15 Movie Scenes That Were Done In One Take Because There Really Was No Plan B

"I'll never look at those slightly bloody hair follicles the same way again."

From low budgets to strict timelines to trying not to die, there can be any number of reasons why a movie only gets ONE opportunity to get the perfect take.

Paramount Networks UK / Via giphy.com

And for someone like me – a perpetual victim of "Sod's Law" – I can't fathom what it's like to only get one shot at something!

Here are 15 times a movie had to nail a scene in one take, or within a fixed time period, OR ELSE...

1. The incredible makeup application scene in I, Tonya had to be shot in one take because of time constraints.

Neon / 30WEST / LuckyChap Entertainment

In the world of this scene, Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding quickly applies her makeup while trying to smile through the pain of her competitive ice-skating ambitions slipping through her fingers. However, in the real world, the only thing making people emotional was getting this scene filmed ASAP.

According to the director of the film, Craig Gillespie, "That was actually our most ambitious day of shooting, we were in a stadium that we were losing that night for hockey games... [and] we had about 10 scenes to shoot."

Neon / 30WEST / LuckyChap Entertainment / Via youtu.be

Margot and the crew didn't have time for her to take her makeup off and reapply it, so she had to give this performance perfectly in one go...and she nailed it!

2. The painful chest waxing scene in The 40-Year-Old Virgin could only be filmed once because it was 100% real.

Universal Pictures

Here's a new reason to wince at this hilarious scene — it was all extremely real! The screams from Steve's character, Andy, in reaction to his hair being ripped off of his chest are Steve's actual reactions. I'll never look at those slightly bloody hair follicles the same way again!

This scene needed to be right the very first time because obv body hair doesn't grow back immediately, and also so that Andy's reaction would seem authentic, especially given how drastic the waxing is supposed to be in the scene.

Universal Pictures / Via youtube.com

Despite being at the expense of Steve Carell's comfort that day, the scene is hilarious!

3. The solar eclipse scene in Nomad was a one-take situation because no special effects were being used.

Instagram: @nomadthefilm

Unlike many big-budget films, which would simply add a CGI eclipse in post-production, indie film Nomad went... Well...to infinity and beyond, basically! With only two minutes and 18 seconds to film this ambitiously precise sequence, the cast and crew managed to create a beautiful scene of two lovers in front of an eclipse.

The film is still in production, but you can watch a behind-the-scenes video of how they pulled this scene off here:

Taron Lexton / Via youtube.com

Of course, this could ~literally~ only be done in one shot with absolutely no way around it (besides waiting years for the next eclipse).

4. The hospital explosion in The Dark Knight was meticulously choreographed before the first and only take cos you can't exactly blow up a building twice.

Warner Bros. Pictures

It's been debunked a few times that a mishap with the explosives on set led to this scene being improvised by the late, great Heath Ledger. What is true is that Heath had to get the scene perfect because they only had one chance to blow up the building for real!

This explosive sequence was rehearsed around 12 times before cameras started rolling in order to make sure that all the moving pieces would take off without a hitch. It was also crucial that Heath was able to walk out of the building on the brink of demolition without getting hurt!

Warner Bros. Pictures / Via youtube.com

What audiences ended up seeing was a perfectly timed scene that was so impressive, it caused a rumour to spread about a premature explosion and Heath being forced to improvise.

5. Peter and Ned's secret handshake in Spider-Man: Homecoming was created on-the-spot by Tom and Jacob due to time constraints.

Marvel Studios / Disney

This moment may be small, but it's very cute and very impressive! Tom Holland and Jacob Batalon were only given a few minutes to figure out how to end a scene together in a fun way, and what they came up with was a hilariously intricate secret handshake between their two characters.

According to director Jon Watts, the pair nailed the impromptu handshake in one take.

BBC Radio 1 / Via youtube.com

"They were like, 'what if we come up with this handshake?'", Jon went on to share with BBC Radio 1. "I was like, 'okay, but you have five minutes because we have to move on' ... They did it perfect in the first take, we couldn't believe it."

6. The moment when Borat crashes Mike Pence's speech in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm was 100% real and could not be rehearsed or directed.

Amazon Prime

For a scene in his infamous mockumentary-style film, Sacha Baron Cohen opted to crash an ~actual~ party conference at which the former US Vice President was speaking. The angry crowd and the disdain on Mike Pence's face are authentic reactions, which you could only get from a huge prank like this.

When asked how he pulled it off, Sacha told the Los Angeles Times that he sat in a chair for six hours while a prosthetics team changed him into Donald Trump. He then sneaked into the Conservative Political Action Conference and hid in a toilet for several hours.

Amazon Prime / Via youtube.com

Sacha was keen to keep production on Borat 2 a secret. When he was being escorted out of the conference, he was asked for ID by a Secret Service agent. "I knew I had to delay", Sacha told Variety, "I felt like the moment they knew it was me, Sacha, that will become a big news story. And that would destroy the rest of the movie." Despite being hounded by the Secret Service, the comedian amazingly managed to avoid giving over his ID and compromising the shoot.

7. Getting the bridge explosion in The Bridge on the River Kwai right was so crucial that filmmakers delayed it until conditions were perfect.

TCM / Columbia Pictures

Similarly to the hospital scene in The Dark Knight, you can ~usually~ only blow up large things once. This movie is no exception to the rule, and the $52,085, 27.4m high bridge that was custom-built for the film had to be destroyed in one single take, no excuses.

Due to the explosion of the irreplaceable bridge only being able to happen once, the event was captured on multiple cameras from different angles.

TCM / Columbia Pictures / Via youtube.com

The film's crew set up five cameras to film the scene, but heavy rain meant the shoot had to be postponed for 11 days! Later, during the shoot, the whole thing was nearly derailed when an empty train that couldn't stop nearly interrupted the blast. Thankfully, it crashed into a generator truck and stopped, which is really bloody lucky (and no one was hurt in the process).

8. The filmmakers behind Vanilla Sky only had a set number of takes they could do when filming a scene in Times Square.

Paramount Pictures

Shutting down what is, probably, the most recognisable area of Manhattan is no mean feat, so it's not a surprise that this shoot came at a significant cost. Producers Don Lee and Paula Wagner – and Tom Cruise himself – met with the then-mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, to inquire about shutting down the intersection. The mayor gave them a single Sunday morning to completely close off Times Square for filming, but with the condition that they weren't allowed to do a lot of takes.

The scene was heavily rehearsed for weeks leading up to the shoot, and filming wrapped that morning with an hour to spare before Times Square was made open to the public again.

Paramount Pictures / Via youtube.com

Also, fun fact, according to the director Cameron Crowe, a shutdown of the city like that is something that will never happen again. He told Vulture, "The filming office [to others] was like, 'I think maybe no.' The thing they told us from the beginning to the end is that this will never happen again."

9. Sticking with Tom Cruise, he and the team behind Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol had a mere 30 minutes to shoot a scene in which Tom scaled the tallest building in the world.

Paramount Pictures

Here's another logistics nightmare Tom Cruise found himself in! There's a scene in this 2011 film in which Tom's character is forced to climb the outside of the Burj Khalifa. Tom wasn't about to shy away from doing it himself, but for various reasons, the scene had to be shot within 30 minutes TOPS.

They had to get the scene done quickly and in one go to ensure that Tom's harness wouldn't cut off his circulation, the IMAX cameras they were using didn't run out of film, and so they didn't exceed the 30-minute flight limit for the helicopters used for filming. Every second truly counted!

Paramount Pictures / Via youtube.com

Oh, and I forgot to mention, Cruise also had the insurance company for the film let go. He did this so that if the stunt failed and he fell to his un-aliving, the production wouldn't be hit with a very large check. Which is... Nice, I guess?

10. The scene in which Corporal Schofield is running through Écoust in1917 had to wrap in under one day, and was allegedly "the hardest day on set".

Universal Pictures / Entertainment One / Via youtube.com

It's no easy task to make a movie appear to have been shot in one continuous take. Indeed, according to Dennis Gassner, the production designer on 1917, "time was our enemy in every way". One of the most "technically challenging" scenes was the sequence in which George MacKay's character is running through the French village, Écoust-Saint-Mein.

Bespoke flares built into a network of winches were made by the special effects team. When fired off, these would provide light for a precise amount of time at specific intervals while George MacKay was running through the set.

Universal Pictures / Entertainment One / Via youtube.com

As cinematographer Roger Deakins told the Los Angeles Times, the "timing of the flares was also very complicated... There were six cranes and each flare had its own track and lasted a certain number of seconds. It was quite amazing what [Dominic Tuohy, special effects supervisor] did."

11. The car chase in The French Connection could only be done once because it happened in real time without any controls or permits... AKA, it was totally illegal.

20th Century Fox

You read that correctly. One of the most revered car chases in the history of film was done illegally. This thrilling scene was shot on the streets of Brooklyn without closing down anything. Basically, the pedestrians and other drivers you see in the scene were regular folks in actual danger!

Despite the fact that the Pontiac seen in the film was going around 144 kmh, no one was hurt during the filming of this scene. Director, William Friedkin, has since expressed regret over the recklessness that went into filming this sequence.

20th Century Fox / Via youtube.com

Friedkin told The New York Post, "I wouldn’t do that now. I had put people's lives in danger... It was only by the grace of God that nobody was hurt or injured in any way."

12. The opening scene in Apocalypse Now, in which Captain Benjamin Willard is having a breakdown, could only be shot once because Martin Sheen was steaming drunk.

United Artists

Maybe this scene could've been shot again, but Martin was pretty insistent that cameras kept rolling even after he got super drunk on set. The actor used the scene to confront his own demons, believing that it would not only come off as authentic, but that recording himself in that state would somehow help him get to the root of his own drinking problems.

Things got a little out of control, and Martin severely injured his hand after punching a mirror. He also drunkenly attempted to attack various crew members, including director Francis Ford Coppola.

United Artists / Via youtube.com

In the world of the film, the authenticity of this emotional collapse helped the audience to understand how broken Captain Willard was as a person. However, for Martin, viewing the footage was "frightening". He later told the Hollywood Reporter, "I don't recognize that man. Pretty sad guy. Trying to be something he wasn’t, afraid of things that he shouldn’t have been. Very painful guy."

13. One of the car crashes in Drive could only be filmed once because production couldn't afford to wreck another car.

FilmDistrict

When a film with multiple car chases is given a lower budget, it's understandable that the number of cars (which are expensive) that can be destroyed is also reduced. For instance, in a scene where Ryan Gosling's character is getting chased down a mountainous road and his pursuer crashes behind him, the production was only allotted one car to total – so it had be perfect the first time!

Even though the shot made it into the final movie, it actually ~wasn't~ the perfect take it was supposed to be.

FilmDistrict / Via youtube.com

Stunt Coordinator Darrin Prescott told The New York Times, "The [Chrysler 300] was supposed to hit a barrier, reverse direction violently and twirl around, like a rally crash we had seen on YouTube... Instead, when it hit the barrier, it went straight up. You could hear people on the set muttering, 'It wasn’t supposed to do that.'" Thankfully, the film's director ended up being happy with what they got!

14. Turning London into a ghost town for 28 Days Later was a "technical nightmare" that faced serious time constraints.

Fox Searchlight Pictures

In an instance similar to Vanilla Sky, director Danny Boyle wanted to create the impression that London was deserted in his 2002 zombie horror... Which is a pretty ambitious thing to do! Just four days were set aside to film Cillian Murphy walking around the streets of Central London. These shoots began at 3am/4am in the morning as soon as the sun came up, and before it got too busy to hold back traffic.

According to location manager Alex Gladstone, police had to be enlisted to keep drunk revellers on their way home out of shot, and angry drivers would beep at Cillian, which had to be edited out in post.

Fox Searchlight Pictures / Via youtube.com

When asked about filming these schedule-restricted scenes, Danny Boyle stated, "It was a technical nightmare but a fantastically weird scene... it makes you feel that the whole of Britain has been abandoned."

15. And lastly, it took Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov just 90 minutes to shoot his film Russian Ark in one single take.

Wellspring Media

Shot within uniquely limiting circumstances, this feature film took years of rehearsal, but was filmed in its entirety in under a day. During the continuously shot 1 hour and 36-minutes of the film, over 2,000 actors and multiple orchestras missed absolutely no cues whilst traversing the 1.6 km, 33 room location that was their set.

Telling the story of a ghost roaming the halls of the Winter Palace museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, the crew only had one day to complete the film, which was shot in the actual museum itself.

Wellspring Media / Via youtube.com

They truly only had one shot to get everything right, and thankfully that vision came to life, creating the longest continuous shot in film history in the process!

Did any of these surprise you? Let us know in the comments!