Pride of place in the filmmaker's toolkit is the one-shot sequence, also known as a one-er. Whenever a director and their crew pulls off one of these elaborately orchestrated sequences, it usually makes for a memorable moment, from Danny Torrance Big Wheeling through the haunted hotel in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining to the hallway fight in Daredevil. Aside from being a deeply satisfying way of heightening the narrative on our screens, it's basically a blue ribbon for anyone able to pull it off.
From choreography to lighting to camera techniques, no one-shot sequence is an accident. While most of the one-ers that end up in TV and film these days aren't pure single shots, but instead an expertly crafted series of shots stitched together to create the illusion of seamlessness, there are some that are a straight, unbroken line of storytelling. When utilised well, the single-shot boosts action, heightens emotion and creates the kind of tension that could be easily deflated by a quick cut here and there.
Here are the 12 best one-shot sequences in film and TV.
13. The Studio (Season 1, Episode 2)
An episode about a one-shot sequence that is itself a one-shot sequence—"meta," thy name is The Studio! Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's Hollywood satire—with Rogen as movie exec Matt Remmick, who fancies himself a defender of cinema even though his job requires him to sell out the art form time and again—uses unbroken takes to create a sense of mounting absurdity and kinetic energy in what would otherwise be a visually static show about people arguing in conference rooms. But the series' second episode ups the ante. Matt visits director Sarah Polley (playing herself) on set, and his bumbling presence becomes another complication as Polley attempts to pull off a complicated one-shot sequence starring Greta Lee (also playing herself.) The twist? The entire episode is itself a one-er—assembled from four different long takes over the course of several days, but we'll let them have it.
12. Succession (Season 4, Episode 3)
Ok, we're kind of cheating here, but Succession's shocking fourth-season death reveal has all the building tension of a one-shot sequence with just the odd cut every now and then. The series is shot on film, which means there's a finite amount of time that the camera can be held before reels need to be changed. Still, the director said they more or less filmed the scene where Kendall, Roman and Shiv find out about Logan's death at Connor's wedding in one go. One scene where that tracking shot is most deftly deployed is when Kendall tells Shiv to talk to their dad on the phone, with the single frame following them mirroring their frenzied intensity. There's something claustrophobic and heavy about the way the camera sticks to the siblings as the cracks in their cold veneer show the fear of losing their dad. Considering it was a mid-season twist of sorts, having a shot you literally can't look away from for fear of missing something just adds to the impact.
11. Creed (2015)
The key to a great sports movie is how well the director can make it feel like you're experiencing the intense highs and lows that come with competition. Normally, that means ramping up the adrenaline with fast-paced cuts, speeding us through the action to the all-important, euphoric win. In 2015's Creed, however, that technique (used, naturally, in Rocky) is shunned in favor of a brutal, extensive long shot that puts you in the ring with Michael B. Jordan's Donnie and his opponent. The scene tracks a fight that doesn't seem to want to end, highlighting the labor-intensive mundanity it takes to get to the final knock-out stage of a boxing match. With the tracking shot almost reflexively re-centering constantly on Jordan's face, we're never for a second allowed to step out of the ring.
10. Goodfellas (1990)
Martin Scorsese's iconic one-shot sequence in Goodfellas is all about seduction. It follows Ray Liotta's Henry and his date Karen (Lorraine Bracco) going from the car to the best seat at the Copacabana nightclub, with the camera following them from the back door through to the kitchen and then the packed patrons at the front of the club. This is Henry's seduction of Karen, sure, but it's also his seduction of us, the audience, as we get our first glimpse of the luxurious perks of organized crime. From Henry's deft ease at navigating the hallways of the club to his easy banter with the workers, every gesture is a casual display of power. It makes his subsequent, self-inflicted fall from grace into a schnook's life in the suburbs all the more stark and humbling.
9. Children of Men (2006)
This intense Children of Men tracking shot, one of a few in the movie, shifts the film into a different gear almost instantly. Having already set the scene of a fragile dystopia descended into chaos and prejudice, this scene—which involves Julianne Moore's Julian, Clive Owen's Theo and Chiwetel Ejiofor's Luke transporting a young pregnant woman across the country in a car—ramps up the danger with a shocking ambush that goes from zero to a hundred in just a few seconds. Tracking shots, by design, are tense, as they subconsciously keep viewers on tenterhooks. Even as the car of people joke around as if they're on a normal road trip, there's a mounting unease that bursts like a balloon once the gang of men try to destroy and kill them. The shot perfectly shows the way life can change in a split second.
8. Atonement (2007)
War will always serve as a deeply visceral setting for a lingering, one-shot sequence. From Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk to Sam Mendes' 1917, the trick has been used to portray the innocent and overwhelming humanity at the centre of the world's most brutal and shocking circumstances. That's never more apparent, however, than in 2007's Atonement. James McAvoy's Robbie is at the centre of the scene, at first almost unfazed by the sensory enormity of what's happening around him on the shores of Dunkirk. In the background, horses are shot, men are carried on stretchers, and soldiers shake with shell shock, all the while McAvoy is determined in his mission to get home. But as the beach fills the screen, the reality that he is just one of 300,000 men wanting to return to normality wipes across his face. By the end of the five minutes, your heart is in your stomach.
7. Daredevil (Season 2, Episode 3)
The stylish one-shot fight sequence from Daredevil's second season works on a number of levels. First, it's a primal hand-to-hand sequence befitting the most street-level of Marvel's superheroes. Second, it plays on our understanding of Matt Murdock's visual impairment, with no end to the shocks that await someone unable to see their way through the world. Finally, it just looks really cool. In a genre that falls back time and again on elaborate (and weightless) CGI battles, there's something satisfying about something so choreographed and analogue. Clearly heavily influenced by Park Chan-Wook's Oldboy (more on that in a second) and martial arts films coming out of East Asia, there's something deeply human and relatable about seeing someone's energy deplete in real-time, even if they are endowed with superpowers.
6. Oldboy (2003)
Like Daredevil, which obviously took influence from this iconic sequence, Park Chan Wook's one-shot fight scene takes place in a long hallway. The camera tracks it from the side, as if hugging the wall, making the area feels like an interminable stretch. The South Korean filmmaker revels in his protagonist Oh Dae-su's (Choi Min-sik) seemingly unwinnable bid for freedom as he takes on a neverending slew of bad guys, getting progressively more battered and bruised in the process. Unlike its Daredevil counterpart, the violence against Dae-su feels more grounded. He's kicked in the head and stabbed in the back, all while somehow clambering to defeat his foes. Miraculously, he does.
5. True Detective (Season 1, Episode 4)
Most one-shot sequences are actually a few shots cobbled together with the help of some expertly crafted cuts. True Detective's first season gives us a six-minute sequence that honestly could be a few neatly stitched scenes, but actually, it really is one, long continuous shot. One of the first offerings of the McConaissance, True Detective's power lies in its deft ability to be entertaining while being so incredibly bleak. Their one-shot trick comes in a scene of a police bust that turns into a public shoot-out. The beauty of a tracking shot is that, while our visual focus remains on McConaughey, we still hear the chaos around him while being unable to know exactly what's happening. It's an incredibly effective tool, as it drops us right into the action with them, highlighting the unpredictability and second-by-second decision-making of the character.
4. Touch of Evil (1958)
Orson Welles was an innovator of cinema, always attempting new things at the advent of modern movies, and one of his finest achievements is the long opening shot of his film 1958 Touch of Evil. There are no bells and whistles with this sequence, no tricks of the camera because, to put it bluntly, no one knew how to do that yet. The camera pans over a man placing a bomb in a car, that car driving away, a couple, played by Janet Leigh and Charlton Heston coming into focus and then the car, off camera, blowing up. Nowadays, this would be constructed by automated cameras and sound dollies, but back then the camera was stuck on tracks and a man with a boom mic had to remain off-screen. As one-shot sequences go, this is about as gold standard as you can get.
3. Call Me By Your Name (2017)
One-shot sequences are often reserved for action as they're a particularly effective tool to focus a person at the centre of something enormous. But Call Me By Your Name's final shot shows the impact of using a lingering shot for some of the most intimate and small moments. From the POV of a crackling fire, Timothée Chalamet's Elio stares into the light, sadness and tears slowly taking over his features. The sequence lasts for almost four minutes, the camera never cutting away from Chalamet's face. It's a deeply personal moment as his parents bustle behind him unable to see our vantage point. Like most of the film, much is said in the unsaid, the audience is asked to imprint their own relationship to being a teenager in love onto Elio. This sequence is the epitome of that, as we're invited to understand heartbreak in our own personal way.
2. The Bear (Season 1, Episode 7)
The Bear didn't just drop a one-er in their series to create a splash. No, they gave us a full, 18-minute-long complete one-shot episode. The series, about a volatile chef (Jeremy Allen White) returning to his hometown to run his late brother's restaurant, understands that a kitchen is like a battlefield. It's a sensory overload of stress, with any number of people at the centre trying to keep afloat. In that way, a single-shot episode feels fitting, especially when they're used so effectively in scenes of warfare. The never-ending shot only helps build up the mounting pressure of a busy restaurant at lunchtime, whipping our nerves into a bundled frenzy in real-time as the promise of some respite feels interminably long. The episode is a feat of technique, skill and choreography.
1. The Shining (1980)
You can't talk about one-shot sequences without mentioning the most unsettling of them all, from Stanely Kubrick's The Shining. As a whole, the film is a powder keg of unease, a bubbling pot of tension waiting to blow but never, even in its bigger moments, fully bursting. As we gear up to the final moments of explosiveness from Jack Nicholson's Jack, we're cued up with a series of ghostly set pieces. One of the more famous is Danny (Daniel Lloyd) riding his tricycle through the iconically carpeted floors of the Overlook Hotel. The child weaves his big wheel through the resort's winding corridor, and if it weren't for the choreography needed to execute a one-shot, you could easily believe he had just been told to go wherever he wants. His speedy journey is halted, however, by happening across door 237, the room of a haunted woman. The scene is short but impactful. Danny is young and innocent, but even he can't be spared from the horrors lurking in the corridors of his weird new home. ‘The Studio’
This story originally appeared in British GQ.