I was known for a while for doing very long takes, especially after Atonement.
My directing style is long takes. The longer take I can do, the more I can think of not doing it in cuts, the better.
A seven-minute take is almost like theater.
A long-playing full shot is what always separates the men from the boys. Anybody can make movies with a pair of scissors and a two-inch lens.
The biggest thing that I came across, right off the bat, was that you can't shoot this like a regular movie with multiple takes. You have to, because it's such a protracted process, break it down to the frame and pretty much get one shot.
The reason I like tracking shots has to do more with a sense of real time than anything else. In 'Gravity,' the use of tracking - of long extended takes - was partially because we wanted to film it like an IMAX-style Discovery Channel documentary. You don't have the luxury of cuts when you're in space. The camera is there; you're just observing.
In real life, when you speak with each other you overlap each other, so you can't fake that. Like especially when you have no cut. In a regular film when you want people to overlap you cut it that way. It's mixing and editing.
We had the guys from X Men 2 do the cameras. They had a 360 camera that would go from one car, up in the air and over to another car in a continuous shot while the film was still rolling, going 90 mph.
