Long Take: *In Her Eyes* (2009)
Directed by Juan José Campanella
Movie Title: In Her Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos / The Secret in Their Eyes)
Year: 2009
Director: Juan José Campanella
Country: Argentina / Spain
VFX Supervisor: Rodrigo S. Tomasso (100 Bares Producciones / Oner VFX)
VFX Producer: Marcelo G. García
Crowd simulation software: Massive (first used in an Argentine film)
Duration of the clip: 5 min 30 sec
Preparation time: 3 months
Filming: 3 days (Huracán Stadium, Buenos Aires)
VFX post-production: 9 months, a team of 20 people
Actual extras: 200
CGI Viewers: ~50,000
Location: Estadio Tomás Adolfo Ducó (Huracán), Buenos Aires
Aerial view of Buenos Aires at night. A lit-up soccer stadium stands out against the cityscape. The camera dives toward the stadium, passes over the floodlights, descends above the field where a match is being played between Huracán and Racing, veers to the right, hovers over the players in the thick of the action—a shot hits the crossbar—then rises toward the stands and settles on the face of Benjamín Espósito (Ricardo Darín), lost in the sea of fans. He’s looking for someone. He spots Gómez, the suspect, in the crowd. A goal sparks an eruption of jubilation. Gómez escapes. The camera switches to a handheld shot and follows Espósito and Sandoval (Guillermo Francella) in a breathless chase through the stands, the damp corridors beneath the stands, and the staircases, all the way to the field where Gómez is tackled to the ground by a player. Five and a half minutes. No visible cuts.
Why This Scene Is a Cult Classic
What makes this shot so dizzying is the shift in scale. You start out like a bird flying over the city. You end up right in the thick of the action, breathless, running through dark corridors. In five minutes, the camera shifts from macro to micro—from an aerial pan of a 50,000-person stadium to a close-up of a man running. This movement encapsulates the entire story of the film: Espósito is searching for a single person in the crowd—a needle in a haystack, a face in the masses. And the camera mimics this quest, starting as wide as possible and zooming in until it finds its target. The moment Racing scores and the crowd erupts is perfect: the collective joy sets the suspect free, and the very crowd that was supposed to trap him becomes the obstacle. The shot makes you physically feel what it’s like to chase someone through a frenzied crowd.
How They Filmed It
The shot is a combination of live-action footage and CGI, designed by Rodrigo Tomasso, VFX supervisor and Campanella’s partner at the production company 100 Bares. Tomasso described this sequence as the first visual-effects long take in the history of Argentine cinema, and the first to use Massive software (the same software that generated the armies in *The Lord of the Rings*) in a domestic production.
The aerial shots—the approach to the stadium, the dive onto the field, and the flyover of the players—are entirely CGI. The stadium was digitally reconstructed. The game in progress, the players, the shot that hits the crossbar—everything is computer-generated. The 200 real extras who participated in the shoot were in the stands. Massive then multiplied their numbers to fill the stadium: approximately 50,000 virtual spectators fill the stands in the final shot.
The transition from the aerial CGI to live-action footage occurs when the camera reaches the level of the stands and focuses on Darín’s face. From that point on, the sequence is shot entirely with a handheld camera. The chase through the corridors beneath the bleachers was filmed at Huracán Stadium (Estadio Tomás Adolfo Ducó), using the building’s actual corridors and staircases. The camera follows the actors as they run for real, with a cameraman running, filming, going down stairs, coming back up, and heading back out onto the field.
Blending the CGI with the live-action footage required nine months of post-production work by a team of twenty people. Tomasso explained that the live-action shots had to be adjusted in terms of movement and lighting to perfectly match the virtual camera’s path. The continuity of movement—the impression that the same camera moves seamlessly from the sky to the ground without any cuts—relies on meticulous matching of speeds, angles, and transitions.
Campanella proudly announced in the film's press kit that the sequence had been created using the same CGI software as *The Lord of the Rings*, a marketing pitch that highlighted the technical ambition—unusual for an Argentine production. The budget for the entire film (approximately $2 million) is less than the cost of most of the Hollywood long takes covered in this blog.
A narrative detail: the shot that hits the crossbar instead of going into the goal. Cineaste Magazine noted that a real goal would have been “simply too much”—the scene would have veered into excess. The shot hitting the crossbar is a perfect dramatic choice: it creates excitement without complete resolution, maintaining the tension for the chase that follows.
Campanella and Darín are both fans of Racing Club, the team that Gómez roots for in the film. The writer Eduardo Sacheri, author of the original novel, roots for the rival team, Independiente. The stadium where the scene is filmed—Huracán’s stadium—is not home to either team; it’s neutral ground, so to speak.
What to Look For When Watching It Again
The transition from aerial view to the stands (~1:30) Look for the exact moment when the CGI gives way to live-action footage. The camera descends from the sky and settles on Darín’s face in the stands. If the transition is seamless, it’s thanks to Tomasso’s nine months of work.
The shot at the crossbar (~2:00) It's not a goal. It's intentional. The commotion that follows is enough to allow Gómez to escape without the scene descending into total hysteria.
The hallways under the bleachers (~3:30–5:00) The camera is shot entirely handheld in the actual hallways of the Huracán stadium. Look at the walls, the stairs, the dim lighting—nothing was recreated in a studio. And notice how genuinely exhausted the actors look at the end of the run.
Did you know?
Rodrigo Tomasso named his own VFX studio “Oner VFX,” in direct homage to the long take that launched his career. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called the sequence “thunderously exciting.” Campanella, who also directed episodes of *House* and *Law & Order* in the United States, brought to this scene the sense of rhythm and dramatic compression typical of American television, but with a visual ambition that television at the time did not dare to pursue.
The film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2010, becoming the second Argentine film to win this award after *La Historia oficial* (1985). The stadium sequence became the film’s main marketing hook internationally. Tomasso highlighted a paradox of his profession: “What we’re aiming for is for the effects to be imperceptible. But then, we have to go out and explain how we did them to promote the work.”
Sources
Rodrigo Tomasso, full VFX breakdown on ArtStation (neuropixels.artstation.com) and Vimeo
Rodrigo Tomasso, interview in *170 Escalones* (2018)
Wikipedia - The Secret in Their Eyes (Production section)
Cineaste Magazine - "Decoding The Secret in Their Eyes" (2010)
Offscreen - "Decoding The Secret in Their Eyes: Domestic and Transnational Meanings"
All The Right Movies - Production Facts and Figures
The Film Emporium - Analysis of the Stadium Scene
IMDb - The Secret in Their Eyes, trivia and reviews
CALAC (Rice University) - Analysis of Staging Techniques
See also:
Long Take from *The Adventures of Tintin* (2011) https://www.plan-sequences.com/categories-de-plans-sequences/les-aventures-de-tintin-le-secret-de-la-licorne - The other major 100% digital long take in the collection: the same concept of a virtual camera without physical constraints, but this time in a fully animated world
Real vs. Fake Long Takes—The Complete Guide https://www.plan-sequences.com/blog-plan-sequences/vrais-vs-faux-plans-sequences-guide-complet - How to Categorize *Dans ses yeux* Within the Long Take Taxonomy: CGI Aerial Shots + Real Handheld Footage = What Exactly Is Its Status?
