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Cuaron begins the shot with a close-up single on Theo (Clive Owen),
who is sleeping against the window. He pulls out to a wide to reveal
the others in the car. This is referred to as slow disclosure, the revealing
of the full context of a situation to the audience.
2. In this wide frame, dialog exposition reveals a previous relationship
between Theo and Julian (Julianne Moore); he questions the girl
theyre transporting about what shes done, why shes special. Theres a
cynicism in his questions: hes not an activist anymore; hes part of the
system now.
Theo is going out of his way to separate himself from them: hes not
like them anymore.
3. The third beat begins with a medium close-up of Theo and Julian
together. Visually, they are not separate, but equal, subtext that is
furthermore strengthened with the use of a prop: the ping-pong ball.
Not only is he her equal, he is the only one who can perform this trick
with her. Cuaron isolates them in this frame; its as though theyre the
only ones in the car, oblivious to those around them or the passing
trees outside.
4. As Theo and Julian mime a kiss, the girl comments on it,
disapprovingly, and the camera moves toward hera move motivated
by Theos look, and subsequently, the spitting of the ball at her.
5. The camera turns 180 degrees, looking through the windshield as a
burning car rolls from the woods into the street, obstructing the
vehicles path.
6. The camera begins a 360 move, first framing the driverwho hasnt
been featured much in the scene and then framing everyone else in
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car, and in noticeably tighter shots than before. Initially, the frame was
looser, the feeling in the car more casual; however, as the urgency of
the circumstances increases, so does the tightness of the shots.
The camera begins to go in reversein fact, the entire vehicle and
camera rig goes in reversethus visually conveying a literal turn of
events.
They were moving forward with their mission, until an obstacle
occurred, which has now set them moving backwards. It is a major
turning point in the scene, and a major turning point for the camera.
Whereas before, the characters were focused on themselves, looking at
each other inside the car, now they become completely focused on
whats happening outside.
The viewer is as well. We are literally put in the middle of it all; we feel
just as vulnerable as they do. Just as the characters world is spinning
out of control, the camera is, and thats how were forced to see it.
7. The camera once again stops, framing up the windshield.
Moments before, Cuaron depicted a burning car in the distance, but
now it is his characters windshield that is on fire. The characters go
from observing a burning car to being the burning car.
As the beats progress, the drama builds and the stakes continue to
increase.
8. The camera then begins to follow the movement of the attacking
motorcyclist, i.e. the threat to the safety of the people inside the car.
The camera is right next to Julian as she gets shot, the blood
splattering onto the glass of the lens.
9. Immediately after the gunshot, the camera whips back to film the
reactions of the people in the backseat, settling on Theo as he attempts
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Theo (Clive Owen) escorts Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) and her baby in a
riveting scene during Children of Men.
Even if you already have plenty of respect for Clive Owen, this will
make you believe in his abilities even more. His performance, along
with an ensemble cast of Claire-Hope Ashitey as Kee, Michael Caine,
Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Huston, and Pam Ferris, fills
in as well with the same exquisite excellence that Cuar3n
implements. You'll quickly fall in love with many of the characters and
begin to care deeply for them; this is all part of the great plan that
Cuar3n has laid out to draw you even deeper into the film.
Is the film a success? Undoubtedly yes - but there is not a clear
message for audiences to take with them. Although the journey is long
and engulfing, the end just floats off quietly into the fog, without a
concrete conclusion or message. After becoming engrossed in its
identifiable, gripping themes of infertility, life, and coexisting as a
human race, I expected Children of Men to be more conclusive in its
conclusion. This ending is the only weak point, if I can call it that, a very
fine crack on an enormous marble masterpiece that can easily be
overlooked.
Last Word:
This film is a masterpiece, a visually innovative and beatuiful creation.
It's a must-see, one of the best films of 2006 (and now early 2007).
Cuaron and Owen together deliver a futuristic action sci-fi with bits of
drama, bits of tragedy, and a huge heaping of excellence that you will
not soon forget.
Thanks, Stina
The reason why cinematographers/ directors/ editors will use long
takes is to put the audience into the actual action in the film and make
them a character in the story so that they can get emotions easier and
have the audience react in a certain way.
Placing the camera right behind the driver's seat in the car, as you
mentioned, makes the viewer feel like they are actually in the car with
everyone experiencing everything that is happening.
I haven't watched the movie in a long time so I can't really think of
anything else right now.
I would totally cover the 6 minute scene at the end where the camera
is in the streets and it goes into the bus, get's blood on the lens and
then it goes into a building (notice how the blood dissapears).
That scene kept me on the edge of my seat. It was very reminiscent of
saving private ryan. I was in the movie. I had blood on my face running
through the streets.
This was a beautiful movie.
Also, when the woman who takes care of the lady having the baby
get's taken off the bus, there is a narrative happening outside the
windows of the bus. You see her get a black bag placed on her head,
and as the bus takes off, you see the progression of what is going to
happen to her. That took me a few viewings to catch, but it was great
storytelling.
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happen to her. That took me a few viewings to catch, but it was great
storytelling.
Alfonso Cuaron and Emmanuel Lubezki are notorious for telling stories
within stories. If you watch Y Tu Mama Tambien, there are two stories
going on. The one the audience paid to see, and the one that sneaks its
way into every frame. It's so delicate, and yet so powerful.
The most f...ing great shot in the movie is what he shot inside a car
with a remote head,i mean the scene where Juluana Moore`character
was killed.Amazing prep and shot!!!!
The Director wants the audience to feel the tension in the story- all
these characters have their lives threatened and could be killed at any
moment of this scene. By using the "One Long Take" placing the
audience inside the car, the Director was able to draw that feeling of
helplessness from the audience. You cannot get away from that action.
You are not driving the car to drive whichever way you want, you are
stuck as the passenger.
If there were a lot of cuts in this scene, you wouldn't get the same
feeling from the audience.
If the camera's "One Long Take" was outside the car, for example- in
War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg's)- in the car scene on the
highway, the camera is outside the car for the most part- The audience
feels the "action" of the scene, but they don't feel the "tension" that
the characters feel like they do in Children of Man.
Posted 12 December 2008 - 03:35 AM
i would break it down. Think of how/what that scene did to pioneer the
art of cinematography. Firstly, examine the camera as a character and
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how it puts us IN the car rather than watching the action from multiple
angles. Next, I would talk about the logistics of it, the car mods, the
prep, the choreography, basically how it all went down and how
something like it has never been done before. Last, I would touch on
the effects it had on the cinematography community, 2 years later and
it's still being discussed, he was nominated for an Academy Award in
addition to winning many other awards, and talk about how it raised
the benchmark of what can and can not be done with a car scene.
This post will contain spoilers for the mentioned movie and for the
PS3 video game The Last of Us and maybe Metal Gear Solid 4.
I just watched the film and I think it's great, but let's put that aside for
the moment.
I noticed it shared many themes and ideas with The Last of Us; which, I
quickly realised, borrowed a lot from the film.
Then I noticed it was more than just themes, or similarity to a specific
game -- the entire film felt like a cinematic video game. It used
techniques that later became common in games like Metal Gear Solid
4, Modern Warfare, and Half Life series (which preceded the film).
The film rapidly switched locations, rarely backtracking (Jasper's hut
was the only place visited twice IIRC), similar to how games switch
levels/areas. Camera almost never left Theon's side.
Events were being mentioned by a quick passing shots over
background newspapers.
Many scenes a monorail style field trip to glance over the world and
create the setting, and hint on larger events.
They even have a blood stained camera, which is a huge trope for
action games today, as the classic HP bar/ number indicator faded out.
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That 3rd act ~7 minute long track one shot, while being very video
game-ish on its own, is very similar to the near final scenes in Metal
Gear Solid 4 and The Last of Us.
I feel that the nature of this film made it very influential to how and
where modern gaming want to be.
I think you're right that Children of Men is an influence on video
games, as it's cited as an influence on lots of stuff. It might be better
understood as something that came along in tandem to modern
shooters too, though, since just as some movies have started to look
like video games those video games are also going for a more
cinematic experience instead of something purely game-like. You can
look further back to movies like Ghost in The Shell and Saving Private
Ryan that were big influences on the current generation of shooters
and potentially Children of Men as well.
I agree, you definitely can't discount the effect that Saving Private Ryan
(and Spielberg) had directly on the game industry at the time,
especially through the Medal of Honor series, which had a big
influence on CoD in creating a sense of immersion and scale that's
become a necessity in big-buget games these days
It may be a coincidence but many believe Children of Men owes a lot
to Half-Life 2 (2004). Both have similar visions of the future/
environments, and more notably, they both treat their audience the
same. I feel like there has to be a term, or at least should be, that sums
up this kind of storytelling; the viewer/player is thrown into the world
with very little back story to this world, and throughout the film the
audience is treated like someone who has already lived through the
past 20 years of the film/game's history. With a keen eye, the audience
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will discover that the background acts as its own character, often telling
you more than what is spoken through the dialog. Graffiti and
newspaper clippings play are large part of the story telling in both.
But despite the similarities, I don't think Children of Men really
influenced gaming too much. And I say this because Children of Men
has really fallen off the radar since it was released (I can only hope it
gets rediscovered), but Half-Life 2 is so well renowned within the
gaming community to this very day. It tops gaming lists to this very
day. Developers openly admit the influence Half-Life 2 and the rest of
the series had on them. You just don't hear that too much about COM.
Ghost in the Shell did a lot of that first, and there may be antecedents
even before that that I don't know of. (Though Blade Runner is a safe
bet.) It's too bad The Matrix didn't copy the Background is a Character
thing, if they had, I would probably consider it a real masterpiece. (Like
I do Ghost in the Shell, Half Life 2, and Children of Men.)
I dont think Children of Men has been forgotten , it was treated as
underrated even back when it came out. It's not all that old, the people
who made it are still making successful new movies, and it's definitely
mentioned when appropriate, like when Dawn of the Planet of the
Apes was cribbing from it.
I can see how a rigidly linear movie could be inspired by Half Life's
imagery but that was possible before...are we going to say Half Life
inspired Birdman? :)
I agree that Half Life 2 was a major influence on the film, I mentioned
it by passing (on gaming as well, it was a story telling pioneer in the
medium).
However, I don't think the fact that Children of Men wasn't a major hit
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has any affect on his implied influence. By the end of the day, game
developers tend to love/appreciate cinema as a sister medium that
share story telling elements.
Kojima (who is a huge cinephile) calls Children of Men one of his
favourite films. I think it influenced 2008's Metal Gear Solid 4 series
transition from quirky take on James Bond to the sci-fi, cynical,world
on the edge setting. You can see influence in the opening credits.
The microwave scene is similar to the films ending by trying to parallel
a personal struggle to a grand scale war.
The game even used television as a major setting building tool.
2013's The Last of Us, doesn't try to hide how much it taken from
Children of Men, it basically tells the same story with a different
apocalypse trigger, here's the opening credit.
I don't understand how The Last of Us's opening credits implies that it
copied a lot from Children of Men. It seems more similar to the Dawn
of the Dead reboot's opening credits.Link. Almost every zombie movie/
game starts out that way. And, they are vastly different stories. I think
Children of Men focuses on the dystopian future and the totalitarian
government ruling over them while TLOU is more about the complete
desertion of the world around them. The post-apocolyptic results of the
big city environments when everyone disappears. The every-man-forhimself, survivor versus survivor theme. Yes, I cannot deny the
similarities in Kee and Ellie being the possible cures in these worlds,
but then again, these are recurring themes in many stories such as
these. One character is immune to whatever is affecting everyone else
and could be a possible fix to the worlds problems. Nothing new in
storytelling. Both of these stories are standalone in my book. Yes, I
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think CoM is a major influence to many but they are more different
than they are similar. TLOU is a masterpiece in videogame storytelling
and a major leap in bridging a gap between games and film. Children
of Men is one of my favorite movie and The Last of Us IS my favorite
videogame of all-time.
An influence is not a copy.
They nearly share a synopsis:
A middle aged man who lost his child is being handled by his, once
love interest, a mission to deliver a young women who may carry the
solution to the upcoming end of humanity, into safe hands, away from
the government.
They play a bit with it, the freedom fighters/terrorist group turn their
coat on our heroes in different acts, and the ending is being taken to a
different direction (as TLoU united The Fishes and The Humanity Project
into The Fireflies; and offered independent settlements as an
alternative).
Frankly, I think The Last of Us had the better ending.
This Interview with the creative minds behind the game clearly states
Children of Men (and No Country for Old Men, for that matter) as direct
influence
...both treat their audience the same. I feel like there has to be a term,
or at least should be, that sums up this kind of storytelling; the viewer/
player is thrown into the world with very little back story to this world,
and throughout the film the audience is treated like someone who has
already lived through the past 20 years of the film/game's history.
I'm not sure if this is the actual term you're looking for, but what I
think you're describing in general, is the distinction between
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of those whom I've conversed with that do not enjoy it as I spend most
of my time arguing for it to them. I see no fault in this film at all. It's
very high on my list. A desert island film if you will.
I believe that Children of Men will in hindsight be considered one of
the first great films of the 21st century. It's cinematography and
production design are firmly footed in the 'aughts' and it's story line
asks important questions of a century and millennium marked with
9/11 as it's starting bell.
Had this been a video game, with the same cast, plot, direction, tone
and todays ability to capture performances? I would most assuredly
play that game.
Would you play it?
Much maligned? On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 93% rating from critics
and 83% from the audience. I know the audience part is probably
biased, but even my dad, who is definitely a casual viewer, enjoyed the
movie. Even he was wowed by the traits already mentioned in this
thread, such as the long tracking shots and intriguing story line.
I can't speak for the other poster but I've had plenty of debates with
those who did not see the film's merits. I'm sure it's a minority of
viewers, but they are quite vocal, and can be quite harsh.
I still greatly enjoy the film so I'm certainly not in any sort of hating
camp, but the film is not at all subtle, especially when it comes to some
pretty heavy handed religious allegory (even with Cuaron toning down
the themes from the source material). Being really picky, some of the
plot devices and characters feel somewhat forced and poorly
developed (it's been a long time since I've seen the film, but new age
lady instantly comes to mind), and some of the impressive technical
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shots actually took me out of the film since you were so busy trying to
figure out how they filmed it. Personally, what I love about the movie is
the immersive atmosphere it so perfectly creates through some of the
best production design (and sound design!!) out there. It's all of the
little background details that make it a compelling film, not so much
the central story/writing).
Setting all that aside, I think there is a really strong case to be made for
transceiverfreq's argument and it will certainly be a film remembered,
loved, and studied (and contested) years down the line.
As mentioned elsewhere here in the thread, Theo's lack of character
development, seems to be a hinge upon which those arguments hang
but that's not really the films fault.
I think perception of Theo's supposed lack of development is a side
effect of his necessity as, for several reasons, but mainly as our entry
point as the viewer. This also happens to be, I think, where the real
correlation between Children of Men and video games comes into
play. Next to that, every act plays like a mission.
It's one of the best films I've ever seen. I watch it so rarely as the
weight of it is so affecting.
While I have indeed heard similar complaints about Theo and the
religious allegory, I think most of the vocal detractors are those who
just couldn't wrap their head around the plot. I've spent a ridiculous
amount of time trying to explain the motivation of the Fishes,
something that to me is so clearly spelled out in the film, so you can
imagine the difficulty one might find themselves in when trying to
explain the things told through the background.
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Then of course, there are those who just can't get over the fact that the
film doesn't even try to explain what caused infertility, which to me is
like asking why the birds are attacking in The Birds.
I know an English major who complained about Theo's lack of
character development. I made no comment. That English Major did
not understand this film.
Just to add a few things (I hope this doesn't sound like I'm trying to
shoot you down
The film rapidly switched locations, rarely backtracking
Is this a real original trait? I can think of many films that do this. James
Bond films for one. They even have a blood stained camera
The bloodstained camera was actually unintentional, but Cuaron chose
to leave it in.
That 3rd act ~7 minute long track one shot
The long shot is a Cuaron hallmark.
I'm well aware of your points and you are correct. None of my claims
are very impressive on their own, but as a whole they paint a very clear
picture, in my opinion.
Part of the reason I didn't really like CoM was because it because it had
a video game vibe about it all (I watched it quite recently though, so
this may well have had some kind of effect on the next-gen industry).
Thought it was OK but a little too visual and gimmicky.
One of those scenes with Clive Owen hiding around behind the cars
was like something out of Watch Dogs.
I think to say Children of Men is like a video game is to not give
enough credit to the inherently cinematic nature of long takes. I'm
sure a lot of video games have taken inspiration from the movie, but I
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think that's because games are rapidly becoming more and more
cinematic, not the other way around.
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camera strays forward to view a severely injured victim stagger into the
street holding her maimed arm, helpless. Cut to black.
The sequence has been admired for its technical virtuosity, but my
immediate interest lies in the way that the seemingly innocent act of
viewing images suddenly culminates in a deadly explosion, killing
nearly all of the spectators in the caf. Rather than neutrally showing
forms of violence such as wars, rioting, and natural catastrophes,
Cuarn implicates modern visual techniques for their capacity to inflict
violence in themselves. In this shocking sequence, Cuarn elevates the
age-old problem of attention to images and the related choices we
make aboutwhat we see, who we see, and how we see into a political,
life-and-death issue, entangled in the larger, abstract processes and
effects of globalization. Significantly, not only does the news story
about Baby Diego refer to an event outside the immediate narrative
space, but the emotional response to the caf bombing is not
registered by the central character, as we might expect it to be; instead,
we see Theo unfazed and back at work, watching his co-workers grieve
for Diego, showing little concern for what just happened.
In a future world where society itself seems to have forgotten how to
see, Cuarn provides the audience with a restless camera, a set of eyes
that provides no explicit judgments on the world at large, but that only
persistently investigates the fragments, the dead, the poor, and the
lost stories that seem impossible to fit within the space of the larger
narrative. From the films early moments to the somber finale, the
unusual camerawork exists in uneasy tension with the protocols of
classical narrative space, opening up questions around reflexivity,
visibility, and filmic storytelling, while revealing the hierarchy of
character (and the accompanying social values) that exist in classical
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characters shows how in the realist text, an elitist character trait tends
to be figured as a negative, rather than positive, value.
The vertical relationship afforded by the apartment therefore provides
a visual clarity that is ultimately illusory upon further inspection. As
Theo and Nigel drink wine beside the wall-sized dining room windows,
we cannot help but feel cheated if we, too, gaze outside, as they do:
the world below appears in a kind of impenetrable fog. Only the hazy
skyline and some architectural flourishes of the Ark of the Arts facility
are visible from this high position, along with significantly a
massive, floating piggy bank, surely a piece of art owned by the facility
and Cuarns own allusion to the broken dreams of Pink Floyd. Nigels
anti-social elitism corresponds with Theos tendency to turn away
whenever foreign character-spaces filter into his own; through this
scene, Theo becomes unreliable or un-singular by association with
Nigel, in whom he shares significant traits.
This rich, but empty, composition suggests that the type of vision
afforded by such social power is, in the end, only self-referential to that
power. In other words, the window is less a window than a mirror
through which Nigel can have reflected back at himself the referents of
status and influence: financial wealth, signified in the ever-present
floating piggy bank; and social stratification, implied in the
impossibility of the gazer to ever literally see what is below. What
supports this privileged vantage point is the multitude of characterspaces, the brutal sociopolitical realities on which the films mobile
camera focuses its gaze throughout. It is this mode of stasis, this vision
of literal unseeing, embodied in the static facility, that the film
repeatedly attacks by various acts of perceptual violence, inflicted on
both the characters and the films own spectator.
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Endnotes
1. See: Slavoj iek, Children of Men: Comments by Slavoj
iek.http://www.childrenofmen.net; Kirk Boyle, Children of Men and
I Am Legend: the disaster-capitalism complex hits Hollywood. Jump
Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media 51 (2009). 13 Nov. 2009http://
www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/ChildrenofMenLegend/ text.html;
Terryl Bacon, and Govinda Dickman. Whos the Daddy?: The
Aesthetics and Politics of Representation in Alfonso Cuarns
Adaptation of P.D. Jamess Children of Men. Carroll, Rachel ed.
Adaptation in Contemporary Culture: Textual Infidelities. London,
Continuum, 2009.
2. In the supplementary material of the Children DVD, iek borrows
the psychoanalytic term anamorphosis to characterize Cuarns
attention to objects in the foreground as well as in the background of
the diegetic space. For iek, such an anamorphic technique is a
suitable means for representing the Real of unrepresentable
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let's just try to go to the edge of the abyss, because that's where the
best images are.' Once he said that and allowed me that freedom to
fail, I was free of all those rules and regulations that were imposed by
going to film school and reading all those manuals."
Children of Men
And here we come to Lubezki's most famous work, a virtuoso take from
Cuarn's dystopian classicChildren of Men, where a car containing
Clive Owen and Julianne Moore is attacked, the entire siege taking
place in one single shot. "On Y Tu Mam Tambin, 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," said Lubezki.
"When Alfonso started talking to me about the scene in Children of
Men, he said, 'I would love to do it in one shot, and I have an idea:
Why don't we put the car on a stage and surround it with a green
screen?' Basically, to shoot it as a visual effect. For probably a week, I
was thinking that way, until I realized it was absolutely the wrong way
to do it. The rest of the movie was going to have a very naturalistic,
almost documentary-like feel to it, and maybe the best way to shoot it
was to really be in the car with the actors."
In order to pull off the scene, then, Cuarn and Lubezki jerry-rigged
the car so that some of the seats would rotate in and out, seamlessly
allowing the camera (operated from the roof of the vehicle) to go
wherever it needed to. But make no mistake, that car was really
moving, and the shoot was dangerous and unprecedented. "It was
very, very scary," admitted Lubezki. "At that time, we didn't have much
support for doing those very long scenes, because the other people
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things look bigger than what they are. You experience life in a much
more powerful way. And we felt like capturing this moment with a
bigger negative, with more resolution, was going to help you feel a
little bit of what he's going through in that moment."
Nearly all of Affleck's dialogue was subtracted from the film in
postproduction, an experience that left the actor scratching his head.
"Terry uses actors in a different way," Affleck told GQ last year, adding,
"He'll [have the camera] on you and then tilt up and go up to a tree, so
you think, 'Who's more important in this me or the tree?'" When
asked, Lubezki laughed off the remark. "I think everybody knows that
the shoot is just another part of Terry's experimentation and search,
and everyone on the set is very open to his suggestions," he said.
"Everyone's fishing for this thing, that moment where it can feel like a
found moment. So yes, the camera sometimes pans away from the
actor, but Ben and Olga and Rachel never complained. At least, I don't
know if they did maybe they went to their agents later on and said,
'What the fuck am I doing?'"
Gravity
Yes, Lubezki's previous single-take shots with Cuarn have been
stunning, but they're dwarfed by the mammoth opening to Gravity, a
twelve-minute single take in outer space that begins with a satellite
repair mission gone wrong and ends with Sandra Bullock's astronaut
cast terrifyingly into the void. "I have to say something about that:
Cuarn tried to make the shot much longer!" said Lubezki. "I felt a
little bit like the Inquisition, coming in and saying, 'Cuarn, this is too
long.' It felt contrived, like we were pushing it. I don't like it when a
movie becomes a series of 'tour de force' shots, and in a way, I was
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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."
Though Lubezki has gone on to lens a few other films since Gravity
wrapped principal production, he admitted, "I just finished working on
this shot a couple weeks ago! It took many, many years." During
production, Cuarn and Lubezki shot Bullock suspsneded in a ninefoot cube surrounded with LED lights; they then worked to composite
those images of the actress with the outer-space setting during
postproduction. "It's basically lighting the movie with computers, not
unlike lighting a Pixar film," said Lubezki. "I did it from my house
while most of the CG gaffers were in London."
So why the single take? "Cuarn told me, 'I want to it be the most
immersive movie we've ever done,'" explained Lubezki. "It was
incredibly difficult to make. We wanted this movie to feel as
naturalistic as possible, and that's really hard to do in CG." With their
shots growing ever grander, should we expect the next movie Lubezki
shoots for Cuarn to consist only of one unbroken two-hour take? The
cinematographer laughed at the notion. "If the audience starts to
sense your trick, it's good to stop the trick at some point and start
again," he said. "It's like erasing your tracks, so that the people cannot
trace and follow you."
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