fun to look at on the screen, the actors get a chance to sink their teeth into something substantial, and it's economically helpful.

It's just really, really beautiful. Each scene is one long 15 minute take without cutting. My scene is with Robin Wright-Penn so I'm pretty excited about that.

There's a fashion for a macho style of filmmaking. How long can your longest take be? And shooting things in one shot. For me, if you can sort of disappear and make people feel that they are there, that involves massive amounts of work.

You can have a movie with hardly any cuts, or very few cuts, that is fascinating, you can't take your eyes away from it... Look at some of the long takes in Citizen Kane.

What's so amazing about 'All in the Family' is sometimes an entire act was one camera shot. It was all about characters.

A seven-minute take is almost like theater.

A long-playing full shot is what always separates the men from the boys. Anybody can make movies with a pair of scissors and a two-inch lens.

No question that 'Birdman' is a breathtaking technical achievement, not a stunt. Shot in 30 days after a long rehearsal period, with the actors' and the camera's movements calibrated to the inch and the millisecond so the action flows smoothly, the picture has the jagged energy of a long guerrilla raid choreographed by Bob Fosse.

I did a lot of commercials early on, and I remember the first commercial I ever got was for a product called Funyuns. I had to eat these chips for, like, 12 hours straight.

On 'Y Tu Mama Tambien,' we started exploring shots that are longer, where the camera is moving around the actors, and there are no cuts, and you feel like you're there.

The biggest thing that I came across, right off the bat, was that you can't shoot this like a regular movie with multiple takes. You have to, because it's such a protracted process, break it down to the frame and pretty much get one shot.

With 'Call Me by Your Name,' they locked off the camera and let scenes play out in long, wide shots to make them feel almost voyeuristic.

I like finding a great shot and then just staying with it for a long time, not trying to pump things up with some kind of artificial energy by cutting.

When you cut from a long shot to a close shot, you're doing it for a reason, or if you let something stay in long shot for a long take. On the short films, I was teaching myself how to express something personal cinematically, how to use the language of film the best I could.

I don't like it when a movie becomes a series of 'tour de force' shots, and in a way, I was disappointed that with 'Children of Men,' people noticed that the car scene was one shot with no cuts. If people notice that, it's like they're noticing my trick, you know what I mean? I'm doing it so people will get immersed in the movie, not to show off.

It's pretty easy in theatre. The comedy's either physical or verbal, and you're looking at the whole frame at once. But TV executives want close-ups. I keep telling them to look at Preston Sturges' movies. He'll do a whole scene without a cut in it, and it's a riot.

I wish I was sort of someone like Woody Allen who can stage everything in one long master shot, no coverage; just, you know, that's it.

I think my strength is to do a take all the way through. I am definitely not someone who can do a sprint. Maybe I am not that smart, but it takes me a while to find the moment, and I like to be pushed toward it.

Having the kind of infinite loop of what a digital stream is - you can shoot for a long time without cutting - allows me to sometimes perform really exciting things.