I’ll let you into a secret. Provided you don’t pass it on to anyone else. My articles aren’t always published in the order I submit them.
It doesn’t matter, provided you find the result interesting, just like when you watch a film, knowing each scene wasn’t shot in the order they unfold.
The complicated process of making films requires them to be shot out of sequence – sometimes because of the limited availability of an actor or a specific location.
Having established that well-known fact, it never ceases to amaze me when I hear people come out with a comment that rings the “What are they talking about?” alarm bell, knowing their conversation is based on a half-listened to TV interview or a misread article – stories that may have been melded into ‘facts’.
When publicising his 2020 film “1917”, director Sam Mendes went to great lengths to explain his cameraman had shot revolutionary eight-minute takes, rather than the usual 30 or 60 seconds.  And that he wanted each half of the 139-minute film to look like one continuous take.
His emphasis on the ‘look like’ was because the film was shot in various locations around the UK, hundreds of miles apart.
So, imagine my bemusement when I recently overheard two people talking about the film, and one of them proclaimed sagely, “Of course the whole film was shot in one continuous take”. And the other person nodded and said, “Yes, I heard something about that when it came out!”
I wanted to say, “Err! Excuse me! Let’s just examine what you said. Sam Mendes had hundreds of actors all set in place in various locations, started filming at, say, 10 am and by 12.30 he had the film completely finished and everyone went home? You know, maybe more directors should shoot multi-million-dollar films in a morning. Then, if their afternoon’s free they could make the multi-million-dollar sequel and be home in time for tea!”
In my mind, I then stepped back to watch their eyes as the cogs of realisation clicked and whirred in their heads.
But, instead, I came home and wrote this article.
In one continuous take . . .