"The Circle" - AMAZING!

D

David W. Richardson

Chapelgrove Films
Has anyone seen this? I watched it last night and it was amazing!

The entire 97-minute movie was shot in one single, continuous take. It's incredible to watch -- multiple locations in buildings sometimes so far apart that they had to get into a car a drive to one of them. And the camera didn't get into the car with them.

The entire movie was done handheld -- the Steadicam operator was unbelievable! And I can't even begin to fathom the amount of planning and hard work it must have taken. How did they get the police car timed to drive past at the exact moment that the Hit Man goes and looks out the motel window? How did they find a path of streets from one location to another so that, when the characters drive in the car, there are NO signs or anything in the background that could have caused copyright issues? How did they do this? How did they do that? It's an amazing thing to watch!

I'd love for you guys to go out and rent 'The Circle', watch it, and then discuss it here. Just from a filmmaking standpoint alone, it deserves attention. (I SO wish there were Special Features on the DVD -- especially a 'Making Of....'.)
 
Wow! One single continuous take!!! I can't begin to imagine how much planning that took.. is that even possible? U sure there wasn't a quick cut in there somewhere you missed? I'd have to see it myself to believe this.

Another movie which did sorta like the same thing ur talking about, is Ireversible, this french film, where a 20 minute scene is done without a single cut...

But I have to check that film "The Circle" out, do u know is it the only film to have ever done this, entirely?
 
I didn't see any cuts, and the box says it's one take. I'd believe it. But I don't know if this is the only movie to have ever done this. Wasn't there some Alfred Hitchcock movie that was supposed to have been done in a single take? Anybody know?
 
Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope" is the one you're thinking of, but it was done as a series of (i believe) 12-minute takes. That was because it was the maximum amount of film that would fit in the camera at the time. They did a pretty decent job hiding the cuts, though.

A feature-length single-take is probably only really doable on video, AFAIK
 
a couple years ago I watched one called "russian arc" or something like that, it was done in one take. The film was boring.
 
I did a seven minute film 'Broken Circle' one take/ STEADICAM boy it took 8 hours planning, 97 minutes!!! :huh: I can only imagine how hard that was.
 
It truly is amazing what they've done. I watched 'The Circle' again tonight, and picked up on some things I didn't catch the first time. Really amazing film. And they even did a flashback scene! In a 1-take film. Very interesting!

I'd imagine lighting would've been a bear. And the Steadicam guy must've been amazing -- in the last few minutes of the movie, after he's been lugging that camera around for something like 95 minutes, he's got to RUN backwards in front of the actress, who is running down the street. Incredible stuff!

I found the movie at Movie Gallery, but Hollywood Video probably has it. I hope people will watch it and post their comments here. Wish we could get the director on here to talk to us about how it was done. That would be fascinating!
 
I saw Russian Ark as well, a one-take flick. I didnt' find it boring, but I have a rough enough idea of russian history to get what was happening. The flick has a HUGE cast in period getup, and was billed as "the worl'ds first undeited movie" and the first shot in the Hermitage museum, St. Petersberg.

From Wiki:
The film displays 33 rooms of the museum, which are filled with a cast of over 2000 actors. Russian Ark was recorded in uncompressed high definition video using a Sony HDW-F900. There was a specifically designed camera for this film. The information was not recorded compressed to tape as usual, but uncompressed onto a hard disk which could hold 100 minutes. Four attempts were made to complete the shot; the first three had to be interrupted due to technical faults, but the fourth attempt was completed successfully. The shot was executed by Steadicam operator Tilman Büttner.

The Russian Ark DVD has a making-of that shows how hard this sort of thing is; fascinating in a "No way would I EVER try this" sort of way.
 
Holosynthetic said:
a couple years ago I watched one called "russian arc" or something like that, it was done in one take. The film was boring.
Click to expand...
Yes, "Russian Arc" was the first film done as a single take. And I agree that it was boring - If you studied Russian history it might be mildly entertaining. The behind the scenes stuff was much more entertaining than the film itself.

I find the film making excercise of "Russin Arc" and "The Circle" to be pointless. Where's the story telling? This thread is about making a film in a single take, very little has been mentioned about the story line of either film. When people spend more time talking about the film making technique rather than the story - the film failed in the core task of story telling.

I do find the humor within. The meaningless of it all reminds me of the character named Stuart on Mad TV. The overgrown child Stuart shouts out, "Look what I can do" before flailing about to draw attention to himself. And I can't help but to laugh at the role of the editor in these films. Set an in point, set an out point, execute the edit - OK, I fininshed editing a feature and it's not even lunchtime. :)
 
You're right, milksac -- I should've said something about the story.

Some of the dialogue is a bit cheesy, but the overall story was quite good, in my opinion -- surprisingly so, as a matter of fact. They didn't just rest on the 'it's all one take' thing. They actually had a good story with a good twist at the end. It's a haunting kind of a tale, one that stays with you. Or it did me, anyway.

In places the acting is a bit uneven, but not badly so. Angela Bettis ("Girl Interrupted") did a superb job as the wife frantically trying to talk a hit man out of killing her husband. Scott Cohen ("Gilmore Girls") was good as the hit man, and David Proval ("The Sopranos") was absolutely chilling as the strip club owner who put out the contract. Also look for Bokeem Woodbine playing a cop.

The story was compelling enough to keep me interested, which isn't easy. The one thing I would've done differently is I would've run some sort of FilmLook filter on the video. But otherwise, it's a pretty amazing film that deserves a wide audience, IMHO.
 
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