I've come to this thread late, so sorry in advance if this is stating what
John Cleese would call the bleedin' obvious.  Hitchcock's 'Rope' (1948) was
conceived as a continuous, 90-minute take.  But he found himself
constrained by the 1,000 foot spool capacity of the Technicolor camera, and
the practical difficulties of sound post-production in a single take of
that length.  Therefore, approximately every 10 minutes you see a pan or
track to an area of no movement (e.g. a bookshelf), a cut to the exact same
shot framed by the incoming camera, and then the incoming camera moves away
to recommence the sequence.  In post-production the camera changes were
deliberately NOT positioned to coincide with the ends of reels on the
release prints, lest the change in colour balance between IB dye balance on
the prints and/or the two projectors' light sources in the cinema 'blow'
the attempt to conceal the camera change.

L

Dr. Leo Enticknap
Senior Lecturer in Media Studies
School of Arts and Media/Northern Region Film and Television Archive
University of Teesside
Middlesbrough
TS1 3BA
United Kingdom
Tel. +44-(0)1642 384049
Fax +44-(0)8712 249151

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Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the
University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu