Orchestrating Spatial Continuity in the Urban Realm

ABSTRACT

Any instance of filmmaking on location involves an interaction between the given space and the movement of the camera through it, the relationship of the recording plane to that movement, and the space as it is recorded and reconstituted in the finished film. Every level of this relationship has an apparent transparency but every level is in fact complex and open to manipulation and interpretation. In this context, the use of the long sequence shot takes on particular characteristics and significance in relation to real space. The long take is interested in establishing spatial continuity by offering an unbroken line of recorded action. By virtue of the path traced by the camera, and its shifting viewpoint along that trajectory, the full map of the terrain gradually reveals itself. Through analyzing a selection of long sequence shots this article examines how this particular technique of cinematography can be used as the site of design research.

Keywords:

• Long take
• spatial flow
• André Bazin

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Igea Troiani

Igea Troiani is an academic, architect and independent filmmaker. She is founding director of the independent film company Caryatid Films and of the Oxford-based architectural practice Original Field of Architecture. She contributes regularly to international journals, edited collections and exhibitions. She is coeditor of The Politics of Making and editor in chief of Architecture and Culture. Included in her teaching, research and practice interests are the expansion of possibilities of architectural practice, drawing, and thinking beyond established institutionalized standards.

Hugh Campbell

Hugh Campbell is Professor of Architecture at University College Dublin, where he is head of the School of Architecture. His doctoral research was on the sociopolitical context of Irish architecture and urbanism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has continued to research and write on Ireland's modern and contemporary architecture. He is coeditor of Architecture 1600–2000, volume four of the five-volume “Art and Architecture of Ireland” series published by Yale University Press (2014). With Nathalie Weadick, he was curator of The Lives of Spaces, Ireland's exhibition at the 2008 Venice Biennale. His more recent research exploring the relationship between photography, architecture and the construction of the self is currently being developed into a book