From Touch of Evil (1958) to Atonement (2007), here are the 10 greatest long takes in movie history.
A long take is one of the most demanding tools available to a filmmaker, and when used wisely, one of the most rewarding. At its simplest, it is a shot that runs for an extended period without a cut, capturing action in one continuous, unbroken take. But in practice, it is far more than a technical choice. A long take is a statement of intent; a decision to let time breathe, to trust the audience’s attention, and to allow a scene to unfold with the weight of real duration.
This guide covers everything you need to know about the long take: what it is, why filmmakers use it, how it differs from similar techniques, and the greatest examples ever committed to film.
What is a Long Take?
A long take can be defined as a shot that lasts long enough to capture the entire action of a scene without any break in the continuity of the scene. This is achieved through elaborate camera movement and blocking. In order to understand the idea of long take better, let us take two examples.
In an example of how a scene is captured through various shot divisions, check out this clip from Sicario (2015).
In these clips we discover that in Chandler, Arizona, FBI Special Agents Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) and Reggie Wayne (Daniel Kaluuya) lead a raid on a Sonora Cartel safe house where they discover dozens of decaying corpses. The tense moments in the scene are generated through joining a number of shots with different compositions.
Whereas in this clip from Gravity (2013) we observe how Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Lieutenant Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) encounter a rapidly-expanding cloud of space debris accidentally caused by the Russians having shot down a presumed defunct spy satellite. Here the entire action is covered in a long take without any interruption of continuity within the action of the characters. The tension in the film heightens due to the use of an uninterrupted long take. If this action had been covered through multiple takes it may not have the same visceral impact. So, here the decision to use a long take fits aesthetically with the emotion of the scene.
Long Take vs. Sequence Shot vs. One-Shot Film: What’s the Difference?
These three terms are often used interchangeably, but they mean slightly different things.
Long take refers to any shot of extended duration within a conventionally edited film. The film around it may cut normally; the long take is a deliberate pause in that rhythm. The bear attack sequence in The Revenant is a long take. The Copacabana scene in Goodfellas is a long take.
Sequence shot is a long take that covers an entire dramatic sequence on its own—beginning, middle, and end—without any supporting coverage. It is a long take with a complete internal structure. The funeral procession in I Am Cuba is a sequence shot.
One-shot film refers to an entire feature presented as a single unbroken take or edited to appear that way. At nearly two-and-half-hours runtime, Victoria (2015) was a one-take film. Let that sink in! Birdman (2014) and 1917 (2019) simulate the effect through carefully concealed cuts. Rope (1948) uses hidden cuts in the editing to create the illusion.
Understanding the distinction matters because each serves a different dramatic purpose and requires a different level of planning, rehearsal, and technical preparation.
Directors Who Built Their Style Around the Long Take
Certain filmmakers have made the long take central to their artistic identity, treating it as a philosophical position on what cinema is for rather than a stunt.
Andrei Tarkovsky believed that cinema’s unique quality was its relationship with real time. His films, including Stalker (1979), Andrei Rublev (1966), and The Sacrifice (1986), use long takes for contemplation rather than spectacle. He wanted the viewer to feel duration unfold in real time, instead of simply watching it pass.
For Orson Welles, the long take was a demonstration of authorial control. The opening of Touch of Evil (1958) announced, in three minutes and twenty seconds, that everything happening on screen was being conducted by a single, commanding intelligence.
Alfonso Cuarón uses the long take to create physical immediacy. The car attack in Children of Men (2006) and the opening twenty minutes of Gravity (2013) are designed to make cutting feel like a relief the viewer is denied.
Béla Tarr took the long take to its logical extreme. His films, including Sátántangó (1994) and The Turin Horse (2011), contain shots lasting ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. A Tarr film makes the viewer feel every second of that duration pass.
Hou Hsiao-hsien uses the long take as a form of restraint, refusing to impose meaning on a scene before the viewer has had time to find it themselves. His camera observes rather than directs.
Martin Scorsese deploys the long take strategically, as a counterpoint to his otherwise kinetic editing style. When the camera moves with Henry Hill through the Copacabana in Goodfellas, the unbroken shot communicates the seamless, frictionless power of a man who belongs everywhere.
How a Long Take Is Planned: Pre-Production
A long take doesn’t begin on set. It begins weeks or months earlier, in conversations between the director, cinematographer, and the entire crew.
Blocking comes first. Every movement of the camera, the actors, and the background must be choreographed with the precision of a stage production. A single actor pausing half a second too long, a grip moving into frame, or a focus puller missing their mark can collapse the take.
Rehearsal time is non-negotiable. The Copacabana scene in Goodfellas required rehearsals over several days before a frame was shot. The bear sequence in The Revenant was rehearsed with the visual effects team mapping every position before the camera rolled.
The shot list changes entirely. A conventional scene might require fifteen to twenty separate setups. A long take collapses all of that into one, but the preparation required multiplies accordingly. The camera’s path must be plotted like a choreographic score.
Equipment decisions are made in pre-production. Whether to use a Steadicam, a dolly, a crane, or a combination, and how to transition between them mid-shot, is determined before the shoot begins. The funeral procession in I Am Cuba required a custom-built elevator, aerial cable rails, and a camera passed between operators mid-shot. None of that was improvised on the day.
How many takes does it typically require? There is no standard answer. Some long takes are achieved in two or three attempts. Others take dozens. The Dunkirk beach sequence in Atonement was limited by practical constraints: one day with extras, and the tide coming in. In that case, necessity compressed the number of attempts. In Victoria, the entire film was shot in a single take, leaving no room for a second chance.
Long Takes in Television
The long take is no longer exclusive to cinema. Television, particularly prestige drama, has used it with significant effect.
True Detective, Season 1, Episode 4 (2014): Director Cary Joji Fukunaga’s six-minute tracking shot through a series of drug dens and gang confrontations is one of the most technically demanding long takes in television history. Shot in a single take, it follows detective Rust Cohle through a neighbourhood raid that spirals violently out of control. The effect is suffocating. There is no relief, no cut to safety.
The Bear, Season 2 (2023): The episode Fishes has an extended, almost-unbroken sequence set during a Christmas dinner that escalates in intensity over forty-five minutes. Director Christopher Storer uses the long take to build emotional pressure, trapping the camera in a room with characters who cannot escape each other.
Arrested Development used comedic long takes in a single location to build layered jokes across a scene, proving the technique works as well in comedy as in drama.
The arrival of the long take in TV shows a broader shift. Directors with cinematic ambitions treat the small screen with the same formal rigour they would bring to a feature film.
Long Takes in Documentary Filmmaking
In fiction filmmaking, the long take is a planned construct. In documentary, it serves a different and equally powerful purpose. Authenticity.
A documentary long take shows that what you’ a’re watching has not been shaped by editing. The camera is present, recording, and can’t intrude. This creates a form of trust between filmmaker and viewer that no amount of careful cutting can replicate.
Frederick Wiseman has built an entire career on this principle. His films like Titicut Follies (1967), High School (1968), and Ex Libris (2017),observe institutions through long, unbroken takes that refuse to editorialize. The camera watches. The viewer decides.
Wang Bing, the Chinese documentary filmmaker, shoots in extended takes that can last an hour or more before a cut. His films, including Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (2003) and ‘Til Madness Do Us Part (2013), use duration itself as a form of argument: that the lives of his subjects cannot be compressed without distortion.
The documentary long take reflects respect for the subject, for time, and for the viewer’s capacity to pay attention.
Common Mistakes When Attempting a Long Take
For filmmakers attempting a long take, understanding what goes wrong is as important as understanding what the technique requires.
Focus pulling errors are the most common technical failure. A long take that tracks a moving subject requires the focus puller to hit every mark precisely across the full duration of the shot. A single soft frame in a three-minute take can make the entire thing unusable.
Crew visibility is a frequent problem in complex tracking shots. When the camera moves through a space, crew members, including grips, sound operators, and lighting technicians, must move with it without entering the frame. The 138-minute single take thriller Victoria (2015) shot across 22 real Berlin locations with no street closures, ran into exactly this problem.
Right after the bank heist, actress Laia Costa accidentally turned down the wrong street and drove directly past crew members who were meant to stay out of view. With no possibility of a retake mid-shot, cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen had to react instantly, reframing around the mistake to keep the crew out of frame as the scene continued. Director Sebastian Schipper later admitted the wrong turn was his own fault, having shouted directions to Costa from inside the car’s trunk during filming. The take survived only because the crew adapted in real time.
Another oft-overlooked problem is sound continuity. A long take captured in a real location may pick up ambient sound, such as traffic, aircraft, or wind, that changes across the duration of the shot. In a conventionally edited scene, these changes are masked by cuts. In a long take, they’re audible.
Actor fatigue too can pose a real challenge. An actor who delivers a perfect performance in take three may not be able to replicate it in take twelve, when repetition takes over instinct.
Overuse is the subtlest mistake. A long take that uses the technique because it’s technically impressive rather than because the scene requires it draws attention to itself rather than the story. The best long takes are the ones where the viewer doesn’t notice the technique at all.
Why do Cinematographers Use a Long Take?
In the current scenario of filmmaking practices, long takes have occupied a significant position in filmic language. They’re excruciatingly tough to pull off. So, when employed correctly with proper aesthetic reasoning, they can add depth and meaning to the narrative.
So, what specifically are the benefits of the long take? Here are some:
1. Long takes allow the director to add a certain aesthetic element within the scene that works in tandem with the theme of the film.
2. They allow the director to show how creatively they can push the envelope of filmmaking, infusing a level of control and confidence within the filmmaker that likely isn’t limited to the take.
3. Long takes provide a certain kind of continuity to a scene that might not be achieved through cuts.
4. They also generate a greater sense of scope, drama, tension, and immediacy for the viewer.
Now that you know when to use a long take in a movie, you might ask how long is a long take? The answer to this is there is no timing set for a shot to become a long take. It can be from one minute in duration to fifteen minutes or more in length. This is the reason why a long take is also known as a ‘sequence shot.’
How Cinematographers Use The Long Take Technique
Over the years, cinematographers in collaboration with the director have used long takes in movies in various ways to add an aesthetic dimension to the narrative. Here are few examples of films that used the long take with extraordinary results:
1. Rope (1948)
Alfred Hitchcock and his cinematographer duo Joseph A. Valentine-William V. Skall shot the entire film in a manner that gives the impression of it being a one long continuous shot. In actuality, the entire film is structured during the process of editing to give it this striking feel. Hitchcock, being a master in film editing, shot the individual long shots in such a way that each shot ended with a black or a wipe. This helped to have a smooth transition from one shot to the other without any interruption.
The way in which the film is shot does not give hints or clues about what’s going to happen next in the story. So, the shot design piques our curiosity about what might happen to the characters.
2. Paths of Glory (1957)
Stanley Kubrick’s trench sequences, following Colonel Dax through a bombed-out World War I battlefield, were among the earliest demonstrations of the tracking shot’s emotional power. Shot using a rubber-wheeled dolly to avoid visible tracks, the camera moves continuously alongside Dax as he walks toward almost certain death, building dread through sustained, unbroken motion rather than cuts. Roger Ebert later wrote that the technique, which Kubrick would return to throughout his career, was aimed directly at the audience’s emotions rather than serving as a stylistic flourish.
3. Victoria (2015)
Sebastian Schipper’s crime thriller already mentioned above was a 138-minute, single take film. Cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen shot the film from about 4.30 am to 7.00 am on 27 April 2014 in the Kreuzberg and Mitte neighborhoods of Berlin. If we look at the film from an aesthetic point of view, the long shot provides a rich visual portrayal of a Spanish woman (Laia Costa) struggling to survive against the dark world of crime. This clip here gives us a glimpse of its narrative style and tone.
What Are The Various Types of Equipment To Achieve a Long Take?
1. Tripod
A tripod is the simplest camera accessory that can help achieve a long take without much physical effort. It’s a portable three-legged frame or stand, used as a platform for supporting the weight and maintaining the stability of another object. The three-legged (triangular stance) design provides good stability against gravitational loads as well as horizontal shear forces. It also provides better leverage for resisting tipping over due to lateral forces which can be achieved by spreading the legs away from the vertical center.
This clip from 12 Years a Slave (2013) is an example of a long take where the camera is placed on a tripod.
2. Steadicam
It is a brand of camera stabilizer mounts for motion picture cameras invented by Garrett Brown and introduced in 1975 by Cinema Products Corporation. A steadicam offers a camera operator to smoothly move with the camera and control its motion while following the subject.
This clip from Rocky (1976) (2:06 onwards) is an example of how a steadicam can be used for a long take.
3. Camera Dolly
A camera dolly is something similar to a cart that has wheels to facilitate smooth movement when placed on rails. The camera is then pushed along the track while the scene is being filmed or moved manually when using a handheld rig. A shot captured using such a set-up is called a ‘dolly shot’.
This clip from There Will Be Blood (2007) from 3:54-4:22 minutes is an example of how a camera dolly can be used to execute a long take.
4. Jimmy Jib
It is a device used to mount a camera on one end, and a counterweight with camera controls on the other. It allows the camera to be moved vertically, horizontally, or a combination of the two. Cinematographers use jimmy jib instead of cranes because jibs are lightweight and less complicated in assembling the entire device. But they are much more expensive than a crane.
The opening shot of La La Land (2016) is such an example.
10 Best Long Takes In Movie History
1. Touch of Evil (1958)
Touch of Evil is one of those film noirs that in a way had redefined the genre and, over the years, earned a cult status. Directed and acted by the master filmmaker Orson Welles, the film begins with a long take in the U.S.–Mexico border where a time bomb placed inside a vehicle explodes, killing a couple. The long take here proves remarkable, as on one hand, it heightens the suspense of the ticking bomb, and on the other, it introduces us to a number of characters.
The camera movement and lighting in the shots also play a crucial role in inciting the conflict within the scene. It signifies how crime and menace can dexterously maneuver their way into the lives of the characters who inhabit the film’s universe. Hence, the long take captures the feel of the background, setting, and atmosphere of the subject, making use of striking visuals to communicate the theme.
2. I Am Cuba (1964)
Mikhail Kalatozov’s Cuban-Soviet co-production was dismissed by both governments on release and largely forgotten for three decades. Its reputation rests heavily on a single sequence: a funeral procession captured in one unbroken take, where the camera moves up a building, passes through a cigar factory, and ends up floating above mourners in the street. Cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky achieved this using improvised rigging, hand-offs between camera operators, and overhead cables, all without modern stabilization tools.
The film stayed in the archives for nearly three decades before it resurfaced in the early 1990s and was reintroduced to American audiences by Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola in 1995. Its visual ambition has since influenced an entire generation of filmmakers (Paul Thomas Anderson, Boogie Nights) and cinematographers Bradford Young, Arrival), and is today regarded as one of the most technically audacious works in cinema history.
3. The Passenger (1975)
Michelangelo Antonioni’s neo-noir drama centers around David Locke (Jack Nicholson), an American journalist, who intentionally assumes the identity of a dead stranger. The decision pulls him into a world he cannot control and cannot escape.
The famous six-and-a-half-minute tracking shot begins in Locke’s hotel room, looking out onto a dusty, run-down square. The shot then moves out to the interior through the bars of the window. Antonioni has said that he wanted to have a shot in the film that transitioned from ‘subjectivity to objectivity.’ The cinematographer Tovoli later described Antonioni as saying, “And I want to get to objectivity without any cuts.” According to Tovoli, Antonioni had explained, “So we must do a long shot beginning with the protagonist—establishing a subjective view, with him in the hotel room—and then we go out of this window and observe the situation in an objective way.” Antonioni felt this was fundamental for the film.
4. The Shining (1980)
Kubrick’s use of the Steadicam, newly invented and still largely untested in 1980, gave him something no dolly or handheld camera could: a glide low enough to follow a child’s tricycle through the Overlook Hotel’s corridors at his exact eye level. Garrett Brown, the device’s own inventor, operated it himself, walking the halls with a wheelchair rig to keep the camera at that unnerving height. The effect is hypnotic rather than frantic.
The corridors stretch on with a calm that feels wrong precisely because nothing dramatic happens within the shot itself. That restraint is the achievement. Most filmmakers reach for the Steadicam to generate kinetic energy. Kubrick used it to generate dread through sheer steadiness, proving the technology’s range extended far beyond spectacle into something closer to psychological menace.
5. The Sacrifice (1986)
Andrei Tarkovsky’s Swedish drama narrates the tale of a middle-aged intellectual Alexander (Erland Josephson), who attempts to bargain with God to stop an impending nuclear holocaust.
In this clip from 3 minutes in, amidst his despair, Alexander turns to God in prayer, offering him everything to have the war not happen. He sets his house on fire as a sign of doing a deal with the almighty. This particular long shot towards the end of the film is crucial because it boldly deals with social and religious strife, communal tensions, violence and disharmony in contemporary times. The film has a message of love and peace and this shot conveys it in a sensitive way. It explores the power of human relationships in overcoming social and religious schisms.
6. Goodfellas (1990)
The Copacabana sequence in Goodfellas runs nearly three minutes without a cut. The camera follows Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) and Karen (Lorraine Bracco) through the club’s back entrance, down a service corridor, through the kitchen, and into the main room where a table materialises from nowhere and is set for them instantly.
Steadicam operator Larry McConkey tracked the movement through a working restaurant: every waiter, cook, and doorman choreographed to be in exactly the right place. The logistics took days of rehearsal.
What Scorsese understood is that the unbroken shot doesn’t just show Henry’s power; it puts the viewer inside it. There’s no cut to remind you you’re watching a film. You glide through the same doors Henry does, receive the same deference, feel the same frictionless ease. By the time Karen leans over and asks “What do you do?” the viewer already knows the answer. The shot has told them.
7. Russian Ark (2002)
Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark is the first feature film ever shot in a single, unedited take, running 96 minutes through thirty-three rooms of the Hermitage in St Petersburg. Cinematographer Tilman Büttner carried an 80-pound Steadicam rig, recording uncompressed HD footage directly to a hard disk, the only technology then capable of holding a take that long. With over 2000 performers and three orchestras choreographed across the museum, the crew had one day, granted by the Hermitage itself, to attempt the shot. The first three takes failed. The fourth succeeded, completed in the last hour of usable winter daylight.
Roger Ebert wrote that the film “spins a daydream made of centuries.” For filmmakers, it remains the definitive proof of how far planning, not improvisation, can push the long take: every room had to be lit, dressed, and ready the instant the camera arrived.
8. Old Boy (2003)
In Park Chan-wook’s cult classic, Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) is released after fifteen years of unexplained captivity and sets out to find his captor. The film’s defining sequence is a corridor fight: Dae-su, armed with a claw hammer, battles his way through a hallway of thugs in a single, unbroken side-scrolling shot.
The sequence took seventeen takes across three days to perfect, filmed entirely without edits. Park and cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon designed it to feel like a side-scrolling video game, prioritising clarity and physical choreography over the rapid cutting that dominated action cinema at the time. The only digital effect in the scene is a knife shown stabbed into Dae-su’s back.
The shot rejected the shaky-cam trends of its era, letting audiences track the fight’s geography and the protagonist’s exhaustion in real time. Its influence later surfaced in films like John Wick and Atomic Blonde.
9. Children of Men (2006)
Children of Men is one of the most overlooked, ambitious films of the Mexican auteur Alfonso Cuarón. It is a futuristic film where the world is hit by infertility and the protagonist Theo Faron (Clive Owen) must save the last lineage of the universe before it’s too late.
In this clip, we observe a dystopian world that has undergone a wake of infertility. Theo Faron has been tasked with escorting a pregnant asylum seeker to safety. As Theo maneuvers his way through the dystopian roads, he encounters one obstacle after another. The use of long take highlights how, despite the difficulties, the protagonist eventually reaches a spot where he finds a woman holding a newborn. It symbolizes hope amidst the bleakness and violence. Technically too, the long take has the camera moving, rotating, going over the shoulders, changing its position to create a dramatic and narrative effect, honing in on the emotional turmoil to capture attention.
Watch the scene here.
10. Atonement (2007)
Joe Wright’s Atonement, based on a novel by Ian McEwan, is a romantic war drama set during 1930s England. In this clip, the evacuation of Dunkirk, also known as Operation Dynamo in the film, is captured in a single take shot that lasts around five minutes. The handheld camera tracking the beach captures the horrid devastation of war. It creates a kind of visceral reaction as we’re left with haunting, rousing, images. The Super 1.85:1 format also adds vitality and emotion to the entire scene.
In an interview the filmmaker discusses how the shot was conceived. Wright says, “It was conceived out of necessity. We had one day with the extras and then the small issue of the tide coming in and washing away the entire set.”
Even if, and possibly more so, out of necessity, this is one of the most remarkable long takes in world cinema.
