The ‘Strange Days’ scene that took Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron six months to create
Following the success of Point Break, Kathryn Bigelow‘s star was rising at break-neck speed. Rather than rush into a new project, the director released her fifth film, Strange Days, four years later. Unfortunately, the cyberpunk thriller was a massive box-office failure; against its $42million production cost, Strange Days grossed less than $8million in the US. Despite rumours that the film would destroy Bigelow’s career, the director proved critics wrong, becoming the first woman to win the ‘Best Picture’ Academy Award with 2008’s The Hurt Locker.
Nevertheless, in the mid-1990s, Bigelow’s attempt at capturing the technological anxieties of the pre-millennium was received with negativity, regardless of the innovative formal techniques she employed to heighten the film’s narrative. Set during the last two days of 1999, Bigelow creates an apocalyptic atmosphere as we follow a black market seller (Ralph Fiennes) of virtual-reality-inspired recording devices (SQUID) as he attempts to uncover the events of a prostitute’s murder. Strange Days tackles heavy topics such as rape, racial violence, and technological voyeurism, using a powerful and defiant style that communicates the horrors of the modern world.
The film opens with an extended POV sequence that lasts three-and-a-half minutes, mimicking one take. The shot puts us in the shoes of a thief who, wearing the SQUID technology, breaks into a Chinese restaurant with a gang of criminals before robbing the cash register. Soon, the police arrive, and the thief attempts to escape the chase, indulging in some exciting rooftop parkour before falling to his death. This immersive technique prepares us for the film’s exploration of voyeuristic technology and instantly connects the audience to the film’s gripping events.
Although the sequence was challenging to prepare, Bigelow’s ex-husband and writer of Strange Days, James Cameron, was there to supervise the tricky technical aspects. The filmmaker is known for his intensely technical films, such as Avatar and Titanic. However, at this point, Cameron was an expert in practical effects, having previously filmed the dangerous Terminator 2: Judgement Day helicopter scene himself when the crew refused to shoot it.
In Brent Dunham’s Conversations with Filmmakers, Cameron explained the scene: “It’s one POV; all the actors play directly to the camera, in effect directly to the audience, meaning the person that is wearing the rig…you run across the roof, the guy ahead of you makes the jump, you hear your own breathing and heartbeat, he’s screaming, the cops are running toward you, you run, you don’t make it, you grab onto the other side of the wall, you look down, your feet are trying to climb but can’t get up the wall, the guy’s pulling you up, he gets shot, and you fall all the way to the alley, six stories down, you hit the ground, and the screen goes black.”
Over six months, the crew set up special cameras and rigs to capture the VR-inspired scene. Although the movements were highly choreographed, a few seamless cuts were added to give the impression that the sequence was captured in one take. The result is an exhilarating opening sequence that perfectly introduces the film’s subsequent events.
