No Cut = Director's Cut

For the single screen, single take film, Russian Ark,director Aleksandr Sokurov (holding script) and cinematographer TilmanBûttner (with camera), used a portable rig for the Sony HDW-F90024p HD camera.

A disembodied voice speaks in the darkness wondering where heis. All of a sudden, lavishly dressed women and soldiers disembark froma carriage sweeping past his point of view, and he is carried into asumptuous party with the other guests. From there begins the journey ofRussian Ark — a journey through two centuries of Russianlife and history, all filmed in and around the historic State HermitageMuseum in St. Petersburg, shot in one single, astounding take.

Inside, the camera/protagonist meets a strange malcontent, dressedall in black, who is not sure what language he is speaking (it isRussian). The two of them begin a journey into the Russian soul, timetraveling through a labyrinth of passageways, anterooms, courtyards,and ballrooms. We glimpse Peter the Great flogging one of his generals,several love trysts in the hallways, contemporary art patrons in agallery, Catherine the Great tittering over a rehearsal of her play, alast meal with Tsar Nicholas and his family, and, finally the GrandRoyal Ball of 1913 with a live orchestra. All of this in an unedited,single screen, single shot, full-length movie.

Russian Ark needed years of development and months ofrehearsals, to culminate in a single take on a single shooting day. Theproduction involved 867 actors, hundreds of extras, 22 assistantdirectors, and three live orchestras. The vision for such a film camefrom Aleksandr Sokurov, one of Russia's premiere directors who has beenmaking features and documentaries for 25 years. He claimed he was sickof editing. “The idea was for a film shot, as it were, in asingle breath,” says Sokurov. “The screen format,cinematography — everything depends on the scissors, on theknife. Editors and producers accumulate then edit using time accordingto their whims. And I wanted to try and fit myself into the veryflowing of time, without remaking it according to my wishes.”

Though the idea has been kicked around before (Sokurov claims nooriginality for it), it really wasn't physically possible until therecent advent of compact 24p high-definition cameras. It is impossibleto record more than twelve continuous minutes of film, so video was theonly way to go. Hi-def 24p was the only video format that combinedportability with a visual quality worthy of the Hermitage fortransferring to 35mm negative.

The demands of the script included a precise architectural plan ofthe Hermitage, marking out a distance of 4,265ft. to be covered duringthe narrative. Using a Steadicam was the obvious choice, but itremained to be seen if an operator could sustain such a shot for anhour and a half. First, Kopp Media, a German company specializing inHD, designed a complex portable rig for German cinematographer TilmanBüttner. Büttner is best known for the frenzied movementshots in Run Lola Run.

The camera of choice was the Sony HDW-F900. However, an HD cameracan only record 46 minutes without changing tapes, and RussianArk was slated to run around 90 minutes. A solution was developedby Director's Friend, a company based in Cologne, Germany. Theydesigned a portable hard disk recording system, equipped with a specialultra-stable battery, which could record up to 100 minutes ofuncompressed image — but only once. Büttner was to carry iton his back.

As one watches the spectacle, the drama, and the meditation that isRussian Ark, it seems inconceivable that nothing went wrong toruin the take, and as the camera moves through the waltz near the endof the film, it is truly transporting. “In order to make a filmin a single breath the many different components within the wholeconcept have to be in accord with each other, all the different partshave to be linked together, and each must flow from the previouspart,” says Sokurov. “One has to grow a tree, as it were.Whenever I'm working on a film, I seek to grow a tree.”