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Just how the hell did they do this?
Posted by David Hepworth on 17 August 2010 - 5:09am.
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I guess in the same way that they made this
Off Topic
Once had to go to a party in an "Irish" pub in barcelona. There was a singer/Guitarist billed as doing "Traditional Irish music". 10 minutes in he tried to get us to singalong to this by asking us to do the "oh oh oh the sweetest thing bit".
How did they do it?
Lots and lots and lots of practice. And a couple of mirrors and a very long piece of string.
40 takes
Full story here.
My guess
Drink was taken.
Out for a walk? Nip across the States in less than 2 mins
Like this ?
Posted this before but well worth seeing. Notice above how you never actually see Robert Carlyle's legs apart from the first and last bits.
Stargate Studios Virtual Backlot Demo from Stargate Studios on Vimeo.
A shot wrung out
The 2002 film "Russian Ark" was one sumptuous 96-minute continuous shot. I'm surprised you don't see at least one of the 2000+ actors cracking under the pressure and running off screaming.
Here's the trailer:
And here's a sample:
I love this film
The best way to view it is a) watch it without reading anything about it, then b) read the film's Wikipedia entry, which details all the historical events reflected in the movie, then c) watch it again. It's brilliant. Well, apart from the final few frames, which I think are clumsy.
I've wanted to visit the Winter Palace ever since.
Here's the Daddy of them all
8 minute single shot plus more references than you can shake a stick at.
Can't let this thread go
Without posting the amazing 3m30s opening shot of Orson Welles' Touch Of Evil.
How did they do it? I'm just guessing here, of course..
They got Bob Carlyle to walk along a road and recite a script whilst someone filmed him using a Steadycam, by the look of it. Various props were set up along the road to coincide with relevant bits of the script. Every time they tried a take, something went wrong. Let's face it, there were lots of things which could have gone wrong. Eventually, it all went right, and everyone was happy.
But perhaps I know nothing about these things.
The achievement is Carlyle's
I've done enough amateur acting and professional pieces to camera to know that what he did - walking really quickly along a road towards a load of technicians while speaking five minutes-worth of unbroken script - is awe inspiring. Most of us couldn't remember thirty seconds-worth of script so we'd never get far enough through the day enough to know how physically and mentally exhausting it must have been at the end.
A hend-bairg?
DH in shock am-dram confession!
Rosencrantz? Willy Loman? Caliban? Stanley Kowalski? The MC in Cabaret?
I'm putting my money on
I'm putting my money on Rocky Horror....
With respect, David..
You're not an actor. You're a journalist who has done some broadcasting. Remembering a long tract of script and then reciting it is what actors train to do. Robert Carlyle is a fine actor and can, presumably, do this with a greater degree of facility than most. He probably just thinks he's doing his job. I marvel at people who can effortlessly rattle out 1500 apposite words of finely-reasoned observation and debate on any given subject at the drop of a hat. You probably think of it as just doing your job and can't see what I'm going on about.
Presumably he used the various props as
milestones for the script to ensure the timing was on.
He also walked quite a long way
At a fair lick, whilst talking and not in the slightest bit getting out of breath.
Yeah its not the whole
Yeah its not the whole story. Glassworks were involved, which pretty certainly means there was some element of CG. I don't know about you, but getting that bull to stand in one position …
A load of bull
Exactly. That would account for the "Animal Wrangler" in the credits. These things are enormously complicated. If the light goes, if the actor hits one of his marks too early or two late, if he stumbles slightly (because he can't afford to look down, like a normal person walking). Add to that the tension created by the various executives, hangers on and other unexplainable presences on such a major shoot. He makes it look easy. It's not. And yes, it IS difficult to recite a five minute monologue and make it look natural. I tend to wear a hat - and I'm taking it off to Mr C.
He'll have really done a five minute walk reciting the script..
and it may have been on a mountain road - problems with a location shoot being the weather, RAF, midges, green laning buffoons in 4X4s, cyclists in klingy lycra, so it PROBBALY was done somewhere else and dropped in but in any case its an example of his craft. There will have been some props/lines to help him hit his marks but the uncanny emergence into shot of background things at precisely the right moment - and look again exactly to the heart beat precisely - has to be CGI.
Bear in mind trained actors do this sort of thing (I'm not one) in all sorts of films - even the Jane Austens - nowadays
Some things he interacts with would have had to really be there but not that many, and as an earlier poster points out you rarely see his feet so he could have been blue-screened and reading it off a prompt. But if so he still has to make it convincing and he's a certainly good enough actor to have really been on the road walking along - though in reality with hardly a prop in site. Hats - or possibly tammies - off to him and to the technical crew - fine work (not too keen on the numbing corporate copywriting though, as opposed to the design and the 'idea').
No, its not all trickery
No. most of it was done for real as this article shows …
http://www.shots.net/article_detail.asp?atype=1&id=9071
Certainly the monologue is real, and the location is real. But the fact that they are even talking about cheating and dong some of it in post, means that there must have been markers, and mapping (allowing accurate placement of CG elements) placed along the route. At the very least these have to be digitally painted out frame by frame. But the fact that Glassworks (a major Soho post production, and CG house) were involved AT ALL, means that some of it is probably not real. Just my reading.
Let's be charitable
It needn't necessarily have been green-screen-type cheating. Much CGI work is simply to remove pylons, power lines and other spoils-the-nice-view detritus from the landscape. (Or maybe they simply stuck some moving images on that bank of TV sets.)
There's also Hitchcock's Rope
A whole movie in 8 single takes :
And this recent loving homage
Psychoville, (aka 2/4 of The League Of Gentlemen*), episode 4, which was filmed in two 14-minute takes, with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it edit in the middle.
*Although in this episode Reece Shearsmith & Steve Pemberton are joined by fellow LoG-er Mark Gatiss.
What about this then?
I would rather have listened to
that beautiful bagpipe than the endless speech about the dull adventures of mr Walker, but I know I'm in the minority.
Wonderful instrument.
"Shut it!" No, YOU shut it, you rude little man.
Ah, the bagpipes...it's only rock'n roll, but I like it!
I think you just have to accept...
....that the standard of craft skill in any area is higher than you think and that some people are even better than that.
We were, weren't we?
The craft isn't in doubt, the actors and/or the crews - just the copywriting...!
A great piece of film making
What a pity the current owners of Johnnie Walker (Diageo) plan to close the Kilmarnock bottling plant in 2011 with the loss of some 700 jobs. Thus ending a 189 year link with the whisky brand and the town.
It kind of makes Robert Carlyle's fine words ring a little hollow.
It was a wonderful performance, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilmarnock#Johnnie_Walker
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/walk-j29.shtml
Goldfrapp
"Happiness"
Johnnie Walker Blue Label
one of the different blends mentioned in the film (which I'd never heard of until Leo drank some in The West Wing), can be bought for around £140 per bottle.
You can put your order in now for a bottle of the King George V edition, which won't be available until May 13th 2013, at a shade under £360.
There is a story that Pope John XXIII was known as Johnnie Walker for his habit of slipping out of the Vatican via a back door to find small non descript churches where he would celebrate a mass for the ordinary Roman people.
The Audio Quality is outstanding...
On a computer no less,digital 'n aw that.So there goes your Analogue V Digital argument.Down the drain...