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Nope. Not for you. Shut the door and go back to sinning.
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A oner is a term that gets banded around a lot in filmmaking circles. It’s one of those things that gives directors a hard on and cinematographers a headache, but it seems to be all the rage right now. Adolescence, Boiling Point, The Studio, 1917. It’s often credited to Hitchcock (probably wrongly) but I’m not here to bore you with film history. I want to talk about how we can steal this technique and bring it into the digital world.
It feels counter-intuitive. We know digital audiences have the attention span of a hungover goldfish. We’re competing with hyper-optimised retention edits, crash zooms, explosions, the whole shabang. But as with everything, there’s a yin to that yang.
The most basic example of a oner online is the humble talking head. YouTubers like Ludwig on Mogul Mail or GothamChess do it all the time. Okay maybe, Ludwig will throw up a Reddit thread, and Levy will show a board position, but mostly it’s just one shot, running long.
Basic, yeah. But millions of views tells us it works. These videos cut against what we’re told about “good” YouTube editing, yet they work for the exact same reason Mendes, Barantini and even Hitchcock used the technique: a good oner grabs you, locks your attention, and pulls you into the scene.
And especially now, with Youtube pushing autoplay in your feed, a long one-take intro can be the cleanest hook you’ve got.
Think of it like this.
The doorbell rings, you open the front door, and a man dressed in a neatly pressed black suit asks you if you have time to hear about the lord and saviour Jesus Christ. Nope. Not for you. Shut the door and go back to sinning.
What if, instead - you opened the door and the man instantly starts to tell you of the story of a downtrodden son of a carpenter who went from city to city making the world a better place for the people nobody else cared about. He healed the sick, lifted up the poor, stood up to corrupt power, and refused to back down even when he knew it would cost him everything. Betrayed, beaten, and nailed to a cross, he turned that final act of suffering into the ultimate gesture of love and sacrifi- okay you get the picture. (can you tell I was raised catholic)
Now you’re hooked. You didn’t plan to listen, but the story swept you in.
That’s what a oner does for us in the digital world. Just because a middle aged white dude with a 10 million dollar budget uses it, doesn’t mean we can’t either. Lets steal the premise and work it into our content. It’s simple really; no cuts, no clutter. Just straight into the heart of the story, before the audience even has the chance to scroll away.
Try it - let me know how it works out for you.
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