What Robert Zemeckis Can Teach Us About the Moving Master Shot
Want to get a lot of coverage with fewer set-ups? Consider opting for a moving master.
Universal Pictures
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The Queue your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video essay about how director Robert Zemeckis is the master of the moving master shot.
Let’s be honest, long takes get all the glory. And, to be fair, there is something delightfully audacious about a well-executed oner: the intense staging, the impossibly fluid camera, all the different moving parts. Continuous shots are difficult to pull off, which is, in part, why they drum up so much praise and hype. Heck, there are even full, feature-length films entirely structured around the spectacle of a single shot (or the appearance thereof):
“Lights Out” began life as a three-minute short film by David F.
Sandberg that was short on such elements as narrative complexity, character
development and memorable dialogue (I don’t recall a single word being spoken) and long on coming up with more big jolts than would seem possible in such a short running time. It got no small degree of attention and
Sandberg was given a chance to expand the short into a full-length feature,
putting it in such esteemed genre company as the original “When a Stranger
Calls” and “The Babadook.” In the cases of those works, the filmmakers found