It's called Russion Ark

http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=13053

quote: " It's sad that the film is most well known for the fact that it is a 90 minute single take - which in itself is a major technical achievement. I believe the film was shot on DV, then probably blown up to film. There are several digitally manipulated zooms which make for 'digitally induced vertigo effects' - they're very subtle, but noticeable. In this film however, you can forgive the filmmakers for ever relying on digital effects occasionally – they did manage to co-ordinate thousands of extras in one single take for 90 minutes "

Amazing!

Some more information on it:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=20020729154836.06806.00000124%40mb-ft.aol.com

Shot directly to harddisk!

wow!
i've seen one song movie (Elton John i want love) which seems to be taken in one shot, but that was some 4min long. 90 min in one shot, amazing!

Margus

Rob:

I have read previously about this project. It was shot in a single, 90 minute take on a Steadicam-mounted HD camera.

Although I am curious about the results of such an undertaking, I have read some interviews with the director in which he has made some blatantly pompous and unforgiveable statements to the effect that "no Steadicam operator in the world has the artistic understanding to achieve what I wanted, they are merely technicians". I can't find the particular article at the moment, if I can I would link it. He granted that his operator (a German gent who did, amongst other things, Run Lola Run) worked very hard but still insisted on blasting him and the rest of us as being unable to perceive and execute his obviously super-human artistry.

Charles,
huh,
i've tried stedicam suit a couple of times, it's really hard job
if i were in op-s skin, i'd offer that director to do shooting work himself. 90min with stedicam and constant focusing to the shot can kill even the best op i think (and HDCAM camera is'nt the lightest to carry)

Margus

Have not seen the film. Salute to the operator for staying in there for the whole 90 (phew!). Doing a film in one takes does not seem like a very fresh concept. No undertaking of that kind has still come close to Hitchcocks Rope. I've seen at least three other films based on the idea of letting the camera run without ever once cutting.

The risk of visual trickery over story is risky... WHY did they shoot it in one take (I hope it's not because they can)?

I thought "Rope" was multi take filmed to look like one take? I heard that they could really only get about 15minutes of tape in the camera so had to rely on little effects to make it look seamless.

"Rope" was a series of ten minute takes (1000 ft of film per take) joined by a series of wipes and dissolves, some more seamless than others.

I think Martin brings up a valid point, which is that the choice to make a shot last 90 minutes, 20 minutes, 4 minutes, even 1 minute without a cut is a significant one. Creating a rhythm in a long take is a particularly sophisticated achievement, and sustaining the viewer's interest for that length of time is an even greater challenge than choregraphing such an event.

I have, over the years, shot my share of "full mag" (i.e. up to 4 minute) Steadicam shots in features, episodic and music videos. Very few of them have been so well-designed that a cut would have been an intrusion. As an example, I operated one in a movie called "Big Fat Liar" which comes out on DVD next month. It tracked a single character who was engaged in various conversations while walking around a full city block. What made it interesting was that there was a definite character arc that was realized by seeing him interact with these other characters, and the continuous nature of the shot complemented this. We heard that the head of Universal noticed the shot when the dailies were being screened, went nuts over it, and had a group of other executives brought in to view the shot. I can't really take any credit for it, because the director and the DP designed it, but I was happy to have been part of the process.

The point of this story is that when the movie came out, the shot had been chopped in half, the second part left on the cutting room floor (as the now-antiquated expression goes). I was a bit despondent, but the director explained that it disrupted the flow of the film and the test audiences (mostly young teenagers) were getting restless. This made a lot of sense to me. Fortunately I hear that the shot is restored to full length in the extras section of the DVD! Another similar occurence was in "Out of Sight", (which I did not work on). The scene in which George Clooney and J. Lo were trapped in the trunk of a moving car was originally shot as a single long take with no coverage, but in testing Soderbergh felt that the audience lost the pace of the film and the scene was reshot with various angles. It's all on the DVD, and it's very clear upon viewing how much better the scene is for the revision.

And yes, Margus, I think that director really wished he could have operated the shot in "Russian Ark" himself, but was aware that it was too physical a job. Apparently he considers us all a bunch of slack-jawed pack mules hauling a camera around a set. Whatever...

I don't know exactly why they did it. I think it was because of
an artistic challenge (make a feature length movie in one shot).
I do find it very intruiqing and I hope it will come out on DVD
sometime so that I can see it. If they've done it right it should
not have to be too boring or long winded. It would be interesting
to see what they did with the concept at least.

Thanks for sharing your story Charles. If my local DVD rental
house has "Big Fat Liar" I'll sure to check it out. Out of Sight
was a nice movie which I have the DVD off. I know the scene
your talking about and think I'll rewatch it sometime next week.

Yeah it will be intesting to see.

Man, I get the heebies even thinking about the possibility of dropped frames in a shot like that! :)

I'd get the heebies if my only option was to shoot it in 35mm (like Rope). No tape in the camera in those days.

Martin, it was shot directly to harddisk. So no tape as well :)

>Martin, it was shot directly to harddisk. So no tape as well :)
yeah, one more thing what probably made shooting even more complex. They had to carry huge capacity harddisk box (900GB if my calculations are correct) and batteries for that anywhere where camera went. Or did they have some wireless solution?

Margus

There was a single cable involved. On one of the web sites that has information you can see the cable hanging off the Steadicam. The drive still would probably have to have been transported around the set at a distance from the camera, I imagine.

I'm surprised it was ONLY 900 GB for 90 minutes of HD!

i'm not sure, uncomp. HD should be 1.5Gb/sec, 100 min=6000sec, 9000Gb should be somewh. near 1000GB (i'm not strong in these bit/bait things)
just thought that there were no cables around stedicam allowed, but seems op had one more thing to watch out: to not film cable.

Margus

Don't know if it was uncompressed or not. Charles, do you have
a link to that site/article with pictures and information? I'd love
to see some pictures.

Thanks.

<Sokurov's solution was to store his "single breath" neither on film nor tape but on an uncompressed hard disk, which could hold up to 100 minutes. He wanted one choreographed movement to take us through 1,300 metres of the Hermitage's rooms>

seems like it was uncompressed

Margus

Margus:

Cables off a Steadicam are a drag, literally and figuratively. That's why we spend the equivalent of a garage-ful of cars on high end wireless equipment to transmit our framing, control focus/iris/zoom, perform speed ramps etc. Shooting on tape has always been a problem because since the advent of Betacam the sound is recorded on the camera, and usually the sound guys want to be hard-cabled, and/or the DP wants to see a reliable image rather than the sketchy transmitted one. And HD is even worse. There are new fiber cables that are slender and pass all kinds of information back and forth, although I haven't seen them yet I hear they are the answer to bulky snakes.

Keeping the cable out of view of the camera is, fortunately, a cable wrangler's job--I'm sure the operator had plenty of other things to deal with...!

In a perfect world, you do not have to deal with the additional forces that cabling introduces. It happens sometimes. In HD, working uncompressed (which is clearly the future), it's going to be a necessary evil. Myself, I hope to hang up my Steadicam vest before all this takes hold!

I can imagine fibre cable to be a pretty good solution. That stuff
can be very very very light! No worries there. If you do hang
up your steadicam Charles, can I convince you to do some steadi-
cam work with my light cable-less XL1-S??? :) ...

Rob, that wouldn't really be hanging up the Steadicam, now would it...?! Then again, maybe if you sent me a plane ticket to the Netherlands...hmmm...I'm thinking about it...

The lighter the camera, the more of a nuisance the cables become--cable-less on an XL1 is key! I actually add up to 10 lbs of weight when flying the camera to make it behave like what I am used to, I prefer having that inertia for more subtle work. If I was being asked to chase someone up stairs ad nauseum, I'm sure I would go with the stock setup.

Rob,
here's some information about 'Russian Arc'
http://www.russianark.spb.ru/eng

and, that nasty speech about cameraman
http://sokurov.spb.ru/island_en/feature_films/russkyi_kovcheg/mnp_ark.html

Margus

Charles,
i've tried to clear up to myself why Sokurov used such hard words on Tillman Buttner, think i can understand (but no way to agree with) him.
In soviet times filmmakers in USSR did have no restrictions for money used for making movies. You can see it if you watch Voina i Mir (War and Peace) from Bondarchuk or Stalker from Tarkovsky (the last one is partially shot in my home town, wheee). The only restrictions were good talking skills and staying (at least pretending to stay)near to communist party view. So in these times film directors learned to be perfectsionists, but never learned to count money. I think Sokurov thought 'if i can walk through these scenes with my looking glass, why cannot op with 35kg camera'. He just did'nt understand, that cameraman is'nt $$$ costing dolly, but a man with camera.
i've visited Hermitage two times, looking forward to see a movie, can i recognize places or not.

Margus

Margus:

I found the original quote from another forum, the article itself is not online.

From "Sight & Sound" magazine, August, by Geoffrey Macnab:


"Tilman Buttner, cameraman on Tom Twyker's <Run Lola Run<,was
chosen to operate the steadicam. Meurer [the producer] had worked with
him before but Sokurov [the director] hadn't. "The paradox of the
situation was that no one except an experienced steadicam operator
could make this film, but no steadicam operator had the artistic
experience necessary," says Sokurov. "No single steadicam operator has
ever been confronted with such difficulties." Buttner worked with a
small army of operators from Russia and Germany, but he was the one
carrying the camera - and shooting the longest single steadicam shot
in cinema history. "Tilman Buttner made a huge effort," Sokurov
concedes. "The rest was beyond his capacity. He is a tenacious man,
able to sacrifice himself for the film, and he did everything he
could."

I can see how that could be taken negatively but I don't see that as an entirely bad comment. One could take that comment and make a career from that endorsement.

My review babble follows:

THE RUSSIAN ARK: One of the most mind boggling films I've ever seen. Okay, everyone knows about the 82 minute steadicam feat, but it's what goes in front of the camera that is the major task. This was a massive undertaking to plan and carry out. Think about it. What looks like thousands of extras, a dozen major settings with constant dialogue, lighting all the way through this huge set, troopers marching through their paces, a court reception, and a twenty minute ball and grand procession filled with five hundred extras in meticulous costumes, recognizable characters zipping in and out of each setting and it is not boring. I'm still collecting my thoughts about this film. It was a dream, a metaphysical documentary. Some will see this mostly as a technical feat and immediately this is what is notable but I believe that the technical feat was necessary thematically to the film which is an ode to the grand setting it paces through: the Hermitage. Why one shot, though? If the message is to convey that the Hermitage has been necessary to preserve the cultural treasures of Russia throughout the ages then having the single continuous shot to shot the continuity is necessary. Other continuous shots such as those employed by Hitchcock and Brian de Palma had their isolated benefits. Hitchcock wanted to show a progression of an engagement from meeting to murder. De Palma wanted to show a journey through a complicated world, opening it up spatially for the outsider, the audience. In the same way the Hermitage shows is a spy's journey through time as expressed by the different rooms in the museum. The fluid motion of the camera is necessary when the audience's device, the European spy who acts as a questioner, is taken away, wanders away. But the camera, eddies along, drawn like boat in a current. One audience member whispered that this was like the Pirates of the Carribean, a ridefilm. When the camera remains still it is quite a shock. When the final shot of the film settles on the mist of the river (the film is not without its digital effects) it's like the signal for the audience to get out of the carousel and stare back at where they've come from, shaking their heads.

http://sokurov.spb.ru/island_en/feature_films/russkyi_kovcheg/mnp_ark.html

Sweet! A fully loaded DVD set with making of stuff would be
double sweet. Damn. Lots of questions no answers eh. Hope
to see it one day...

This DVD will be released in September:

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00009NHAT/