Cinema Science

Atonement director of photography Seamus McGarvey discussing that amazing 5 minute tracking shot from the middle of the film. This is an excerpt from an article at American Cinematographer.

Robbie and two fellow soldiers in his unit hide away in the French countryside and make their way toward Dunkirk, where the British forces are gathering after failing to quell the German push into France. Redcar, on England’s northeast shore, stood in for Dunkirk, and it was here that the filmmakers staged the long Steadicam shot that travels with the three soldiers as they uncover the scope of the scene before them.

Aware that the schedule would allow them roughly two days to shoot the sequence, Wright and McGarvey storyboarded the details they wanted the scene to convey. It very quickly became apparent that two days would not be enough, especially after a location scout raised concerns about the quality of light at the beach — McGarvey found it was only suitable at the end of the day. Mulling over this predicament, Wright began to reason that the best approach would be to cover the beach in one complex move; this would allow them to shoot when the light was at its best, and he also believed it would be an effective contrast to the quick cutting that characterizes many war films. “Our concern became how to choreograph the move and make it evolve in a way that would be interesting for the audience while communicating the chaos and waste of war,” says McGarvey. “At the same time, we wanted to stay with Robbie and maintain the sort of subjectivity and dreamscape atmosphere this section of the story had so far had.”

The art department created a detailed scale model of the beach that McGarvey and Wright could look at with “a little periscope finder,” says the cinematographer. “It allowed us to work out what we’d see at each point, how best to use our action vehicles, where to place fires, and where we would get the most out of the extras.” The beach had to be populated with more than 1,000 extras in period uniforms, and the first of the two shooting days was dedicated completely to rehearsal, which continued on the second day until the sun hit its mark in the late afternoon.

Flanked by McGarvey (who carried a remote iris-and-zoom control, plus a small monitor so he could see the shot), De Carvalho (pulling focus remotely), and two grips, Robertson began the shot riding on a small tracking vehicle that kept pace with the three soldiers as they entered the beach. After the soldiers passed a group of horses and rounded a beached boat, Robertson stepped off the vehicle and walked on the sand up to a bandstand. As the camera moved around the bandstand, McGarvey opened the stop from a T5.6 ½ to a T2.8 ½, stopping down again when the camera was clear of the stand. Meanwhile, Robertson reached the other side of the stand and moved down a ramp. Soon thereafter, actor McAvoy stepped into a close-up and Robertson stepped onto a rickshaw that was moved past a brief scrap Robbie’s compatriots have with another soldier and to the beach end of a pier. Then, Robertson dismounted the rickshaw and moved down the pier and past a bar, into which Robbie’s two companions have disappeared. The shot ends when “Robbie stays outside [the bar] and looks out over the scene he’s just walked through,” says McGarvey. “His gaze led the camera into a pan, and for the first time, in a big wide shot, we reveal the entire scene.

“In the end, we did three good takes, and on the fourth the light had become really bad, so we just abandoned it mid-flow. Take three was the one we went with, and there was a strange phenomenon that happened in it: cloud diffusion appeared in the atmosphere, creating a little rainbow band on the edge of the sun. It was a beautiful, delicate color, and the light was just exquisite.”