The beginning scene that opens Robert Altman’s of The Player is unusual in the fact that it is a long continuous shot opposed to numerous shots making up one scene. This 8-minute sequence shot features many different camera angles and shots that all flow from one to another. In this single long take, as the camera moves through the parking lot of a Hollywood studio, it follows numerous people engaging in conversation. It is also designed to introduce the people who work on the lot and setup the film’s plot.
It is immediately known that the film itself is set on a film set when the first thing heard is presumably a director saying “quiet on the set!” as well as an actual picture of a set. The next thing that is shown is a clapperboard, signaling the start of a scene. A girl answers a phone and the camera pans downwards and slowly does a backwards dolly out of the office. The camera continues into the air as it rises and pans left, using a crane shot to reveal the entire studio parking lot. The camera pans right into a tracking shot of a car from a distance as it pulls up and parks. A man exits the car and begins talking with another man as the camera follows their conversation until they get into an office building then it follows another conversation between two other men.
The characters are
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The theme of Hollywood’s deconstruction is shown by how everyone is driven by success and profit. There are multiple pitches, financing issues, assistants running around, top executives arriving in cars, and just the commotion happening in Hollywood studios. There is also a couple of conversations that happen where the actors mock the style of heavily edited film footage but also as a joke mention other films that have long sequence shots such as the opening shot of Touch of Evil, which was six and a half minutes