Time and space in staging "Oners"
via Goodfellas, Children of Men, and The Adventures of Tintin
How does working in real-time change the way scenes are staged?
“Oners” - a shot that is designed to look like a long, uninterrupted continuous take - hold a certain fascination. Part of it is the wow factor: “How did they shoot this?!”. Part of it is the hypnotic element, “I cannot avert my gaze!”. Part of it is the immediacy and intensity that comes from playing a scene in real-time.1
We tackled down the latter in our podcast, Draft Zero Episode 101, by looking at how screenwriters create that same feeling of immediacy on the page. We broke down one-shot scenes from the scripts of Goodfellas (1990), Children of Men (2006) and The Adventures of Tintin (2011).
In comparing the scripts from those scenes with the actual shots, we noticed some differences. Differences that to us seem to illuminate one of the key challenges when shooting oners: how you manage time and space when you’re working in “real time”. A cut can take us from a wide shot to a closeup in 1/24th of a second2. But the oner takes that tool away. The choreography of action and camera has make rhythmic and spatial sense.
To make this clearer, we’ve put the one-shots alongside their script pages; and we’ve taken Meegan May’s reading of the script and edited that narration to match the onscreen action. It helps highlight what has changed from script-to-screen.
Now, let’s be real. We are reverse engineer from the final shot. So any specifics are speculation. This is more about demonstrating the broader considerations.
GOODFELLAS
“The Copa Shot”. The timing of a shot like this is very dependent on the location. After all, that’s one of the reasons to shoot it as a oner: we get to feel the geography. But that also means you’re dependent on the geography of the location, and that can create “holes” that need to be filled with business (both action and dialogue) to help time the camerawork and make it interesting.
Larry McConkey, the Steadicam operator:
noticed a problem straight away when Henry and Karen descend the stairs after entering the club’s back door. The camera would be too close to the tops of their heads, which “wasn’t photogenic”, so he paused at moments to create a wider shot but needed Liotta to stall before he then rounded the corner into the club’s corridors so he could catch up and get closer again. The actor decided he would tip the doorman to give McConkey that time, and offered up similarly creative solutions for other points in the take3
You can see that approach throughout the shot. Henry interacts with EVERYONE. The couple making out in the corner, with Henry joking with them: “every time you two!”. The near collision in the kitchen. It works because it comes from character. He’s gregarious. But it also fills the space, motivates movement, and shows the actors faces.
The real kicker is when you learn that Henry and Karen do a “double switcheroo around” the kitchen: exiting through the same doors they entered! Scorsese had originally only planned to for Henry to lead Karen past the kitchen, but Michael Ballhaus (the DoP) wanted them to walk through it because it was going to make it even more kinetic and offer some visual contrast.
This is reminiscent of another great oner in Basic Instinct. But we’ll cover that in another substack.
CHILDREN OF MEN
Children of Men has many great oners, born of a desire from DoP, Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC and Director Alfonso Cuarón to avoid traditional coverage. As Lubezki says:
“We decided to have every shot be a shot in itself and avoid the A-B-A-B of coverage, even though we couldn’t get away from doing it sometimes. The more I work this way, the more I realize that conventional coverage is what makes most movies feel the same. You go to see a comedy, a drama, or a horror movie, and they all somehow feel the same. It’s as if the cinematic language hasn’t really evolved that much. Many films just cover the dialogue without really exploring the visual dimension.”4
In this six-minute scene, where our anti-heroes are attacked by the Zeds, the filmmakers had to create a pretty elaborate rig to get what they wanted.
From a staging perspective, the biggest difference between the script and actual scene is timing. The real-time nature of scene requires action to happen concurrently — rather than in A-B-A-B coverage — or in a way that the linear nature of a script cannot reflect.
The filmmakers have also locked the camera to the car, so our experience is with the characters. This isn’t one of those whooshy-whoosh drone-style oners that have become more fashionable. And it’s far more immersive as a result.
Dialogue isn’t emphasised. Characters aren’t singled out when they talk. That’s too slow. Instead, the overlapping dialogue adds to the panic. We only need impressions.
The flaming-car rolling down the hill happens fast. It’s our reference point for time. So the scripted business around Luke accelerating the Multipla doesn’t make sense. Nor would the car sitting silence after they come to a stop. Instead, in the actual scene, Luke goes into reverse immediately.
The staging of the motorcycle is simplified compared to the script. It has to be. They’re travelling fast and trying to show (as per script):
The Zed on the back looks in the car, his eyes visible for an instant through his black mask.
wound’t work in the style of oner they’re doing here.
Lastly, the shooting of the cops is way more perfunctory on screen than in the script. It’s bang bang bang and all over. Again, that feels like a change that has happened in blocking. Draw a gun that close, you better shoot fast.
For more on the making of this scene check out 👇5
THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN
The Adventures of Tintin also has to tackle concurrency in staging its action. However, unlike Children of Men, the camera is decoupled from the heroes. It is able to swoop from one block of action to another. Indeed, part of the fun of this sequence is how it is able to seamlessly transition from one bit to another — and really this scene is really a series of fun an escalating bits/gags stitched together.
Like in GOODFELLAS, it finds moments for the characters to stop or slow down, so the camera can reposition. Watch how the camera pivots around the motorcycle when it breaks in front of the house.
Like in CHILDREN OF MEN, the dialogue is given less importance. Sure, there is talking - but it primarily to the sense of the urgency but it’s never about the what the characters are saying.
Most of the action is staged with the characters heading towards camera or away from camera. Rarely is it staged in profile. Part of the push-pull rhythm of the scene comes the camera having to alter direction from leading the characters to following them, or vice versa. It makes it visually very dynamic.
Care to share any thoughts you may have on these or other oners? Leave a comment!
IMDB
To be fair, not all oners play out in real-time. Think of the climatic hallway fight in Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3. They shot it “at 120 fps, with the idea being that action could then be ramped up or slowed down for key moments in the oner” (read more on the making of at Before and Afters VFX)
Because “film cuts… exploit the ways in which our visual systems evolved to work in the real world” As Jeffrey Zacks explains in his excellent article Strange Continuity.
From Hannah Flight — Goodfellas at 30: The making of one of film’s greatest shots
From American Cinematographer: Children of Men: Humanity’s Last Hope