Children of Men Takes a Long View of Life During Wartime

Our very own Sheigh Crabtree has spread her wings and flown freelance (she'll still contribute the odd piece to THR and the blog) and has landed a cool production column at the LAT. This first one is about an amazing long shot in Alfonso Cuaron's upcoming Children of Men that took our breath away when we saw it at Comic-Con. Way to go Sheigh.

Comments

[sheigh]

Thanks, Anne! But it's not my column, I just got the first crack at the new editorial slot.

[Ray Pride]

A nice piece, but I wondered how the shot was done physically... Was it shot on 35mm or High Definition of some sort? There have, in the past, been technical limits on how long a take you can shoot in 35.

[sheigh]

That segment was shot on 35mm with an Arricam 235 mounted w/ and 18mm lens. They shot with 5 min. film mags (3 perf). (The original story details why Chivo shot film instead of digital but that, and another section on the capture process, were cut. Chivo said they tested digital but it looked "terrible" and they lost too much detail). When you see the sequence, try to figure out the riddle of how they pulled it off!

[T. H. Unfassung]

I like details. Someone once said, rolling film’s a technicality; it’s all in the prep, so I hope Sheigh does more pieces about filmmaking. The story reminds me of “L’Enfant,” reading about the Dardennes’ writing and rehearsal process and my moment of realization that every shot was moving, a oner and unaided and unabated by coverage. In a story in The New York Times, John Anderson wrote that before “L’Enfant” was shot handheld, (on film, as far as I can tell, maybe for reasons similar to what Sheigh would have reported, had it not been cut, as opposed to other shooting situations, like for Dean Semler on "Apocalypto," who's said to love digital) they went "to selected locations, shooting with a small video camera to get a sense of the film-to-be." And then they brought in the actors and had them "run through the script to expand on what" had "already been rehearsed." Details, give me details.