The Terrain of the Long Take

Abstract

This autobiographical essay examines my inclination towards the use of the long take in documentary film and video. I discuss how my documentary practice is dominated by the take in duration; the ways in which I use the time of the frame to draw closer, in an intuitive way, to the profilmic; and how the long take makes visible the complexities of living through the representation of landscape, space, and time. I describe the process of framing my subject, what the long take signifies in the moment of its capture, as well as what the duration of my frame might express to an audience in search of meaning. I also consider the possibility that the long take is an autobiographical impulse, derived from the experience of inhabiting a landscape that is itself both time and space.