I do need to go look at the film again, but as I recall, there are 2 distinct cuts in ROPE, which would mean that there are 3 "shots" in the film. The interesting thing is that the actual cuts seemed far less obvious than the track to bookshelf device used to cover the reel changes that Leo mentions. Don Larsson -------------------------------------------- "Only connect." --EM Forster Donald F. Larsson English Department Armstrong Hall 230 Minnesota State University Mankato, MN [log in to unmask] Phone: 507-389-5501 -----Original Message----- From: Film and TV Studies Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Leo Enticknap Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2004 10:42 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Reply: long takes 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 ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu