Look Behind the Camera of the 2-Minute Steadicam Shot in 'Hugo'

Aside from P.T. Anderson, one of the filmmakers better known for some impressive, elaborate, single-take, tracking shot sequences is Martin Scorsese. The opening of GoodFellas is the most prominent one that comes to mind, but there's another fantastic piece of cinematography from the closing of Scorsese's Best Picture nominated film Hugo. A single, steadicam shot walks us through George Melies house during a celebration showing us all our main characters and wrapping up the story in a charming package. Now a new video let's us be a fly on the camera as it sweeps through the set for this perfectly choreographed scene.

Here's this awesome behind-the-scenes video from Martin Scorsese's Hugo via The Playlist:

It's great to see the inner-workings of the set with the crew moving quickly in and out of the room, moving entire walls, and extras quickly moving past the camera once they're off-screen. Plus, it just goes to show you how much work goes into a short sequence and all of the post-production efforts that go into making this shot look even more seamless. From Chloe Moretz, Asa Butterfield, Sacha Baron Cohen, Emily Mortimer and Ben Kingsley nailing their marks to all the boom mike operators sweeping in and out of sight, it's like watching a dance number. For those curious how they captured this, Steadicam operator Larry McConkey put a GoPro camera on top of his own and Scorsese was awesome enough to let it happen.

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