The Unhumbled Camera

There is an overt trend in contemporary cinematography these days that I find extremely unharmonious and incompatible with the goals of drama. Like the laziness attributed to the overuse of CGI, this trend has been made possible by the current technology we have at our disposal, but it also seems that, as this trend is rather widespread, that it must also be serving a social function. It is answering an audience’s desire for something.

I am talking about a very specific type of steadicam-assisted long shot. This particular steadicam shot is often characterized by the element of the camera tracking an individual figure, action, or focal point through varying and diverse locations without the use of cutting. In Location A, extras and other elements of the misé en scene exist in the world of Location A independent of the extras and elements in Location B. When the camera enters Location B, those extras and moving elements are already acting as intended, so as to create the illusion that the camera is stumbling onto new events that just so happen to be enfolding.

The broad concept of the long shot has an interesting history that has, apparently, been leading us to our current environment. Here is an extremely abbreviated history of that technique, the way I see that history as having set us up for disaster, and the possible hope I have that it can evolve into something interesting.

Since the 1968 film, I Am Cuba, was reissued in 1995, and was championed by the mainstream filmmakers, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, it has seen a new level of influence on the current landscape of film. I Am Cuba is a Soviet propaganda film, directed by Mikhail Kalatozov, that the government financed as a way to support the Cuban Revolution. It is now famous for two shots in the film, during which, the camera performs unthinkable movements in unbroken, long shots.

The more famous of the two, takes place at first on a rooftop. The camera explores Western-looking people having a hedonistic party as a jazz band plays exciting music. Then, without the use of cutting, the camera suddenly descends the side of the building. One can see that there is a swimming pool below, more western partiers on a mid-level balcony, and partiers at the level of the pool. Once the camera has hit pool-level, it tracks several alternating people until it gets to a woman leaning on the railing at the side of the building, apparently taking a break from the hedonism. She leaves the balcony and we start tracking back the way we came. The shot ends as the focus alternates onto a woman who enters the pool. The camera is submerged under water, and we can now see that there are even more westerners under the water too.

Since the 1995 rediscovery, this shot has been studied religiously by many people. It is notable as an example of an absolutely over-the-top, impressive shot, during which, one is constantly asking, “How did they do that?” With every movement, the shot prompts questions over how certain movements were technically achieved. During the shot, the audience is forced to reconsider their real location as the camera descends the building, in turn begging the question, is one camera man on the roof, passing the camera off to another person on a moving platform? Does that person pass the camera off to a person on the pool level? And finally, has the camera been in waterproof housing the entire time?

The shot is impressive in another way too. Such a long shot, that incorporates so many elements of mise en scene is, by its very nature, a feat in choreography. Not only are the camera movements and the focus pulling expertly choreographed, but the actors and extras must make their movements at the exact right time, so as to not be seen waiting around for their queue or to enter the frame too early and alter the shot’s intended progression. The flawless realization of a perfect camera choreography in addition to talent choreography is why this shot has become so famous and undeniably impressive.

One can also easily see the strength of I Am Cuba’s influence when watching Scorsese’s Goodfellas which would then influence Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights. There are also other notable points in history when the long shot has been further developed. Although the work of Tarkovsky and Antonioni is not nearly as unchained, freewheeling, or as traditionally exciting, they, in their slow way further canonized the use of the long take.

The next major contribution, however, would be Russian Ark in 2002. Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov, this ode to Russia’s long history was conceived as a film entirely made up of one long point-of-view shot, in which the camera, and the main character, wander around the Russian State Hermitage Museum and encounter figures from Russia’s past. The film is an hour and thirty-nine minutes long and its contains no hidden cuts.

Both I Am Cuba and Russian Ark are examples of films that use the unchained camera in similar and contemporary ways. Russian Ark is impressive on an even larger scale as the camera and talent choreography must continue, unbroken, for the entire run time of the film. In that sense, Russian Ark represents the natural evolution of the cinematic technique that was previously most fully realized in I Am Cuba.

Within this context, my argument, for why this has turned out to be such a negative and dysfunctional innovation, has to do with the rhetorical purpose for why such a technique is chosen in the first place. Since the release of Russian Ark, there have been several films that have misused this stylistic technique.

The American mainstream cinema has so far dabbled with incorporating the technique only at specific points during films, when they strive to achieve a hectic, immersive and often chaotic experience. Examples include the airplane crash scenes in Edge of Tomorrow and Knowing, and the opening scenes in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Spectre. Such scenes, in reality, often don’t last that long, but they directly posit the knowledge onto the audience, that the action is taking place in one long shot.

Popular examples abound more often in “prestige” films. Children of Men, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, was one of the films that initially brought the concept to the American mainstream. Cinematographer on this project, Emmanuel Lubezki, would later expand his use of the long shot in Cuaron’s Gravity and continue to incorporate it in his work with Alejandro González Iñárritu in the films, Birdman and The Revenant. Other recent films that prominently feature long shots with an unchained camera include The Tribe directed by Miroslav Slaboshpitsky, Victoria directed by Sebastian Schipper, and Son of Saul directed by László Nemes.

In all of these examples, perhaps besides Gravity and Son of Saul, the technique is used to the degradation of each film.

Although Children of Men, is by my own account, a good film, its use of the long shot is entirely misguided. Unfortunately, this one misguided attempted has spawned a generation of films that use the technique in similarly misguided ways. The famous shot of the ambush on the car is designed as a long shot in order to increase the realism and the immediacy of the scene. By not cutting, the audience is meant to experience the threat of ambush the same way the characters do, as one singularly experienced event. There is no cut, and therefor no escape, until the surviving characters have found safety. It is an extremely impressive shot.

There is however, a side effect, that completely invalidates what the filmmakers had accomplished in regards to enhancing the realism. Similar to the pool shot in I Am Cuba, the shot is extremely highly choreographed. It starts with two characters playing a game to pass the time and flirting with one another. The camera appears to be inside the car with the characters. Then, a flaming car rolls down a hill to block them in, initiating the ambush. Hundreds of extras swarm the car and bash in the windows as the car reverses. Two thugs on a motorcycle chase after the car and shoot the person in the passenger seat. The main character saves himself from being shot too, by kicking his door open which causes the motorcycle to crash. The surviving characters, and the camera continue their escape until they are stopped by the police. The driver and the camera man exit the car and the driver shoots the police men. The car drives away.

The single take aspect of the shot is successful at enhancing the dramatic tension of the scene. However, the viewer is constantly aware of how impressive the shot is. How is the camera moving around a compact sedan so freely? At points, it seems as if the physical location of the camera is now where a character’s head and body should be. There must be a rig on the outside of the car. How then, do we see the entirety of the car drive away at the end of the shot, evidently, with no rig attached? How could one choreograph so many extras to attack and then, in a new location, choreograph the actions of the police men?

When one is thinking of so many questions concerning the construction of this scene, one is absolutely not immersed within the film’s reality. In itself, this would not be a negative aspect, if not for the fact that the obvious motivation for the technique used, was to enhance the feeling of immersion.

The reason the same technique works without fault in I Am Cuba, is that that film exists as propaganda. The motivation to use the technique has nothing to do with immersion or realism, it instead exists to state with confidence, “Look at how impressive this film is. We as Soviets have accomplished the seemingly impossible, and we have accomplished it because we are Soviets”. It works in both the cases of Russian Ark and I Am Cuba, for this very reason. The motivation has nothing to do with masking the construction, rather is knowingly touts the complex construction.

It is easy to see, why Iñárritu, Lubezki, Slaboshpitsky, and Schipper, would make such a mistake. In each of their films, the technique is used with the hope of concealing the constructed element of cinema, and yet, that element is even more at the forefront of the audience’s mind as they watch these scenes.

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If we perceive the world as one unbroken shot, shouldn’t cinema strive to do the same? Wouldn’t that make films more exciting? More immersive? More representational of the human experience?

What these directors fail to realize, is that a film will never cease to be an artistic product. A piece of art will never, and should never be a mirror to reality, rather a product that can help one contextualize reality. This is not to say that films should never strive to be immersive. But it is when the audience is emotionally invested with a character or situation, that they become immersed in a film’s world.

Earlier, I ruled out Gravity and Son of Saul as exceptions that may have used the technique successfully to some degree. Gravity because it operates similarly to propaganda. The opening, 17 minute shot of Gravity appears to be very up front that the motivation to shoot that scene in such a way, was to create the shot as impressively as they could. Cuaron wanted to make a statement with that shot. He was going to change the game and use technology as it had never been used before. The shot makes no attempt to hide that fact.

Son of Saul is more complicated. Since we are in the middle of the era of the long-unchained-shot, we don’t yet have the luxury of hindsight to know if this is just a fad, or if we are, in fact, merely in the infantile stage. It is quite possible that the utilization of the technique will continue to evolve into something that will be in harmony with the motivation for said utilization. But right now, it is too early to tell.

Son of Saul represents, to me, possibly the first example of an evolutionary step. The long-unchained-shot is used extensively in this film, and it is often used as Lubezki might have done it… impressively. However, Nemes and his cinematographer, Mátyás Melis, made an extremely interesting choice that prompts the conclusion that they never meant Son of Saul to be immersive. Ninety percent of the film is comprised of close tracking shots of the main character. But two aspects of the cinematography work to assert that the film never strives to be anything but a product of artistic rhetorical moves. The film is shown with a 1.37 :1 aspect ratio. The effect of this is that it creates a narrower focus on the main character, who often takes up a large percentage of the screen. With less background visible, we focus more on the human subject.

But the filmmakers went even further to bring attention to the idea that the audience should focus exclusively on the main character. Most of the film is shot in extremely shallow focus. What little background information there is, is almost always seen in blurry blobs of color compared to the crispness of the man in the foreground. The shallow focus is used so extensively that it functions as a gimmick that, in part, defines the film.

This is an extremely interesting decision because the camera movement is very Lubezki. There is always highly choreographed and important information happening in the background of scenes that are shot in long takes which change locations. Why then, did the filmmaker chose to shoot the film in such a way that does not, in any way, reflect how humans actually see the world?

In my opinion, Son of Saul has come the closest to using the contemporary conception of the long-unchained-shot successfully. The filmmakers never once stop reminding you that you are witnessing a construction of a time and place, a reenactment of events. This both serves an ethical function, and allows them to realize the tension that Lubezki achieves, without the dissonance associated with Lubezki’s motivation.

It remains, however, imperfect, although a big step forward. There are points in the film, when one feels that confusion of, “Does he want me to be immersed or impressed? But despite not fully letting go of the temptation to impress, Son of Saul works to throw a wrench into the current system and is, in effect, the best example of a film with long steadicam shots since Bela Tarr's work in the 1990s.

I can only hope that there are more directors and cinematographers who, if they feel the need to contribute to this trend, at least attempt to innovate as I see Son of Saul doing. I find it truly maddening to watch films like Victoria, Birdman, and The Tribe and see the virtues of good shot composition thrown out the window just because it’s cool, “immersive”, and impressive to shoot something a certain way these days. I do not want all films to shoot everything in shallow focus, or even demand that they call attention to their construction. But I ask that filmmakers continue to explore the ways technology can be used to tell stories and to understand that just because it can be done, doesn’t mean it will work in the context of their film.