Must Watch: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Work Through 5 Steadicam Shots

UPDATE 03/08/2013: The video is now available below

As you know since the Cuaron’s video, I love long takes, so I was very happy to discovered BFI published an excellent video essay from Kevin B. Lee going through 5 steadicam shots from 5 Paul Thomas Anderson‘s movies: Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Punch Drunk Love, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood.

Anderson took the habit of putting steadicam shots in every movie, some being more elaborated than others, but each one of them bringing something to the story and telling something to the audience. It’s interesting to see that in Punch Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood, even though the steadicam movement became minimalistic it almost revealed more about the characters than the most ambitious scenes.

There Will Be Blood also stands out  as Lee demonstrates how Anderson created four different framing within one take (see video for more).

Have a look below at each shot’s composition, its length and the camera operator’s name. The images below are screen captioned from the video you can watch here.

One of the great thing of the video is, while you watch the scene on the top right corner, you also see the camera movement on the bottom left corner. Highly recommended. (more than once actually)

Hard Eight

Boogie Night

Magnolia

Punch Drunk Love

There Will Be Blood

thanks to Roy Jamhouri for the video and IndieWire for the vimeo update.

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