The opening to the highly acclaimed Paul Thomas Anderson picture "Boogie Nights" features an almost three-minute sequence that takes us through a nightclub and introduces us to each of the major players in the film.
The film opens in 1977 with a shot of the title's namesake, the neon sign of the "Boogie Nights" club, and swoops down to street level to follow Burt Reynolds' director and Julianne Moore's actress as they enter the club, and take their seats. The tracking shit at the centre of this sequence then follows characters around the dancefloor, constantly joining different conversations, establishing each characters' status and distinguishable persona, moving onto another character, before returning to Reynolds and Moore, and culminating with a shot of the main protagonist, 'Dirk Diggler', portrayed by Mark Wahlberg, in what appears to be a single take.
The camera slows down and takes a moment to focus on him, inaugurating him as the character at the centre of the film. However this sequence also shows that this film is very much an ensemble piece, through introducing a large number of characters, and establishing the central premise of the film - the relationships between this wide array of roles, the conflicts that drive the story, and their goals that reveal their true intentions. The utilisation of the long take ensures that the audience can digest and explore the environment and its inhabitants as if they were actually in the scene. Viewers feel the rush and excitement of the nightclub as they attempt to absorb all the information that Anderson presents us with in this sequence. Production of such a scene is a very complex, lengthy process which is only possible after heavy rehearsal, especially of timing, and Anderson cleverly hides any crew or film equipment from view.