Cinematic Weapons: The Long Take

I had another excellent chat with Wes from Winnipeg about cinema. Yesterday I was scanning my library for a dvd to watch. I was feeling nostalgic, almost a return to where it began. So, I looked for what gripped me to film in the beginning. The Technique, The Rules and the breaking of those rules. Save the Best for the last. So I'll break this rule. In my opinion the most effective, sought after and rare cinematic technique to pull of well to evoke that chilling, orgasmic feeling once you realize what you just saw and experienced. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Long Take.The Long Take is essentially a highly choreographed scene where The Director of Photography and his team keeps rolling that camera throughout the scene(s) without a cut. The camera can move but there is no "Cut" in the duration of the scene(s).

With attention spans decreasing by the millisecond, this does look very weird to the "average" viewer, due to cuts in film quickening to cater to the audience's ADD.

The best times are letting a story teller take you on a journey and showing wa
ys to get you the audience to engage to become immersed in the way of telling. But in telling, there has to be technique. Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler was my first exposure to what a Long Take can do to someone. "#wtf?!" then I did some digging and found this:

It's like an overture in composition. It's something you miss if you are not looking for it. Invisible if done impeccably.  (Orson Welles, 1941) Touch of Evil.  It would be breaking the rules if I showed "Children of Men, 2006, DOP Emmanuel Lubezki, Dir, Alfonzo Cuaron) take and The Wrestler (2008, dir: Darren Aronofsky, DOP Maryse Alberti)  out of context. Watching this, will give you a clue what looks like and how damn tough it is. NOTE: A movie titled the Russian ARK is a 3 hour movie done in one take. Figure that out.