25 Greatest Tracking Shots in Movie History
Technically many of these are long shots and not tracking shots, but if I wrote 25 Long Shots you may think I was referring to my bar tab or the 25 girls I hit on while racking up that bill.
Unfortantly many great scenes can no longer be found on the intertubes, such as the “Goodfellas” Copacabana scene. The good news is we found 25 other films where the marketing department didn’t have their heads completely up their legal asses.
Mean Streets
Children of Men
Touch of Evil
The Player
Kill Bill
Boogie Nights (no sound)
Breaking News
Contact
I Am Cuba
Weekend
Old Boy
Werckmeister Harmonies
Ulysses’ Gaze
The Mirror
The Protector aka Tom yum goong
Carlito’s Way
Russian Ark
Satantango
Strange Days
Nostalghia
The Shining
Snake Eyes
Werckmeister Harmonies
Frenzy
Rope
UPDATE – Just remembered one of my favorites, so here is #26:
HOLY CRAP – that Protectorate/Tommy Yum Goong was an amazing choreography feat…
This is a very good one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA86_HuMcBE
From the brilliant Argentinian film The Secret in Their Eyes
Almost a bit over the top, but the film Atonement, also has an amassing long take at the end:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB8tVQ_pWFA
Not over the top. The music, the scenery, the framing. Honestly deserves to be on this list, big time.
some of these are long, like 10+ minutes long.
What about Sakrifice, opening track shot from Tarkovsky? And end shot too (12 min, second take!)
Yes, and unlike some of the other mentions that really was one shot, AND they had to film it twice (rebuilding the entire burned-down set) because the camera jammed.
Evidently no one here saw Gone With The Wind?
[...] I love great tracking shots, those long, continuously moving camera shots that are often used to show off the director’s “vision” in epic films (see the battlefield scene in Atonement). So I was glad to find a list of the 25 greatest tracking shots in movie history. [...]
Hard boiled?
Russian Ark has to be the winner for me – one seamless shot from beginning to end of the movie. Yes, there are joins where they had to change film, but they’re cleverly spliced so you can’t see them – there are absolutely no cuts in the entire movie and it looks like one take. The choreography required to achieve that is amazing.
They didnt splice anything thing b/c it was recorded onto a harddrive that could hold 100 minutes of footage. It was carried behind the camera man as he walked room to room.
Missed the opening scene from JCVD.
Many thanks for your good publish. I’ll take the notes you’ve written.
What about Goodfellas? I mean one of the best shots is when they go into the restaurant from the back to basement to the kitchen to the dance floor. That needed to be shown.
Read the intro paragraph.
Babylon Gate from Intolerance.
whaddabout Elephant – Gus Van Sant hallway walking where tracking moves from behind to in front in time to ctach his backward glance – nice list! very cool
These are neither long shots nor tracking shots. They are long TAKES some of which contain long shots or tracking shots. Cinema studies 101?
These are “tracking shots” in that they “track” a subject without cutting. The word “take” is not really applicable because all shots are takes and the word really doesn’t have a meaning outside the production/editing process.
Perhaps you should go back and check your Cinema Studies worksheet before trying to pick semantic arguments.
The scene from Goodfellas: http://youtu.be/yCYwcObxl78