Directed by Juan José Campanella
Title of the film: In his eyes (El secreto de sus ojos / The Secret in Their Eyes)
Year : 2009
Director: Juan José Campanella
Countries: Argentina / Spain
VFX Supervisor: Rodrigo S. Tomasso (100 Bares Producciones / Oner VFX)
VFX Producer: Marcelo G. García
Crowd software: Massive (first used in an Argentinian film)
Shot duration: 5 min 30 sec
Preparation time: 3 months
Filming: 3 days (Huracán stadium, Buenos Aires)
Post-production VFX: 9 months, team of 20 people
Real extras: 200
CGI Viewers: ~50 000
Location: Estadio Tomás Adolfo Ducó (Huracán), Buenos Aires
An aerial view of Buenos Aires at night. A brightly lit football stadium appears in the urban landscape. The camera plunges toward the stadium, passes through the floodlights, descends above the pitch where a match is being played between Huracán and Racing, turns right, flies over the players in action, a shot hits the crossbar, then rises again toward the stands and focuses on the face of Benjamín Espósito (Ricardo Darín), lost in the mass of fans. He's looking for someone. He spots Gómez, the suspect, in the crowd. A goal triggers an eruption of jubilation. Gómez breaks free. The camera switches to a handheld shot and follows Espósito and Sandoval (Guillermo Francella) in a breathless chase through the stands, the damp corridors beneath them, the stairs, down to the pitch where Gómez is tackled to the ground by a player. Five and a half minutes. No visible cuts.
Why this scene is iconic
What makes this shot so dizzying is the shift in scale. You start like a bird soaring above the city. You end up right in the thick of the fray, breathless, running through dark corridors. In five minutes, the camera goes from macro to micro, from an aerial panorama of a 50,000-seat stadium to a close-up of a man running. This movement is the story of the entire film: Espósito is searching for an individual in the crowd, a needle in a haystack, a face in the mass. And the camera mimics this quest, starting with the widest possible shot and narrowing until it finds its target. The moment Racing scores and the crowd erupts is perfect: the collective joy frees the suspect, and the mass that was meant to trap him becomes the obstacle. The shot makes you physically feel what it's like to chase someone through a delirious crowd.
How they filmed it
The shot is an assemblage of live-action footage and CGI, designed by Rodrigo Tomasso, VFX supervisor and Campanella's partner at the production company 100 Bares. Tomasso described this sequence as the first single-shot visual effects sequence in the history of Argentine cinema, and the first to use Massive software (the same software that generated the armies in The Lord of the Rings) in a national production.
The aerial sequence—the approach to the stadium, the dive onto the pitch, the flyover of the players—is entirely CGI. The stadium was digitally reconstructed. The ongoing match, the players, the shot that hits the crossbar—everything is computer-generated. The 200 real extras who participated in the filming were in the stands. Massive then multiplied their number to fill the stadium : approximately 50,000 virtual spectators populate the stands in the final shot.
The transition between aerial CGI and live-action footage occurs when the camera reaches the level of the stands and focuses on Darín's face. From that point on, the sequence is shot entirely handheld. The chase through the corridors beneath the stands was filmed at Huracán Stadium (Estadio Tomás Adolfo Ducó), in the actual corridors and stairways of the building. The camera follows the actors in a real-life run, with a camera operator running, turning, going down stairs, going back up, and reappearing on the pitch.
The seamless integration of CGI and live action required nine months of post-production work by a team of twenty people. Tomasso explained that the live-action footage had to be recalibrated in terms of movement and lighting to perfectly match the trajectory of the virtual camera. The continuity of movement, the impression that the same camera moves seamlessly from sky to ground, relies on meticulous matching of speeds, angles, and transitions.
Campanella proudly announced in the film's press kit that the sequence was created using the same CGI software as The Lord of the Rings, a marketing ploy that emphasized the unusual technical ambition for an Argentine production. The film's entire budget (approximately $2 million) is less than the cost of most of the Hollywood long takes covered on this blog.
One narrative detail: the shot that hits the crossbar instead of going in. Cineaste Magazine noted that a real goal would have been "simply too much," the scene would have veered into excess. The shot hitting the bar is a perfect dramatic choice: it creates tension without complete release, maintaining the suspense for the chase that follows.
Campanella and Darín are both Racing Club supporters, the team Gómez supports in the film. The writer Eduardo Sacheri, author of the original novel, supports their rival, Independiente. The stadium where the scene is filmed, the Huracán, is neither team's home ground—a neutral ground, in a way.
What to observe when reviewing it
The aerial → stands transition (~1:30) Look for the exact moment when the CGI gives way to real footage. The camera descends from the sky and stabilizes on Darín's face in the stands. If the transition is seamless, it's thanks to nine months of work by Tomasso.
The shot that hits the crossbar (~2:00) It's not a goal. It's deliberate. The ensuing commotion is enough to allow Gómez to escape without the scene descending into total hysteria.
The corridors beneath the stands (~3:30-5:00) The camera is purely handheld, in the actual corridors of the Huracán stadium. Look at the walls, the stairs, the dingy lighting—nothing is recreated in a studio. And look at the actors' genuine exhaustion at the end of the race.
Did you know that?
Rodrigo Tomasso named his own VFX studio "Oner VFX" as a direct homage to the single-shot sequence that launched his career. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called the sequence "thunderously exciting." Campanella, who also directed episodes of House and Law & Order in the United States, brought to this scene the sense of pacing and dramatic compression characteristic of American television, but with a visual ambition that television at the time didn't dare attempt.
The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2010, the second Argentine film to win this award after *La Historia oficial* (1985). The stadium sequence became the film's main marketing tool internationally. Tomasso highlighted a paradox of his profession: "What we aim for is for the effects to be imperceptible. But then we have to go out and explain how we did them to promote the work."
Sources
Rodrigo Tomasso, full VFX breakdown on ArtStation (neuropixels.artstation.com) and Vimeo
Rodrigo Tomasso, interview 170 Escalones (2018)
Wikipedia - The Secret in Their Eyes (production section)
Cineaste Magazine - "Decoding The Secret in Their Eyes" (2010)
Offscreen - "Decoding The Secret in Their Eyes: Domestic and Transnational Meanings"
All The Right Movies - facts and production figures
The Film Emporium - stadium sequence analysis
IMDB - The Secret in Their Eyes, trivia and reviews
CALAC (Rice University) - analysis of staging techniques
Also read:
The Adventures of Tintin (2011) - The other major 100% digital long take in the collection: the same logic of the virtual camera without physical constraints, but this time in a fully animated world
True vs. False Long Shots - The Complete Guide https://www.plan-sequences.com/blog-plan-sequences/vrais-vs-faux-plans-sequences-guide-complet - How to classify "Dans ses yeux" in the long shot taxonomy: Aerial CGI + real handheld = what status exactly?
