There is a scene in François Truffaut’s film of Fahrenheit 451 (1966) that is almost all a single take. It is especially remarkable because in the background a monorail is operating. One shot. No edits. No CGI.

The shot is three minutes and four seconds long. I timed it. That is quite a lot of screen time for one shot.

But why does it exist?

Still from Fahrenheit 451, as seen on actionet.com

Montag and Clarisse are walking home after departing the monorail. A tracking shot, they walk and talk as the monorail departs in the background. Later in the shot it comes back in the opposite direction and, later still, it appears again, going in the original direction.

The coordination involved would have been substantial. There is a good amount of dialogue for the actors to maintain (not difficult for actors in general, but one flub and it’s back to one) and any mistake with the monorail and the whole thing needs to start over, which would include getting the monorail car back into position.

In a way, the back and forth of the monorail car does not make sense. There is only one track. How are cars taking opposite routes on the same track unless there is some switching going on at the supposed stations along the way — or unless it’s a very short track between two stations, as indeed it was, because it was a proof-of-concept that was only a mile long in real life.

Two people on a tandem bike cross the shot at the beginning of the characters’ walk and pass in front again toward the end. It’s curious that it would be the same people but there is a lot of surreality put into the film on purpose. They are also seen in the background during the shot, stopped and perhaps fixing the bike, another addition to demonstrate the complexity of this single take. If one thing went wrong, just with the bikers — it's back to one again.

The sound of an aircraft becomes quite loud toward the end of the shot and continues after a cut. I wonder if it interrupted the shot and they added it to the following shot or if it was inserted on purpose all along. The actors’ voices sound dubbed so I assume it’s on purpose — an alarm, a warning as we see Clarisse’s house for the first time, an indication of the oppressive government, a transition to get us out of that long single take so that the cut is less jarring.

But Why?

Why a long single take? I believe directors like to show off that they can (and let’s put the crew through their paces) but there also needs to be a function in the telling of the story and in this case there is. It’s worldbuilding. Few people are going to be conscious of it being a single take but perhaps unconsciously it is increasing the potential of this being a real world because that monorail is functioning all the while they are talking (though in real reality it is just going back and forth). The length of the shot is teasing out our suspension of disbelief and toughening it. It's making the monorail real.

It’s marvelous — and potentially overlooked. Today the monorail would be CGI with no one blinking an eye and younger viewers used to it done digitally, perhaps no longer giving such things a second thought, unless they are interested in film technique — from the old days. But it's not meant to be noticeable anyway.

Suffering for Super 8

For a film project in college using Super 8 film I sat outside the Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., for about two hours with the camera set to take a frame once about every 30 seconds. There is a sculpture on a plinth outside the museum in an infinity shape that rotates very slowly. The motion is hardly noticeable. With the stop-motion technique the resulting bit of film made it look as if spinning.

Two hours or so. Maybe an hour and a half, of just sitting there while the camera clicked every 30 seconds, or perhaps every 60. One did such things. Because film was material and one literally cut and taped it when editing. You made things out of construction paper. You affixed with Elmer's Glue. You sat outside a museum for hours.

You do it because you want to, because you can, and I was putting my crew (consisting of just me) through its paces.

It's always worth it. Even if you're the only one who notices.

Fahrenheit 451 DVD cover on Amazon CA