15: The Long Take in documentary - understanding film language

THE LONG TAKE
(Don't confuse with the Long Shot)

This workshop will help you understand WHAT is the Long Take, WHY we use it, and HOW to use it

• What is the Long Take? 

It is a camera take longer than the normal 10-15 seconds. (There is also the extreme Long Take which I will discuss in a moment.)

• Why do we use it?

In cinema language it gives us the chance to really engage with a scene and the subjects in that scene because we are kept on the subject for longer. We really have the chance to 'feel' the atmosphere. 

• What does it do?

It allows the viewer to have the feeling that we are really involved in the moment, and it often gives a deeper sense of drama, due to the fact we are kept longer in the scene eg. a woman giving birth, a runner running a marathon, a child playing.

(In fiction the Long Take is very complicated and a lot of skilled technique are involved. In documentary none of this is really implied, unless it is a staged documentary.)

• How to use the Long Take?

You, the director-camera person, will leave your camera on the subject/s for a longer than the normal time without cutting away to a new scene.

Within the Long Take you can use different movements as you follow the flow of the subject/s.

Bread Day. Photo: Sergei Dvortsevoy,

One of the best examples of an extreme long take is by Sergei Dvortsevoy, the Kazakh filmmaker, who uses the Long Take throughout his 1988 ethnographic documentary Bread Day.

It is handheld, shot on 35mm, and the epic opening scene lasts 7.48 minutes! A short in itself.

The D.P. is Alisher Khamidkhodjaev, from Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

What Dvortsevoy and Khamidkhodjaev
do for the viewer is  bring us intimately into the lives of a few people who need to push a train carriage along old snow bound tracks.

When the static camera pans at 2.40 mins, a complete, 360°, it is like a dance as we follow on the face of one of the women.

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Bread Day is a wonderful example of the Long Take as much of the documentary is slow and reflective; a life lived on the outskirts of life, where once a week bread comes to a small isolated community of elders by train. The pinnacle of the hamlet is the bread shop itself.

This story cannot be rushed. It is a story of routines, rituals, habits, old people, countryside, snow, winter months, and therefore the Long Take allows us to enter into this hard, rough and wild snowbound life. We have the chance to observe the difficulties the inhabitants face. We hear their banter and how it took two of them ten hours the day before to push the train carriage to the hamlet.

The opening scene allows us the time to settle into our chairs, sit back, and wander slowly into this different world.

It is, for me, a beautiful work.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR PASSING
BY. HAVE A GREAT WEEK.

PLEASE SHARE IF YOU ENJOY.

Jeanne

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