'True Detective' Season 2 Spoilers: New Season to Include Another 'One Take Gauntlet'? [VIDEO]
When it comes to True Detective, creator Nic Pizolatto likes to take risks.
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During True Detective's first season on HBO earlier this year, Pizolatto decided to film an entire six minute scene using one, un-edited take. In the scene, featured in the fourth episode, Rust Cohle (Mathew McConaughey) takes a hostage and moves across the wide landscape of a bad neighborhood in the midst's chaos. The camera doesn't moving. And neither do the characters.
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Pizolatto refers to the scene as a "one take gauntlet". In a behind the scenes interview (features below) show runners go on to describe the thinking behind the scene. "Knowing we were going to be locked in this moment," they explained, "it was the perfect opportunity to run one long take...a lot of things are happening.
This scene, which included dozens of extras and a lot of careful planning, was a stylistic choice. They didn't have to do it, they wanted to. The questions is: Will they try it again?
Directors have done it before. Director Joe Wright of Pride and Prejudice and Atonement fame includes one such scene in each of his films. True Detective may decide to take a page right out of his book.
While casting is still uncertain and the plot has yet to be revealed, True Detective's second season is set to take place in California, which could lend itself to the same kind of complicated, choreographed "one take gauntlet."
With three lead characters coming up this season, a scene like this might even outdo the original.