Films › Cinematography
Touch of Evil
Directed by Orson Welles, 1958
The opening crane shot runs over three minutes and moves through a border town, a street, and two conversations before the bomb pays it off. Russell Metty's photography leans on extreme wide angles, low camera heights and pooled street light. The interrogation sequences use long unbroken takes to trap the actors in the same frame as their accuser. It is a textbook on staging for a moving camera rather than for the cut. The opening crane shot required a custom-built boom and a synchronized traffic and pedestrian cue system, since the entire sequence had to hit its timing mark for the car bomb without a single cut to hide an error. Welles and Metty rehearsed the shot for days, adjusting blocking rather than camera movement whenever timing slipped. Art direction favored cramped, low-ceilinged sets on the Mexican side of the border to force the wide lenses into further distortion. Directors planning an unbroken opening shot should study how much of the film's tension here comes from the audience's awareness that the timer is real.
What to watch for
Watch the opening for how a single move sets geography, threat and timing without a word of exposition.
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