Making a movie is by no means an easy process.
In any given production, meticulous directors
and conscientious actors want the final product
to be as good as it can possibly be - and
that can often result in some scenes taking
tens or even hundreds of takes to perfect.
Actors can mess up their lines, the lighting
might not be right, something could go wrong
with a stunt and all manner of other problems
can arise - especially when filming a particularly
complex scene.
However, sometimes, even the most difficult-to-film
and most memorable of scenes can be successfully
performed in a single attempt - and that's
what this video is all about.
Here are ten amazing movie scenes that were
nailed on the first take.
The Dark Knight
The late Heath Ledger famously won a posthumous
Oscar for his role as The Joker in 2008's
The Dark Knight - and this particular scene
epitomises exactly why.
It's the scene in which the villain blows
up Gotham City hospital - and Ledger totally
nailed it first time, in spite of the fact
that he encountered difficulties during the
filming of it.
Ledger was holding a device to activate the
explosives that were to blow the building
up, but they didn't go off as planned at first.
So, while remaining in character, he fiddled
with the device for a while until the explosives
detonated - and that's the scene that made
it into the final movie.
Alien: Resurrection
Alien: Resurrection was pretty terrible.
The fourth installment in the Alien franchise
had very little going for it, but one particular
scene was extremely memorable.
It was the scene in which Sigourney Weaver's
Ellen Ripley Clone 8 was able to score a basketball
whilst facing away from the hoop - a shot
with a success rate of about one in six - and
she did it in just one take.
She'd trained with a pro basketball coach
for two weeks prior to the shot, but director
Jean-Pierre Jeunet still wanted to cheat by
dropping the ball in the hoop from out of
shot.
However, Weaver believed she could pull it
off and that's exactly what she did - and
even Ron Perlman's genuinely shocked and out-of-character
look couldn't stop the scene from making it
in to the final movie.
Hunger
Hunger - a 2008 movie about the 1981 Irish
hunger strike - starred Michael Fassbender
as hunger striker Bobby Sands and Liam Cunningham
as a priest named Father Dominic Moran.
There's a fifteen minute discussion about
the strike between the pair, while they're
both sat at a table, that only took one take
to get right.
Apparently, Cunningham moved in with Fassbender
for several weeks and rehearsed the scene
up to fifteen times a day to perfect it - and
the result was a very captivating and emotional
scene that was accomplished brilliantly at
the first attempt.
Poltergeist
The conclusion of 1982's classic horror movie
Poltergeist saw the Freeling family's home
implode and get sucked into a portal that
had opened in one of the bedrooms.
In order to produce this scene, a six-foot
model scale of the home was constructed, which
took four months of hard work.
After brainstorming numerous methods of putting
the shot into practise, the special effects
team decided that the best way to do it was
by threading thick cables through the model
and to simply pull it into a funnel attached
to a high powered vacuum - they pulled it
off in a single take.
After the model destruction shot was completed,
it then took two months of additional special
effects work to perfect the final shot.
Boogie Nights
The brilliant Boogie Nights tells the stories
of a number of characters and the film's opening
shot goes straight from the opening title
of the film to introducing several of them.
It follows characters like Julianne Moore's
Maggie, Burt Reynold's Jack Horner and Luis
Guzman's Maurice Rodriguez into a lively and
popular nightclub, circling and meandering
through it seamlessly whilst introducing the
rest of the main cast.
The framing, lighting and timing had to be
extremely precise - and it was - and, astonishingly,
it was nailed perfectly at the first attempt.
Director Paul Thomas Anderson loves this kind
of shot - and this is arguably his greatest
example.
Titanic
In James Cameron's epic 1997 romance-disaster
movie Titanic, after the ill-fated titular
ship had crashed into the iceberg and started
to sink, there was a memorable scene in which
water crashed into the vessel's Grand Staircase
room.
Due to the fact that the entire set and its
furnishings were going to be destroyed in
the scene in question, the film makers were
only actually allowed a single opportunity
to get it right.
Thankfully, they totally nailed it, and the
scene you see in the movie is indeed that
one take they were afforded.
Children of Men
Children of Men is a 2006 movie about a dystopian
future in which society is on the brink of
collapse, due to two decades of human infertility.
It's set in a dog-eat-dog world in which chaos
is the norm - and one such example of that
chaos is when the main characters' car is
ambushed.
It's a complicated scene that sees the characters
played by Clive Owen, Julianne Moore and Chiwetel
Ejiofor attacked by an armed gang.
There's a burning car blocking their path,
there's a motorcycle chase, there's a gunshot
that kills Moore's Julian Taylor and there's
a violent exchange with a group of police
officers - and it was all done in a single
take.
A splatter of blood on the camera lens threatened
to ruin it, but director Alfonso Cuarón was
convinced to keep it in the final movie by
cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki.
Primer
Trying to explain Primer in detail in such
a short video would be impossible, but in
a nutshell it's essentially a movie about
the accidental discovery of time-travel.
It's extremely convoluted and it has a very
experimental plot structure - which makes
the fact that it was almost entirely filmed
in single takes all the more impressive.
The movie's budget was only $7,000, so its
writer, director and leading man Shane Carruth
only had enough money to buy just the right
amount of celluloid to shoot it on.
There was barely any room for error and he
successfully pulled it off - and you have
to give him huge props for doing so.
Russian Ark
2002's Russian Ark - a historical drama directed
by Alexander Sokurov - goes one better than
Primer, in the sense that the entire movie
was filmed in a single take.
You didnt mishear that - the entirety of this
ninety-six minute movie was filmed in a single
take.
To put into perspective what an astonishing
feat this was, the movie moves through thirty-three
rooms of the Russian State Hermitage Museum
it is set in, it contains more than two-thousand
actors and it utilised three orchestras.
While it wasn't a huge commerical success,
it has understandably garnered widespread
critical acclaim and a documentary about its
creation was made, called In One Breath, which
is definitely worth checking out.
127 Hours
Danny Boyle's masterful 127 Hours tells the
true story of Aron Ralston - played by James
Franco in the movie - who managed to get his
arm trapped underneath a boulder at the bottom
a remote canyon in Utah while he was out hiking
alone.
After more than five days of being stuck,
Ralston was forced to amputate his own arm
using a blunt knife in order to escape and
avoid an inevitable early death.
It was the most memorable and excruciating
scene in the entire movie - and Franco pulled
it off in a single take.
The actor cut through a realistic prosthetic
arm in the scene, which was expected to take
around a day and half - but it actually only
took him twenty minutes.
Thanks for watching our list of ten amazing
movie scenes were nailed on the first take.
Did you enjoy this video?
Which other great scenes only took one attempt
to nail?
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