10 Greatest ‘One Shot’ Scenes In Movie History
4. Atonement
Quite possibly the most impressive accomplishment on this list purely for the way it melds near-faultless cinematography with stunningly co-ordinated mass choreography, and still manages to be a triumph of one-shot cinema.
James McAvoy takes the plaudits for his performance here, but the man operating the near 70lbs Steadicam across a 5-minute long scene that required a quarter of a mile walk, deserves an Oscar all of his own. Across beaches and streets all strewn with rubble and stray legs, one single stumble would have ruined this, and two entire days of rehearsal went into getting the finished article.
Every single minute of those can be seen in the bags under James McAvoy's eyes.
The story also goes that this was originally storyboarded to be a standard set-up with all number of different takes and angles. But only having the location and crew for a short amount of time meant that getting it all in one go was considered the most effective way of filming it. Inadvertently producing one of the most striking scenes in modern cinema, and getting a Best Picture nomination in the process, apparently just happy accidents.