The Studio S1E2: The Oner
A one-shot, (or, per the episode’s title, a oner), is a long, continuous camera shot in a movie. It’s tricky to film (if one little thing goes wrong in the extended sequence, you have to start over), so it’s a director’s way of showing off. It’s impressive, but it’s also self-indulgent and a little pretentious.
We know this because new studio head Matt and his coked-up bro film executive friend Sal tell us as much as they drive up to a movie set, in one continuous shot that extends through the entire episode. A self-indulgent bit that the show insists you notice? Absolutely. Impressive? Also absolutely.
Granted, in the digital era, there are plenty of ways to cheat a oner. Hitchcock’s 1948 flim Rope was one continuous shot — he planned the camera past something dark every 8 minutes to hide the cuts, because reels of film were 8 minutes long. And in the digital era, the cheats are even easier to make and easier to hide from the audience.
That being said, this is a messy, chaotic episode that, no matter how many cheats you get to make, had to have been very difficult to choreograph, and the results are damned impressive.
Again, we open on Matt and Sal driving up to a movie set. Sal tries to convince him he’s going to be disruptive, but Matt loves movies, he loves being on set in the middle of it. So naturally, he’s disruptive. In the first episode, Matt fretted to his mentor, Patty, that he wants to make great movies, and yet in his new position, “I feel like my job is to ruin them.” So naturally, the second episode makes that literal, as Matt trips over himself literally and figuratively, inadvertently doing everything he can to ruin a carefully-constructed oner director Sarah Polley (playing herself) is trying to capture before she loses the light.
Some of this isn’t Matt’s fault. His presence is disruptive simply because of who he is. He’s the boss that everyone wants to suck up to, either out of fear of being fired, or because they want something. Polley’s hoping he’ll spend $800,000 to put “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” over the scene she’s shooting. Greta Lee (playing herself), the movie’s star, wants to flatter Matt so he’ll let her fly around in the studio’s private jet instead of commercial.
But some of the disruption is just Matt being an oblivious pain in the ass. Yes, he loves movies, and he’s genuinely psyched to be a big shot on a movie set. (Sal admits to being in it for the sex, drugs, and money). Except Matt’s spent his whole life on movie sets, one would think that A) the thrill would be lessened a bit and B) he’d know better than to get in everyone’s way constantly. Being oblivious to the job everyone else has to do makes sense for a corporate suit who comes in giving notes; Matt mentions several times he started out as a PA. He knows how all of this stuff works. His incompetence gets laid on too thick and begins to stretch credulity.
The episode does at least constantly shake things up between pure accidents, things that aren’t Matt’s fault but he’s somehow in the middle of, and things carefully set up in the first act that blow up in his face in the third. Yes, the episode-long one shot is pretentious and indulgent, but it’s also an impressive bit of filmmaking, expertly set up, and it adds up to an entertaining amount of mayhem, until finally Matt and Sal drive away, having learned very little, to the tune of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” The show wants you to know how clever they are, but in their defense, they’re exceedingly clever.
Quick cuts:
• “You’re not as dumb as you look. Which is saying a lot considering how dumb you look.”
