It almost seems like a cheat to include an extended tracking shot for an 'opening shot,' as the shot itself takes on so many different forms and absorbs so much more information than conventional opening shots. But when it works, it works. You could have the opening eight-minute long take of Robert Altman's The Player (or even, technically, the entirety of the 87-minute Russian Ark, which is one long tracking shot from beginning to end), but for the best you have to look to a master. It's hard to figure out how - pre-Steadicam - Orson Welles even managed the opening shot of Touch of Evil, which begins on a close-up of a bomb, follows the man that plants the bomb on a car, then follows an unsuspecting couple as they drive the car down the street to their eventual doom. Welles' camerawork is so fluid it flies, in a similar way to that seen in Mikhail Kalatozov's I Am Cuba, but this shot is the touchstone for every director who's attempted a virtuosic tracking shot since.
Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the dashing young princes. Follow Brogan on twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion: @BroganMorris1
