Behind the Scenes
Ideas:
This segment from unReal is a scene that not just anyone or any group could pull of, the team of cinematographers pulled it off with a truck, a camera, and four dudes. They spent a month building the trail and the very important road for the truck to drive on in a month. They practiced the shooting for only ten days. There challenge was to somehow shoot one consecutive shot, of a rider traveling at 25 plus miles an hour, and in turn the rider himself can not make any mistakes. The focus has to be right the truck has to be in the right position at all times, while the camera always needs to be tracking the rider perfectly. The driver can’t drive the truck to fast or too slow, that position call out guy needs to be on top of were the rider is, so that the camera operator and the focus technician knows exactly were the rider is. The crew could not have any mistakes. Unlike a normal mountain bike film where you take 30 or 40 shots in roughly three minutes and if you make a mistakes in on clip you simply trim it or don’t use it at all. While for this scene it as all or nothing — literally. Everyone has to be on their A-game.
During most all of the shot the crew inside the truck is completely quite besides expect for the call guy, giving directions to the other three guys. This seems like a small detail, but it is important part of the production. If other people are saying things or calling out, there’s a good chance things could go south. The building of the road and the trail had to be spot on, the road had to put the camera in range of the bike trail and the trail had to built in a way around the road that shot felt surreal in a way, hence the name of the film — unReal. The attention to detail and the amount of time the crew spent on pre production is probably uncountable. It goes to show how important it is to plan, plan, plan, plan for production. You can never be over prepared. The One Shot seems so simple to the viewers, but when you dig deeper into the production you realize it isn’t something you can pull off, just off the cuff.
It’s nice to see sometimes people focus more on getting the shot or shots right the first time then relying on post processes to fix all of their mistakes. It’s more of a genuine form of cinematography. The one shot gets to the roots of were it all became. Something that is rarely done and easy to mess up, but when done right is simply amazing. The crew for the unReal film got it right, and in turn this one shoot is the most important one of the whole film.
