Tarantino has done for Mother's Day what Charlie Brown did for Christmas

October 9, 2014 7:26 PM

ER One Shot (YT): one long opening shot from the Quentin Tarantino-directed episode of the TV series ER. Blog post | less bloggy, more pagey, format.

The episode is titled "Motherhood" (Season 1 Episode 24, aired May 11, 1995).

Streaming options: Can I Stream.It?, Amazon (ER is not available on Hulu at ths time).

List of ER episodes at Wikipedia; also at the same resource, Quentin Tarantino's influences and style of filmmaking.

via Joshua Rothman (@joshrothman)

posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome (11 comments total)

Interesting. Simple in the sense of the camera was in about three rooms and a hallway, but corralling and choreographing all those people and their individual movements must've been incredibly complex.
posted by zardoz at 8:13 PM on October 9, 2014

I'm a policeman
Arrogant walk by others
No paper work waits
posted by Mblue at 8:32 PM on October 9, 2014

Apparently seeing Sherry Stringfield suntanning in a twisted up t-shirt is my Proustian madeline.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:40 PM on October 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

Apparently seeing Sherry Stringfield suntanning in a twisted up t-shirt is
a huge clue. A couple of pointed ideas. A possible odor to follow.
posted by Mblue at 8:46 PM on October 9, 2014

I see your ER One Shot and raise you a 29 Take Walk and Talk.
posted by gwint at 8:53 PM on October 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

I love long takes, and I remember watching this one (hands up everyone who remembers when ER was THE THING YOU WAITED FOR ALL WEEK), but nothing beats the shot in Children Of Men.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:58 AM on October 10, 2014 [2 favorites]

FFFM, I respectfully disagree. At 6 minutes of pure adrenaline rush, True Detective beats 'em all.
posted by Frayed Knot at 6:21 AM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

There's an amazing single shot sequence in the opening of Soy Cuba (1964).

And then, of course, there is Tony Jaa.
posted by jammy at 7:02 AM on October 10, 2014

Not to mention the opening scene from The Player, in which a couple characters get meta and mention long take scenes from *other* movies.
posted by A dead Quaker at 7:12 AM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Or Russian Ark, where the entire 90 minute film is (allegedly) one take.
posted by epo at 8:29 AM on October 10, 2014

90 minute film is (allegedly) one take.

Not allegedly. It's one take, period. Also, it's the first movie ever to be shot digitally directly to a hard drive, which was the only way to create a shot that long.

As someone with some (limited) experience operating Steadicams, I can't help but admire Tilman Büttner's endurance. He was the cinematographer and Steadicam operator on Russian Ark.

Operating a Steadicam is maybe the single most physically demanding job in film production. Something like the ER shot linked above is really, really strenuous; you have 50+ pounds of equipment strapped to your body and you have to essentially make it dance and hit all of these marks perfectly. Imagine doing that for 90 minutes, where if you screw up, you have to start all over again.

By the way, the guy who operated that ER shot is Guy Bee, who was also the Steadicam operator on Magnolia.
posted by alexoscar at 1:15 PM on October 11, 2014 [2 favorites]