By way of Andrew Sullivan’s blog comes a set of the most famous Steadicam sequences of all time. Such shots involve a great amount of time and patience, and often the story behind the shot is as interesting as the product itself.
First up, Martin Scorsese’s shot from Goodfellas:
Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil:
Robert Altman’s The Player:
Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men:
And, though it wasn’t mentioned in Sullivan’s blog, we can’t leave out Joe Wright’s extraordinary sequence from Atonement. I can’t find an embeddable clip, so you’ll have to click over to YouTube to watch it.
Loading ...Others that we’ve forgotten? We know that the all-time ultimate single-shot sequence must be Russian Ark, by Aleksander Sokurov, which is an entire 90-minute movie without a single cut.
If you haven’t had enough, make sure to spend some time at Steadishots.org, which dedicates itself to the “tribute and study of Steadicam operators and their work”.
How about:
1) The beginning of Serenity. I think it’s 8 minutes uncut and goes all over the ship.
2) The beginning of Boogie Nights.
Here’s another good one, 3 minute, 47 seconds following Tony Jaa fighting his way up the stairs in Ong Bak.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=qE7WijeShQM&feature=related
I like the opening shot of Trigger Effect a lot - very reminiscent of Touch of Evil.
Another to mention is Hitchcock’s brilliant “Rope.” A film that is all tracking shots and has only 5 cuts coming from how much film fit on reels back then. Based on the Leopold/Loeb murders and starring Jimmy Stewart.
I also like the tracking shot in Pulp Fiction that follows behind Bruce Willis as he sneaks back to his apartment.
For this list, Goodfellas is my favorite with Touch of Evil coming in a close second.
I’m shocked, amazed and disappointed that Touch of Evil isn’t getting more votes. It preceeded the rest of the films by at least over 30 years and pretty much the reason the other films attempted those long tracking shots.
It’s actually ridiculous that TOUCH OF EVIL is even on this list– the Steadicam wasn’t invented until the late 1970s. While TOUCH OF EVIL is bravura first-rate filmmaking, the smooth gliding camera in its famous opening shot is the result of very masterful control of a tracking dolly and crane, and not the sophisticated balancing mechanisms of the Steadicam.
Where is THE SHINING on this list? Kubrick’s film was one of the first to use the Steadicam extensively in a majority of the shots, and is basically an encyclopedia of the Steadicam’s abilities even early on.
the guy who wrote this knows what is a Steadicam?
In the times of “Touch of Evil” the steadicam wasn’t even invented. The first one to use it was Stanley Kubrick in “The Shining”
Do you actually realise that only the first shot is done with a Steadicam ?
The 3 others are crane shots…
Ah… internet…