How the Hidden Edits Used in ‘Birdman’ Made It Appear As If It Were Filmed in One Continuous Shot

In a recent episode of “Frame by Frame” by the Film Theorists, host Kyle explains how the movie Birdman used a series of cleverly hidden edits to make the movie appear as if it were filmed in one continuous shot and how Alfred Hitchcock employed tricks in his classic film Rope in 1948.

Most continuous takes are not continuous at all and whether it’s 1948 or 2015 the principle behind hiding cuts remains the same. You see, the key is to distract you the viewer in order to disguise edits. Now filmmakers can do that with whip pans – objects moving to the foreground or even obscuring the entire image as we saw in “Rope” or with camera pushes like these. Either way though the results are the same the image is obscured and so is your focus creating the illusion of simultaneous action. So is Birdman’s design as revolutionary as the media stated? Not really these techniques are almost a century old after all, but Birdman took this concept and gave it wings, perfecting it to such a degree that this movie doesn’t just fly it soars.

via Boing Boing