This film is part of Free

Warships at Sunset

A stunning shot of ships at sea - with a little help from some creative ingenuity

Non-Fiction 1900 Silent

Overview

There's no doubting the beauty of this single-shot film showing a fleet of warships in the open sea. But something doesn't feel quite right. The natural bobbing of the lead ship means the horizon won't stay still, so why isn't the sky moving too? The answer is that it has been superimposed from another sequence, presumably because the original lacked the drama the filmmaker was after. For all its slightly queasy effect, the trickery is pretty impressive, until the sun suddenly appears *in front of* the mast of the following ship.