I recently saw Tom Yum Goong, the new Tony Jaa (of Ong Bak fame) flick. The movie had incredible martial arts, and the cinematography made incredible strides from the first film.

There is one shot in the movie which lasts about five minutes. Tony Jaa enters a large room with a gigantic spiral staircase, and in one continuous take fights his way up the stairs. He even throws a few people off.

I'm wondering how they might've accomplished this... there were no tracks visible, a crane wouldn't be possible, and it's hard to believe a steadycam operator would be able to climb up five flights of stairs without the camera becoming a bit unstable (at the same speed as Tony Jaa too).

Has anyone seen this? Any thoughts on how they pulled it off?

I've seen that movie before. And yeah, it is pretty amazing. When I was watching that scene, I was stunned by how it was so perfectly executed. From what I hear, there were no effects or editing techniques used in post, it was just choreographed and planned that way. Apparently, they planned it all out, rehearsed it, and got it all down before they tried to shoot it. It's pretty amazing how they pulled that off because that must've taken a crapload of time to plot out.

Haven't seen it, but from what you describe a good (excellent?) steadicam
operator might be able to do that. I know our own Charles Papert did some
interesting work on American History X running down some stairs (and pausing
etc.) and then continuing on to the outside of the house.

A good steadicam operator could do that,

if you have ever seen "Contact" there is a scene where jodi foster's (young self) dad dies and she runs up the stairs and goes to the mirror in the bathroom and opens it.

in one single movement the steadicam operator follows her up stairs (filmming her from the front), along a corridor and then flawlesly it seems the steadicam operator was filmming her reflection in the upstairs mirror. A well crafted shot.

Andy

I remember that shot from Contact actually, but the thing about the one in Tom Yum Goong was that it actually ran for five minutes, up about five large stories of stairs. I'll see if I can post a clip from the movie, because you really need to see it to believe it, like that crane shot in fight club that started hundreds of feet into the air and via crane entered the bar and followed someone into the basement.

I would love to see it if you can post it, ive never seen the film