How they filmed *that* stunning running sequence for the Severence season 2 premiere

Severance is one of the best shows in the Apple TV cannon, and the stunning two-minute opening sequence of Season 2 only confirmed its quality in front of and behind the camera.

So, how do you open Season 2 of one of the most acclaimed sci-fi series of recent years? Answer, you pull off something truly memorable, partly because Apple's going to give you the budget to do it.

The opening sequence of Severance Season 2 sees Adam Scott's character Mark S. racing through the oppressive corridors of Lumen Industries as the camera swoops and dives around him in one single continuous take. It's a bravura two minutes of action, though of course it's not the single take it looks like, rather a sequence of shorter shots filmed over months, cleverly choreographed, and seamlessly stitched together in post as Adam Scott and Ben Stiller explain in this Vanity Fair video.

Over at Lensrentals, Zach Sutton dips into the details of the dolly zoom that it opens with. We've come a ways since Hitchcock made it famous in Vertigo in 1958.

"Shot on a Sony Venice II camera and the 19-90mm Panavision zoom, this simple effect is a subtle way of showing the shift from one location (and one character) into another," he writes. "As Severance cinematographer Jessica Lee Gange explains, “What’s different from a lot of motion control stuff though is that it’s half operated by a human, half by this computer. So it works with a laser, and if you’re pushing the dolly forward, which is human-operated, it’s calculating a distance on the ground and mapping out the distance while compensating with the zoom”."

This scene is then followed with some quick pans around Mark S. achieved using a Bolt robotic arm from MRMC before moving into an extended chase sequence. 

"When filming this portion of the opening sequence, a Sony FX3 was used on a handheld pogo stick gimbal, along with Panavision H Series lenses. Opting for a pogo stick gimbal system instead of a handheld steady-cam system was because, as director Ben Stiller states, “a gimbal is too hard to run [with] this fast…it’s very cumbersome.”

And, if you haven't seen it, this is the sequence in full. Minor spoilers ahead...

tl;dr

• The opening sequence of *Severance* Season 2 features Adam Scott's character, Mark S., racing through Lumen Industries in a stunning two-minute continuous take that showcases high-quality production techniques.
• The impressive visuals are achieved through a combination of human-operated and computer-assisted camera movements, including a dolly zoom effect shot on a Sony Venice II camera.
• Cinematographer Jessica Lee Gange explains the innovation behind the shooting technique, where the system calculates distances while the camera dolly is manually pushed.
• Director Ben Stiller opted for a handheld pogo stick gimbal for fast-paced shots, highlighting the challenges of using traditional gimbals in dynamic filming situations.