Around the half hour mark into Children of Men, the audience is shown a scene with the characters moving through the countryside. However they are ambushed by tribal like people who block the road ahead resulting in a car chase set inside the car. During this time, a character gets shot, another takes out two bikers using a car door and and we see the getaway with the police pulling the car over to see what's happened.
What makes this scene unique is that it's all a single shot inside the car without any cutting making it a single take shot. The way the film makers achieved this was by creating new vehicle rig that that consisted of a shell of a car with a platform on top so the camera operators and director can stand on top. The Rig itself was was able to move around the car using a ball like axis, along with seats that can move around so the camera isn't restricted. It also pushes the actors to be on their toes all the time because they never know where the camera is because of how it moves about the car so for them they also needed to be very aware of the scene and the actions that are happening in order to be able to give a good reaction.
The effect this gives the audience is a very panicked one, where because of the camera the audience can't gauge how bad the situation is, putting them in with the characters. It almost feels like the audience is in the car with the actors creating a sense of immersion due to the scene having no cutting.When Julian gets shot the sense of space really helps add the sense of lack of space with the characters trying to move in a confined space while tending to one another, while feeling so tight. It's the sense of immersion that the film makers are trying to create that is really helped by the rig system, if they were to shoot something without it they would lose the sense of space because the camera can then move a lot more freely shifting between characters and never feeling like it has it's own place.
However the scene might also be the films biggest disadvantage. Throughout the entire of the film, it's established that the world is a dystopia with the films using a urban setting utilizing grey colours to show how bad the world has become. However this scene is looking quite bright and is almost a complete contrast to what was before and after the film. It almost feels like the film was going for a different style with it feeling like it was going for a bandit attack rather then a terrorist attack giving it more of a mad max feel then a hunger game dystopia. It does however manage to capture the danger of the terrorist and this is then used again during the film half hour of the film showing them in a confined building with bullets swizzling past them.
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