Peter Giles

Alfonso Cuarón on how this continuous shot in "Children of Men" (2006) was clinched in the final attempt & the "Miracle" that occurred while filming: "Interviewer: When Theo runs into a hollowed-out bus in that shot, blood splatters on the camera lens. Can you tell me how that happened? Cuarón: Initially, there was going to be blood splatter on the lens when they ki!!ed Julianne Moore. We were going to add that digitally. But long story short — or long story long — is that for [the refugee camp] shot, we had like 14 days to shoot the whole set piece, except by day 12 we hadn’t rolled cameras yet. As you can guess, by day three that you don’t shoot camera, they send a production guy from the studio to visit you. By the sixth day that you haven’t done it, the creative executive comes to visit you. Well, by the time that you reach the 11th day, the head of the studio is there. That kind of stuff. And the problem is that we had only two shots a day to do the thing. The morning, then you have to reset the explosions, the screams, the whole thing. Five hours to reset. So you only have another shot right before the light goes away. And the problem is that, we could not extend it to the 15th day, because there was already a commitment with the army or something, one of those things. So we are in the 13th day, and in the afternoon, we do our first shot. Then after a minute and a half, it just was wrong. So we had to reset for the next day. The next morning we do the first take, and everything is perfect, and we’re about to reach the end. We were running towards getting inside the building, when [camera operator] George [Richardson] tripped, and so the camera fell. So we only had one more shot for one more before we have to move out. It was the end of my career. Interviewer: Were you panicking at that point? Cuarón: You know, at that point, you’re just focusing. Interviewer: Okay, so you get to the final attempt at the shot. Cuarón: And when we arrived at the bus, the camera goes in, and blood splatters the lens. With my little monitor, I see that I cannot see anything. I yell, “Cut!” But an explosion happens at the same time, so nobody hears me. And that gives me time to think, “Look, I have to roll to the end.” So we kept on going. When we said, “Cut,” Chivo [Emmanuel Lubezki] starts dancing like crazy. And I was like, “No, it didn’t work! There’s blood!” And Chivo turns to me and says, “You stupid! That was a miracle! The blood goes here, not with Julianne Moore!” Yeah, that was supposed to go in the other scene, but it happened here." ("The Vulture Transcript: Alfonso Cuarón on Children of Men", Abraham Josephine Riesman, Vulture, 2017)