Behind the Justin Timberlake "Say Something" Video

Some fun facts about the Justin Timberlake “Say Something” video featuring Chris Stapleton, which was all live with no cuts:

The director, Arturo Perez Jr. of the Paris-based collective called La BlogothÃ¨que, hoped to do something purely acoustics, and the musicians agreed. The “concert” ended up taking “17 musicians, 60 choristers, five floors, two elevators, one camera and many microphones … shot live in the prestigious Bradbury Building in Los Angeles.” [Source]
All one take on Panavision C Series anamorphic, DP’d by Bill Kirstein and “ninja” operated by Ari Robbins, SOC (who did Steadicam on “La La Land”) [Source]
According to Ari himself, the lens was a “42-425 with an ARRI [Alexa] Mini. Focus puller was Jenna Hoffman,” who obviously did an incredible job as well. [Source]
One of the members of the collective, “Clumsy,” tweeted that the earpieces “were only there for them to hear each other as there were 17 musicians on 5 different floors.” [Source]
Pre-production took two weeks: “I walked the Bradbury Building for two and a half daysâ€”just walking through it like a crazy person. We walked and walked and talked about it,” Perez says. “What we didnâ€™t want to happen was for this to just be a Justin Timberlake one-take video gag. Weâ€™ve been doing this for a while, and we donâ€™t get high off of doing a one-take video. We get high off of creating poetry.” [Source]
Camera rehearsals surely aside, according to Justin Timberlake (and the slate at the end), it wasn’t just one shot, the video was done in just one take. [Source]