Long Take in "The Protector"

It was tough for me to decide what scene to bring into our conversation. I've already brought up "Woman in the Dunes," and while I considered using Ozu's "Floating Weeds" or "Tokyo Story," I've decided to go with "The Protector" (Pinkaew, 2005), a martial arts film starring a talented muay thai martial artist, Tony Jaa. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zESe7U467vs This scene features two interesting camera elements: a very mobile camera, and a very long take. This scene is mostly impressive from a production standpoint. The scene features many, many stunt personnel, and has the main character climbing the interior of a tall building. Most impressive is the camera operator's stamina and ability to keep the camera stable, as for this scene, even a stabalizing mount would not have been able to keep the image stable without great endurance by the camera operator.