One-shot sequence from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
Film title: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Year : 2023
Director: James Gunn
Country: United States
Director of Photography: Henry Braham (BSC) - compact RED cameras worn on the chest
VFX Production Supervisor: Stephane Ceretti (Marvel Studios)
VFX (corridor shot): Wētā FX - supervisor: Guy Williams; animation supervisor: Mike Cozens
Stunt Coordinators: Wayne Dalglish (Lead) and Heidi Moneymaker
Cameras: RED (compact models, worn on Braham's chest)
Frame rate: 120 fps (frames per second)
Sequence duration: ~2 minutes 30
Number of plans assembled: 18
Number of stitches: 17
Filming time: 3 days (Gunn estimates perhaps 5 days in total)
Samples per segment: 30 to 40
Planning time: 6 months of choreography
Post-production duration of the shot: 1 year (Wētā FX)
Music: “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” by Beastie Boys
Film budget: ~$250 million
Total VFX for the film: 3,066 shots, 10 VFX studios, 15 months of post-production
The Great Evolutionary's Arete spaceship. The Guardians must cross a corridor to reach the ship's core and rescue Rocket. The Beastie Boys' "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" starts playing. And for two and a half minutes, the camera doesn't cut. Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) leads the charge, firing pistols, throwing punches, sliding on the floor. The camera pans to Drax (Dave Bautista) as he smashes guards against the walls. It cuts to Nebula (Karen Gillan) whose neck snaps on impact, her head twists 180 degrees, but she keeps fighting. Mantis (Pom Klementieff) backflips over an enemy. Groot stretches his arms across the entire width of the corridor. Rocket fires from Groot's shoulder. The camera dances from Guardian to Guardian, bouncing between them like a pinball, rising above the melee then plunging back down to ground level, and bodies pile up in the corridor behind them, dead biomechanical crustaceans and guards stacked up as they advance. The last time the original Guardians fight together. The final dance.
Why this scene is iconic
James Gunn had wanted to pull off this shot since the first film. In 2014, on the set of the original Guardians of the Galaxy, he and the stunt coordinator planned a single-take fight scene in a hallway. Everything was ready except the actors. Pratt and Bautista watched it and said, "James, we've never seen this scene. We've never rehearsed this scene. You can't just ask an actor to show up and do a scene that complicated." Gunn shelved the idea. Nine years later, for the latest film, he brought it back: "It more than makes up for the failure the first time."
The emotional power of the scene stems from its narrative significance: the last time this group fights together. Each Guardian has their moment: Star-Lord at the center, Drax as brute force, Nebula shattering and reforming, Mantis performing acrobatics, Groot extending, Rocket as artillery. The camera leaps from one to the other as if wanting to see them all one last time. And the music, "No Sleep Till Brooklyn," transforms the carnage into a celebration. It's a farewell in the form of a bravura performance.
How they filmed it
Guy Williams, VFX supervisor at Wētā FX, gave Corridor Crew the full details: "Spoiler alert: it's not a single shot. It's 18 shots filmed over three days." Each shot is a segment of the choreography, filmed separately, then assembled using 17 digital stitches in post-production. The process took a full year at Wētā FX.
What distinguishes this shot from the other faux continuous shots in the collection is that the seams aren't hidden. Where Kingsman masked its cuts with whip pans and extras walking in front of the camera, and Atomic Blonde concealed them with motion blur, the seams in the Guardians corridor are made "right in the middle of the action, directly in front of the camera," according to Williams. The technique relied on camera projections to reconstruct the corridor in the background of each shot, resolving the perspective problems that arose when two takes were spliced together, and on digital doubles of each character to ensure continuity of poses.
Henry Braham, the cinematographer, shot with compact RED cameras worn directly on his torso, a lightweight setup that allowed him to move almost like a handheld operator while maintaining cinematic stabilization. Karen Gillan described the experience: "The camera operator was tethered to cables and literally flying across the room, catching shots on the fly. If I'd been in the wrong place, there would have been a collision."
Everything was filmed at 120 frames per second, four times the cinematic standard (24 fps). This choice allowed Wētā FX to slow down any moment in post-production without loss of quality, and, more importantly, to manipulate speed within the shot: speeding up the camera during transitions between Guardians, slowing it down to emphasize an impact. Guy Williams explained that the CG characters (the crustaceans, Rocket, Groot) had to be animated at this high frame rate, which multiplied the animation work.
Stephane Ceretti, Marvel's VFX supervisor, described the difficulty: "I was a little nervous, I'm not going to lie. When you're in that long corridor, it's unforgiving in terms of perspective. If you're stitching two cameras together and the cameras aren't in the right place, and you have people dancing and jumping and the perspective doesn't match, and the people aren't in the same place, it's hell trying to stitch the shots together. And guess what? It was hell."
Wayne Dalglish and Heidi Moneymaker choreographed the sequence over six months. Moneymaker described the process: "We planned, worked, redid, and redid for six months. The action is really cool. The way it's filmed is incredible. All the actors are involved and do amazing things in this big fight." The actors shot each segment 30 to 40 times. When Pratt complained, Gunn replied, "30 to 40 takes? That's rehearsal, man. That's Jackie Chan."
A detail about the continuity of the corpses: as the Guardians advance down the corridor, the bodies of defeated enemies accumulate behind them. Mike Cozens (animation supervisor, Wētā) explained that the animation team had to create a "pseudo-continuity" transition to ensure the bodies remained visible and consistent throughout the shot, without blocking the action—a unique challenge in the long take, where you can't make a corpse disappear between cuts.
One last, late addition: Blurp, the little creature. The team realized during production that Blurp was with the Guardians at the entrance and exit of the corridor, but had no part in the fight. Cozens: "We thought, we need to find a little story for Blurp." James Gunn loved the moment when Blurp climbs onto the corpse of an octo-hyena and strikes a pose.
What to observe when reviewing it
Nebula's neck (~middle of the shot) : Nebula takes a blow that breaks her neck. Her head spins 180 degrees. She continues to fight. Gillan did "as much as possible in real life," physically contorting herself into impossible positions that the VFX then amplified. She described the scene as "one of the most original moments I've ever seen in a fight sequence."
The accumulating corpses (the entire shot) – Williams and Cozens recommend multiple viewings to spot all the background action. The enemies' bodies remain in the corridor; it's a continuity detail necessitated by the long take, a detail that traditional editing would have eliminated.
The seams in the center of the frame (~17 transitions) Unlike all the other faux continuous shots in this collection, the seams aren't hidden in the edges of the frame or in blur. They're "right in the middle of the action, directly in front of the camera." You probably won't see them, but that's the technical feat: sewing the invisible where everyone is looking.
Did you know that?
The corridor shot was the last one delivered by Wētā FX, a year after they began working on it. It was also the shot Gunn was most afraid to show: he worried it would be "too long and too brutal." When Gunn explained to Pratt that the difficulty of the shoot stemmed from repetition, not frustration, he added, "It's Jackie Chan," a direct reference to the Hong Kong master's method of shooting dozens of takes per move until he achieved perfection. Brad Allan, the choreographer of Kingsman (a former member of the Jackie Chan Stunt Team), reportedly acknowledged the connection.
This scene is Marvel's version of the fight sequence shot, and it occupies a unique position in the site's collection. Old Boy (2003) is a real, raw fight in a confined space. Atomic Blonde (2017) is a faux continuous shot in service of physical exhaustion. Kingsman (2014) is a faux continuous shot in service of pop spectacle. Creed (2015) is a real continuous shot in service of emotion. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is a faux continuous shot in service of farewell, the final fight of a dysfunctional family, filmed in one apparent movement so we can see them all together one last time. And the music, "No Sleep Till Brooklyn," with its rising guitars and screamed chorus, transforms the carnage into a farewell party. It's the sequence shot as curtain call.
Sources
Guy Williams, VFX supervisor (Wētā FX) - fxguide, "Guardians Vol 3: how they did that incredible hallway shot" (June 2023)
Guy Williams & Mike Cozens - befores & afters, "There are 17 stitches in that insane Guardians Vol. 3 oner" (May 2023)
Guy Williams - Corridor Crew / ComicBook, "VFX Supervisor Reveals Every Secret of The Epic One Take Fight Scene" (2023)
Stephane Ceretti - befores & afters, "The 2-day virtual production shoot" (May 2023)
Stephane Ceretti - Variety, "Guardians Vol. 3 Required Over 3,000 VFX Shots" (February 2024)
James Gunn - io9/SlashFilm, "James Gunn Was Very Afraid of That One-Take Action Scene" (May 2023)
James Gunn - Marvel.com, "Creating the No Sleep Till Brooklyn Fight Scene" (June 2023)
James Gunn - ComicBook, "Gunn Tried to Do One Take Fight Scene in First Movie" (2023)
Karen Gillan, Heidi Moneymaker, Chris Pratt, Sean Gunn - Marvel.com (June 2023)
Wikipedia - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Read also
Extraction (2020) https://www.plan-sequences.com/categories-de-plans-sequences/extraction - Sam Hargrave and the fake continuous action plan taken to the extreme, Netflix version rather than Marvel
The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan (2023) https://www.plan-sequences.com/categories-de-plans-sequences/les-trois-mousquetaires-dartagnan - Another choral battle with dense choreography, previous entry in the collection
