Sebastian Schipper
23 connections found
Filmography
View:
Connections, in both directions
Like "Russian Ark," but fast!
In 2002, Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov created "Russian Ark," a fantastical, 99-minute art-and-history tour of the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, out of a single, flowing, uninterrupted camera shot, a feat made possible only by digital cameras.
Aleksandr Sokurov’s 2002 documentary Russian Ark created an elegant one-shot tour of the Hermitage Museum, but Victoria glides through the night in service of a story.
That’s been done before; back in 2002, during the infancy of the digital film revolution, “Russian Ark” offered a 96-minute take.
That bravura exploit (echoing Alexander Sokurov's documentary "Russian Ark") played out over 22 locations and needed the help of six assistant directors and three sound crews.
Director Sebastian Schipper amps up the intensity to "Run Lola Run" levels, but eventually overplays his hand.
It won’t surprise viewers unfamiliar with actor-turned-helmer Schipper’s career that he has previously collaborated with Tom Tykwer: For much of its seamless running time, “Victoria” essentially plays as “Run Lola Run” minus the stylized videogame conceit.
German director Sebastian Schipper is most famous for having acted a small role in Run Lola Run.
In 1998, Tom Tykwer made "Run Lola Run," a kinetic thriller in which the German star, Franka Potente (later of "The Bourne Identity"), seemed to never stop moving.
In its virtuosity, subject matter, and country of origin, Victoria calls to mind Run Lola Run.
Director/co-writer Sebastian Schipper, a veteran actor who’s appeared in “Run Lola Run” and “The English Patient,” knows character and performance as expertly as he does crime movie mechanics, and balances those elements so well in “Victoria” that watching it feels like being a sixth amigo, not just some detached audience member observing fictional figures.
Before Sunrise (1995)
Directed by Richard Linklater
influenced Victoria (2015)
Plot Themes Dialogue Characters
It’s like if “Before Sunrise” suddenly turned into a minimalist “Heat,” complete with a robbery scene shown entirely from within the getaway vehicle.
The transition from astute "Before Sunrise"-style love story to kinetic thriller in the vein of "Run Lola Run" is seamless.
Director Sebastian Schipper had only 12 pages of script, and with the cameras rolling nonstop, he let the actors improvise their lines, aiming for the loose conversational style of something like the Richard Linklater film “Before Sunrise.”
She accepts, and so begins an off-kilter adventure that brings to mind Before Sunrise — if Ethan Hawke’s Jesse had been of considerably more dubious character.
They wander a bit behind the rest of the hooligans, and their scenes have the easy, natural rapport of first love that recalls other single-night stories like Before Sunrise.
Schipper’s direction is extremely accomplished throughout, effectively pulling off a seamless series of genre switches, but giving each story equal dramatic and emotional weight, so that the early section has all the charm and intimacy of, say, Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (there’s a beautiful, tender moment involving a piano that comes out of nowhere and is utterly charming).
Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” consists of eight 10-minute takes (the limit of a standard film magazine); by contrast, Hungarian art-god Béla Tarr’s celebrated “Werckmeister Harmonies” – 39 fixed-camera shots over 145 minutes – is pretty much a hip-hop video.
Hitchcock did it in his audacious “Rope,” following two killers across the scene of a crime in 96 minutes of (pretend) uncut (pretend) real time — its collection of 8- to 10-minute shots seamlessly edited together to look like one.
Even Hitchcock’s Rope and last year’s Oscar-winner Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) pulled some deft maneuvers to create the illusion of filming all in one take.
Where other movies like Rope or Birdman artfully hid their cuts to give the illusion that their stories were happening in real time, director and co-writer Sebastian Schipper’s fourth feature works without a net, its two-hour-plus journey through the early morning hours of Berlin growing increasingly more suspenseful, his camera capturing every moment.
Victoria is not the first movie based on a single-shot conceit, but many feted previous examples have used visual sleight of hand, from Rope to Russian Ark to Birdman.
Alfred Hitchcock used extremely long takes (along with discreet cuts) to mimic a single-shot structure for his 1948 thriller “Rope.”
That last bit is swiped from the classic noir “Gun Crazy,” another film using its limitations (in that film’s case, money) as inspiration.
An even greater story influence appears to be the 1980s American thrillers After Hours (directed by Martin Scorsese ) and Jonathan Demme ’s Something Wild, in which flirtations with newcomers led to dangerous nights of the soul.
An even greater story influence appears to be the 1980s American thrillers After Hours (directed by Martin Scorsese ) and Jonathan Demme ’s Something Wild, in which flirtations with newcomers led to dangerous nights of the soul.
As far as I know, Mike Figgis’ “Timecode,” made in 2000, was the first true example, and as its title suggests it was essentially a novelty item.
Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” consists of eight 10-minute takes (the limit of a standard film magazine); by contrast, Hungarian art-god Béla Tarr’s celebrated “Werckmeister Harmonies” – 39 fixed-camera shots over 145 minutes – is pretty much a hip-hop video.
As she leaves, Sonne (Frederick Lau, "A Coffee in Berlin") and his buddies Boxer (Franz Rogowski), Blinker (Burak Yigit, "Mustang") and Fuß (Max Mauff, "Absurdistan," "The Reader") begin to flirt, hoping to convince her to stay out a little longer despite the late hour.
Maybe because it sounds near-impossible to streamline the unpredictability of a live battlefield as opposed to, say, the urban Broadway-ness of Birdman or the Berlin nightlife of Victoria.
¿Qué tienen en común La soga, del inglés Alfred Hitchcock; El arca rusa, del ruso Alexander Sokurov; Victoria, del alemán Sebastian Schipper, y Birdman, del mexicano Alejandro González Iñárritu, con 1917?
It was perhaps most famously showcased in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948), but 1917 isn’t even the first film this decade to rely on such a trick – Birdman (2014) and Victoria (2015) being the most notable examples.
Traditional narrative features like Victoria (2015), a romantic crime thriller filmed in a single 138-minute shot, have since figured out how to work narrative ebbs and flows into a similar visual fabric.
Fox is an English actor you’ve likely never heard of (his credits include Victoria ), son of another obscure actor, James Fox.
Orson Welles did it partly in “Touch of Evil,” his film-noir portrait of police corruption, opening with a long, ever-moving tracking shot told in one take, a masterful filmmaking first.
Hitchcock tried something similar, editing Rope’s 10-minute takes to simulate continuous action much as Birdman did, while Orson Welles’ long, bravura opening shot in Touch of Evil was emulated at Boogie Nights’ start.
El patetismo de Victoria me parece estrechamente relacionado al de Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) en Taxi Driver (1976), donde Nueva York es un dantesco círculo del infierno habitado por los condenados de America.
This film might have been a diverting enough successor to such other girl-falls-for-gangster classics as Breathless and Bonnie and Clyde.
Like last year’s Sydney Film Festival competition entry Fish & Cat, Schipper shot the film, in its entirety, three times, yet where Shahram Mokri used a handful of very cleverly hidden cuts, Schipper seems to have done Victoria without any.
In 1998, Tom Tykwer made "Run Lola Run," a kinetic thriller in which the German star, Franka Potente (later of "The Bourne Identity"), seemed to never stop moving.
The director's loose, intimate quotations of Children of Men 's protracted battle scenes (which were, themselves, quotations of Full Metal Jacket ) are initially lively and amusing, but they tediously comprise most of the film's second half, eventually fizzling out into redundant cacophony.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu
influenced Victoria (2015)
Visuals
Iñárritu imitated the technique to create the frenetic, unrelenting atmosphere of Birdman and, with Victoria, Sebastian Schipper can now boast of being one of the few directors to have shot his entire feature in a single continuous take, and one of even fewer to have done so to such staggering effect.
If films like “Birdman” or “The Revenant” display the immersive magic of the long take, “Victoria” is a painful example of how not to do it.
There's no getting around what the film promises to be, a two-hour plus story all done in one camera shot, and honestly so, not a series of clever edits like "Birdman".
Like "Birdman," but for real!
The hyperbolic hoopla surrounding Sebastian Schipper’s directorial debut Victoria similar to Russian Ark Timecode and to a lesser extent Birdman and Gravity runs 138 minutes without a single cut; that’s like reading a review devoid of proper syntax or punctuation.
Where other movies like Rope or Birdman artfully hid their cuts to give the illusion that their stories were happening in real time, director and co-writer Sebastian Schipper’s fourth feature works without a net, its two-hour-plus journey through the early morning hours of Berlin growing increasingly more suspenseful, his camera capturing every moment.
As she leaves, Sonne (Frederick Lau, "A Coffee in Berlin") and his buddies Boxer (Franz Rogowski), Blinker (Burak Yigit, "Mustang") and Fuß (Max Mauff, "Absurdistan," "The Reader") begin to flirt, hoping to convince her to stay out a little longer despite the late hour.
Director/co-writer Sebastian Schipper, a veteran actor who’s appeared in “Run Lola Run” and “The English Patient,” knows character and performance as expertly as he does crime movie mechanics, and balances those elements so well in “Victoria” that watching it feels like being a sixth amigo, not just some detached audience member observing fictional figures.