From a black screen to Fury Road: StudioBinder asks how many shots a scene needs
The 20th episode of The Shot List runs from films with no pictures at all to George Miller's desert chase, and viewers want to know how the angles actually get filmed.
StudioBinderStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 45,641 views a day, 19 times a normal first day on this channel (2,436).
How Many Shots Does a Scene Need?
The answer StudioBinder gives is anything from zero to more than a dozen. "How Many Shots Does a Scene Need?", episode 20 of the channel's series The Shot List, walks that whole range. It was watched close to 40,000 times in its first 17 hours, on a channel where a new upload usually ends its first day in the low thousands.
The essay starts at nothing. Jonathan Glazer opens The Zone of Interest on a black screen, with sound before any image. Derek Jarman's Blue runs a whole feature on a single field of International Klein Blue. Next comes the locked camera: Roy Andersson's Songs from the Second Floor, where staging and deep focus do the work that cutting would do elsewhere, and Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, which gives a woman's daily chores the frame a car crash would get.
Then the camera starts to move and, in the episode's words, becomes its own editor. Joe Wright's U-Bahn one-take in Hanna is one example. The Juilliard scene in Todd Field's Tár is another, where the camera moves only when Cate Blanchett's Lydia does. After that come lighter coverage in Eric Rohmer and Kelly Reichardt, the close and inward framing of Bergman's Persona, ordinary master shots and close-ups, and finally Mad Max: Fury Road as the case for shooting a lot.
The last chapter puts the same kind of scene, two people talking, through The Matrix, Before Sunrise, The Sixth Sense, The Master, Raging Bull and Spike Lee's Highest 2 Lowest. The description makes its point plainly: more coverage is not insurance against indecision, and every setup costs time.
The comments read like a film class after the bell. One viewer asks whether every angle is filmed at once with several cameras or each needs its own take. Another wonders why a director with a complete storyboard would need extra coverage at all, and a third says it all comes down to the editor. Several people, some writing from India, ask for subtitles.
The rest of the channel's recent uploads are short pieces, on lighting cookies and on Network's "mad as hell" speech turning 50. The cookie clip posted the same day is still under 1,500 views. The long essay is the one carrying the channel.
Published on Trari
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What viewers say
Now this is one I've been waiting for.
@filmreviewer117See it on YouTubeAll coverage is shot simultaneously with all cameras of all angles? Or each angle needs different takes?
@ZYKS_666See it on YouTubeMy Intermediate Production course has discuss about this topic a month back. I should definitely show this to my film professor. Thanks for the update!
@a.jthomas6132See it on YouTube
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- Channel
- StudioBinder
- Subscribers
- 2,260,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 559,719
- Channel views, pace per day
- 49,375 (on a normal day: 81,015)
- Video published
- October 5, 2026
- Video views so far
- 39,269 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 45,641
The numbers
The channel as a whole has been running a little below its usual daily pace, which makes this episode's start look even bigger.
💡 Test your knowledge
Before Sunrise, one of the films in the episode's final chapter, follows two strangers through which city?
Richard Linklater's 1995 film follows Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as they walk and talk through Vienna for one night.
