One Camera, 5 1/2 minute scene, One day to pull it off!

I went to see Atonement tonight with my bride and it was one of the best films I’ve ever seen.  Brilliant writing, stellar acting, stunning cinematography and of course “the shot”

  ”In the middle of Atonement, a 5 1/2-minute shot unfolds as Robbie (James McAvoy), a British soldier in World War II, comes upon France’s Dunkirk beach, where the final point in the British retreat from the Germans is portrayed as a grim circus of defeat and chaos.

 The scene was composed with 1,000 extras, a number of horses and vehicles on the beach, and (digitally added) ships off the coast. It all cost a sizable chunk of the film’s estimated $30 million production budget and  to be shot in a single day.  

While the tide was out and the light was right, Wright and his crew managed 3 1/2 takes - the fourth finally exhausting Steadicam operator Peter Robertson. (They used the third take.)” 

Here it is… 

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