Why are so many scared of focus?

[tigeba]

Just to press home the point. I pulled out "Crash". I figure that since it won a whole pile of Oscars, it must be considered a "real" film....

Typical closeup.

Wide angle, probably wide open.

Typical mid shot.

Insert. Focus on the shoe people! Ignore all that grass. The grass is not the point!

Another mid shot. Wouldn't this look 100% better if it was shot at f16 where you could see all the filaments of each individual light? Is that a Starbucks back there?



But ok, maybe that movie isn't your speed. I am lucky enough to have received Munich via Netflix yesterday.

Insert. Ok, we want to see the TV, but don't want it to be boring. Ok, angle the TV to give nice leading lines. Move it over to one side to give space in the frame, just like a closeup. But, we don't want people peeking down the hall so...

More closeups, I have run out of sarcastic comments.

Anyway, just more examples of the extremely common use of depth of field to isolate elements in film. Perhaps these are all just newbie mistakes!

It dosen't really matter what movie I pick. You could pull these types of grabs from almost anything shot on 35mm. Spielberg even made use of the FORBIDDEN ZOOM many times in Munich to give it that 70's feel.

 

[TimurCivan]

you know whats interesting, making "mistakes" look good is so hard.... Like, making intentionally "Shaky cam" footage that looks good, is so damn hard.

Or as my friend who is a Commerical director once said,

"Someone asked my how i got hat great camera shake in that commercial i shot....
i said: " I kicked the tripod a bunch of times"

ok maybe i was exaggerating the difficulty, but perhaps it has to do with the setting. 1chip handycam, with Don cheadle acting very well is gonna pull through, because of th content, not the camera.

 

[TimurCivan]

Wow... the grabs from the DVD really look very very soft.

 

[Erik Olson]

Focus on me or I'll throw a f-ing phone at your head!!! Oh, yeah... I really will.

Look. In a typical master, there is usually a cavalcade of depth... establishing the overall scene in one easy-to-read quick glimpse. Film Sense tells us that there is a formula that works for master to cut-away to master and so forth.

Creatively brazen, but most often ill-advised, is the single-shot master coverage, where there are no cut-aways to fall back on.

As we explore the characters more closely, usually when tension or isolation is a part of the dynamic, characters are isolated from the background by diminishing depth of field, lighting ratio, compressing scenic elements or a combination of the three.

A long lens / shallow DOF is a quick and easy way to accomplish this important filmmaking standard. Visual storytelling succeeds by directing the viewer's eye and attention appropriately within the given frame. Eliminating clutter is a necessary process.

It may not always be used appropriately by inexperienced filmmakers, but the shallow depth shot isn't a gimmick by any stretch of the imagination.

e

 

[pmark23]

I have to laugh.

Most of you who think you're arguing against me are arguing for me. Please read my posts completely.

Where are all these shallow DOF movies? Is that all you can come up with (and bad examples at that.)

The reason none of you put up any movies is that upon viewing, you found that there were actually very few shallow DOF scenes in them. Am I right? In fact the shallow DOF scenes probably composed a scant few % of the entire running time.

If that's all you can come up with, then you've proven me right. :dankk2:

And by pulling examples of recent movies you'll automatically prove me right because I'm bemoaning the lack of good cinematography in recent films (shallow-DOF just one of the issues -- there's plenty more I could offend you with!)

 

[pmark23]

Well that is amazing... so.. the DP would be fired because he wasn't about to get around the limitations of a lens? or the limitataions of physics? I think you need to actaully watch some more films..

Uh... Yes. On the spot, and with a kick in the ass on the way out. The laws of physics are no obstacle for a good DP! The history of cinema is filled with inventions greated to fit the cinematography to the story -- not the other way around.

In fact you brought up one of the largest things which annoys me about the current state of cinematography. This slacker "it's too hard" "we'll fix it in post" "nobody will notice" work ethic which (IMNSHO) has no place on a film set.

Your right..because MOS is a sound term, and the others you mention are camera moves. Rack Focus however is a term widely used. And is 100% related to a shot with a shallow depth of field.

Rack focus is for focussing between two (or more) foreground object. I'm talking about the widescale blurring of the background. There is no term for this (I looked.) Nice try though.

Do you always speak for other filmmakers? And since when is proper focusing a drawback...? So.. I guess if you were shooting on long lens.. wide open, and you had to direct someone's attention from point A to point B in the frame you would do that how? keeping in mind of course.. point B.. is Out of Focus... You can't get around the limitations of a lens. You could I suppose use a wide lens, and have everything in focus. But what happens if it is time based event? that requires people to see something at a point in time, and another shortly after? What would "Deep focus" do for you there? I think you get my meaning..

Actually, most of the instances of shallow DOF I see are due to this: The DP running up against a limitation, and instead of working around it, work with it. Sometimes it works, but mostly it doesn't -- to me it just looks like lazy filmmaking.

A good example of this (I see this on television shows all the time) is when they cut from a med to a cu, and don't bother re-setting the camera (or even relighting). The background suddenly jumps from sharp focus to blurry -- not stylistically, but because the DP is too lazy to shoot the scene properly.

Call this style if you want -- I won't.

Many shallow DOF shots can be accomplished instead by proper framing or blocking, which is the source of my peeve.

Yes... of course! Thats what all those small budget films were trying to do.. add layers of meaning to each shot! my god.. it is so obvious.. seriously.. how does having a busy background help your audience? Of course if we went down this path, we'd have to get into the art of Production design, but that is a whole other topic...

Huh? Are you dissing the one thing that makes cinema an artform? WTF? Dude, you just seriously compromised yourself if that's what you really think.

Focus is part of the toolbox. You don't need to use focus to divert attention to places all the time. But it is another tool you can use to help your idea.

DVXUser has some sort of inferiority Complex related to Depth of Field. People need to get over it I think. Tell the story with the best means available to you, and if that means using focus to help, then giver.

"The DVX has great DOF BTW" ... i dunno what that means.. every camera that has a lens attached to it would qualify that statement.. it's almost like saying "This camera can record images". no kidding..

Agreement. **Yawn**

I have yet to see a movie use "Deep Focus" like say, welles, Citizen Kane. *link, could you list films that use Deep Focus as a technique? Wide shots don't qualify since this technique requires you to have the layers to achieve it, namely, a foreground, middle ground and a background. I can't think of any recent films that do this. Or specifically set out in the production design and composition to achieve the effect.

Any film made from the 20's to the 70's, but particularly German and Hollywood films of the 30's, 40's, and 50's are all specifically deep-focus films. What makes Cain stand out is that previously they would have to build shallow sets to keep everything in focus. Cain used technology to be able to use deep sets and get extra-deep focus shots.

In the 60's lighting, lenses, and film stock became good enough that no special techniques were required for deep focus. Any current film where you can see the foreground and the background is in focus is deep focus -- though undoubtably not deliberately as earlier films. Almost all films today are by default deep-focus just because that's the way the camera's work. In the early days of filmmaking it was a constant struggle to keep everything in focus -- and much of the technology we have to day (lighting, lenses) comes from that struggle.

 

[Policar]

Yeah man, Janusz Kaminski, Salvatore Totino...total chumps.

All kidding, aside you've got a point but not a great one. Most DPs shoot between f2.8-f4 (t3-t4.5?) and on an SLR lens that's like f4-f5.6 in terms of DoF which is way deeper than what you get with a 35mm adapter since most people shoot f1.4. Also most DPs are shooting wide nowadays since camera moves and shaky-cam is in. Spielberg keeps it in the 20mm zone about 90% of the time or something.

But what about Barry Lyndon? t0.7. Insane. A lot of stuff shot at night is still wide open (1.2-1.4). Brokeback and Geisha had a lot of stuff between t1.4-t2.0 and Geisha was anamorphic.

What you're saying is that no good movie has a soft focus look...I guess that cancels out every film of the Classical Studio era and everything now looks awful, too. Oh, and early anamorphic lenses had shallow DoF issues so you're seriously saying that every movie not shot in the 70s and 80s except a scant few is below your abilities and expectations. That's not hubris--that's insanity. Want to impress me? Go win best DP...Kaminksi did.

The truth of the matter is that most talented DPs will shoot between t2-t4 with some exceptions on either end. Malick shot some t11-t16 recently but the lenses acted up when closed down like that. 35mm adapters give a shallower DoF than is used in 90% of Hollywood films, true, but Hollywood films are heavy on camera movement, fancy set designs and are projected on the big screen.

For TV exhibition, a shallower DoF looks better (Lost has the shallowest, even in outdoor scenes) and if you're not using a lot of camera movement, you're going to be using longer lenses thus a shallower (looking) DoF. A shallow DoF can hide ugly background details, can allow you to shoot more flexibly during the day because of it, and can allow you to spend less on sets. I don't have $100 million to spend on my movie, so I'll do the best I can with the tools I have. A shallow DoF is a good tool to use, even if it's not what I'd be using in an ideal world.

So what's your argument boil down to? No good movies use a shallow DoF since you like a deep DoF and judge how good a movie is by it. Can anyone argue with that? No. But, whatever. No accounting for taste, and some good DPs would even agree with you. (German Expressionism stuff is pretty good, I agree.)

 

[Dirty_Ass]

Guys, we're arguing about depth of field. Whether or not we agree with eachother, we're still all friggin nerds.

 

[snodart]

And by pulling examples of recent movies you'll automatically prove me right because I'm bemoaning the lack of good cinematography in recent films (shallow-DOF just one of the issues -- there's plenty more I could offend you with!)

This dramatic failure of cinematography is your opinion, but not the opinion of the majority of movie goers or movie makers. Nothing wrong with that. I say (and I mean this in a positive way), stop debating and start shooting. There would be no better way to prove your point and convince the masses.

This thread could be argued all day alongside religion and people's favorite color. It is simply a matter of opinion; something that, in the realms of logic, cannot be argued to resolution. Cinema is a method of communication. It seems to me that the goal of most filmmakers (and artists for that matter) is to communicate their work to a large group as apposed to a small group of like minded people. Things do evolve and change though; and with art there truly are no rules. So feel free to start a revolution.

As for the "newbie filmmaker" and shallow DOF. If you don't like it, point it out to the filmmaker when allowed the oppertunity... or just don't watch it. I am certain that your early work (I assume you have a body of work) has signs of crutch work and novice tactics. So relax, shoot the style you like, and start a new thread of how advantagous deep focus can be. This way, those that shoot the footage that seems to make you cringe can consider and possibly even pick up on your ideas.

 

[Loki]

I have to laugh.

Most of you who think you're arguing against me are arguing for me. Please read my posts completely.

Where are all these shallow DOF movies? Is that all you can come up with (and bad examples at that.)

The reason none of you put up any movies is that upon viewing, you found that there were actually very few shallow DOF scenes in them. Am I right? In fact the shallow DOF scenes probably composed a scant few % of the entire running time.

If that's all you can come up with, then you've proven me right. :dankk2:

And by pulling examples of recent movies you'll automatically prove me right because I'm bemoaning the lack of good cinematography in recent films (shallow-DOF just one of the issues -- there's plenty more I could offend you with!)

I didn't feel like wasting my time posting images from movies.. I gave you two perfectly good examples to go watch.

I wouldn't mind seeing some of your work, you know, to see the outstanding cinemtagraphy and useage of "deep focus".

Perhaps you should enlighten us... it seems that we are all clearly missing the point.

Either your very ignorant narrow minded, or your some kind of Deep Focus Prophet, I can't decide.

 

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

read Overlands post ...
it's alll about story telling.

anyone thinks that either IDOF or SDOF is BETTER than the other for their own sake doesn't get visual story telling.

this argument is stupid
its like saying that vowels are BAD
and one should only use consonants.

granted there are very clear rules on when and how to use vowels,
but if you read Overland's post you will see that there are clear and established scenarios for shooting a scene and which lens to use when. What he describes is so rudimenatry and standard if its news to you then you have a lot to learn. These are not rules, but guidlnes if you will, and for the rest of the Planet (where it seems you are not from according to your location under your avatar) this VOCABULARY has an established psychological effect. Filmmakers may choose to diverge from it for effect and that effect may or may not work for you. Like any tool it may be used well or poorly.

PMark .. please do me a favor and type the rest of your well thought out responses without vowels.

I hate vowels.

Many's the time I've seen a beginning English speaker ( a toddler, or a foreigner ) use vowels incorrectly. Everyone in the room sighs ... oh there goes the random insertion of a vowel.

You might think that this would lead me to regard the speaker as a novice, or unable to use the tools of language in a sophisticated way ... but on the contray, it has brought me to HATE VOWELS.

You see I am not smart enough to see the distinction between the tool and its improper use so I have decide that anyone who uses vowels is not really speaking English properly ... so again, I therefore hate vowels.

makes sense huh? :evil:

 

[Loki]

I hate vowels too!

except that we are just trying to get pmark23 to understand that movies use variations of DOF... something I think he is having trouble grasping... perhaps he can't find the ... focus.. of his argument?

sorry.. couldn't resist.

 

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

I hate vowels too!

except that we are just trying to get pmark23 to understand that movies use variations of DOF...

wht! mvs s dpth f fld?
tht's crzy tlk!

sn't t mch bttr whn nly s n tl, rthr thn tw?

Trasnlation
"what! movies use shallow depth of field?
that's crazy talk!

isn't it much better wgen you only use one tool rather than two?"

I get where you guys are coming from but you (and I guess me too now) are having and argument whith a crazy person.
We might as well go to the corner and convince the local transient that the CIA is not speaking too him via a radio in his tooth if PMark does not think that very oscar nominated film this year for for the last 30 years hasn't had sh*t loads of SDOF.

 

[pmark23]

So I just assume that you don't actually shoot anything and you just like to talk about shooting stuff... prove me wrong... bust out those IMDB credits.. or portfolio or whatever...

Aren't you reading my posts completely. I already said (twice) that I use shallow DOF quite often. However I do documentaries and often have no choice but to blur out the background during an interview.

My film-school projects were all deep-focus (deliberately), and when I get around to shooting a narrative again, you can bet that it'll also be deep-focus.

I think you have some sort of complex of your own with Focus effects.. an out of focus background doesn't imply poor composition. I don't know if your aware, but the reason most people use an Adaptor is to get a soft focus on the background, not to just completely fuzz out the background.

Not always, but mostly it's a dead giveaway of an inexperienced filmmaker.

Try this trick with your own eyes... look at an object.. focus on it... and pay attention to your peripheral vision. Notice how everything else except the focused object is out of focus slightly?

Why does this sound familiar? Oh, because this was my initial argument.

Watching a well made film, you never notice these things, and you shouldn't. You should be paying attention to what is "in focus", unless you are trying to achieve an effect, such as the Deep Focus Technique in Citizen Kane.

Well shot films attempt to mimick the way your eye naturally filters out unecessary detail. And I can gaurentee you, that there are Rack Focus effects going on in your "good" movie collection that your not even aware of.

Then why bother at all with shallow DOF shots if you can't see them?

This is exactly why long ago filmmakers didn't use shallow DOF -- because the eye automatically does it, and doing it for the audience was considered BAD. The audience knows where they want to look, and a skillful director (Welles is a great example -- Spielberg is also great) can force your eye through a deliberate path so that in a shot of a few seconds meaning can be disseminated in a deliberate and controlled manner. This is done by using lighting (to create shadows), blocking, camera movements, and all of the other tricks (Shallow DOF included.)

Even better, different people will follow different eye-paths, and interpret the story differently.

Use Shallow DOF constantly and you vastly decrease the story-telling ability of filmmaking. For an excellent example, look at the screen captures posted above. What narrow, pointless story. **Yawn**.

Note that television, with it's small screen, is a case where you often want shallow DOF to help with storytelling.

Another reason none of you can come up with a list of movies that are composed with many shallow DOF shots is that for the reason you outlined above, you THINK the shots are shallow DOF, but when you look at them critically you realize they weren't -- you saw it as shallow DOF because you were only playing attention to the foreground -- your brain filtered out the background the way it was supposed to.

That brings me back to what I said earlier... what do you consider Shallow DOF? The DVX does not, and cannot deliver the same Depth of Field as a Film Camera, which is the another big reason people use the adaptors. I don't care what you say about "good composition" cause apparently you have no clue what that actually means.

Ouch! :violent5:

Composition isn't just referring to framing, but reading your posts, it seems that is all your concerned about. A good composition leads the eye, with focus, colour, geometry, movement etc... Sure you can have a nice composition with everything in focus, but why let people's eye's wander around the frame when you want them to look at something specific? (unless of course that is the stylistic choice of the filmmaker.)

Yeah, you're right, Loki. The lights just came on. All this time I was worrying about stupid things like composition, framing, telling a good story. poo poo all that! I'm just going to blur everything I don't understand. poo poo learning how to use the camera properly. poo poo the audience, and their stupid expectations.

Is that what you're trying to say?

It is all about information... if you want people to take in a lot of information in one shot then so be it, but you get into trouble when that interfers with editing and pacing. What separates the pros from the amateurs is their ability to filter out the unneccessary info, and only keep what needs to be seen.

This is another peeve of mine -- the dumbing down of movies. Not all of us are retards. Some of us actually enjoy seeing a movie several times to pick out all the tiny elements that weren't noticed the first few times. This is good filmmaking.

Do you need to see all those street signs and people walking during a close up on a street? If it is integral to the story then yes, but if not, why bog down your image with useless information.

Because the mind will blank them out if they're not important. And how do you know they're not important? Maybe some people in the audience will see a brief shot of a "No Parking" sign as further evidence of the main characters post nihilistic attitude towards the increasingly hedonistic socio-political system (or something.)

Like I said, blur out the background, and you reduce the meaning of your films to almost nothing -- and then what are people going to talk about? Nothing except what the director wants you to talk about. **Boring**.

Most indie-zero budget filmmakers don't have experience and just shoot to get it done (I am guilty of this as well). That is where the "everything in focus" problem arises. Despite what you said previously, having everything nice and sharp really doesn't add layers of meaning, because if you understood composition you'd realize that layers imply separation, and with no separation you really are working with 1 layer.

Yes, of course you can light to create that separation, but that is only one tool. So you have lit a scene with contrast, and depth, now what are we supposed to be looking at? The foreground? the Background? etc..

I see where you're going here, and mostly agree -- except that the confusion of what to watch -- foreground or background -- is one of the huge features of filmmaking. There's essays written by theorists going back 100 years talking about this very thing. That again is the reason why early filmmakers were so intent on keeping everything in focus.

Blur is a very poor tool to create separation, because you have only two things to see: what's visible and what's not. By using lighting (shading, really), framing, set design, composition, and camera movement, a filmmaker can create many layers of depth, and the direct the audiences eyeballs through the scene to tell a story. This is great filmmaking.

I think I have made my point by now... give those exampels a watch.. two big name films that use really "shallow" DOF in many shots... of course I still have no idea what Shallow DOF means to you..

so.. take what I say with a grain of salt.. who knows.. maybe we will all be shooting are films with Deep Focus 20 years from now.

Maybe in 20 years everything will be "microfocus", with a 2cm image depth, and rapid rack-focussing? **shudder**


Once again, I'm NOT saying that Shallow DOF is never used, and should never be used, but that it should be used with thought. To get back to the original topic: there is nothing inherently "professional" about Shallow DOF, and thinking that you have to use Shallow DOF in your production to look "professional" or add production value is wrong. There are lots of other things which are more effective (like proper framing, blocking, and composition.)

Also keep in mind that I'm a film school grad working on a masters in Semiology, which means that I watch movies with a finger on the pause button (which makes for an unhappy wife), and break down every scene into its component meanings -- and try to figure out how those components work together. Blurring parts of the screen is a frustration because usually (but not always) the blurring is symbolic of nothing, and worse, it blots out something that could have had meaning.

I hope you see where I'm coming from, because as far as I can tell we mostly agree except for stylistic reasons which is something we don't have to agree about (and is stupid to argue over).

 

[pmark23]

BTW: I dn't slly sy "Poo".

 

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

3 Questions

1) wow ... film school huh ... what did your film school professors say when you insisted on only using 50% of the available vocabulary to tell your story?

2) did your "narrative" films have stories, or just lots of shots with infinite focus?

3) were these film professors "real" i.e. could they be seen by persons other than yoursef? :laugh:

 

[TimurCivan]

3 Questions......

3) were these film professors "real" i.e. could they be seen by persons other than yoursef? :laugh:

Ha!!!!!

play nice guys.

 

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

OK "Jarred" oooohhh

I'm am just amazed that this guy went to film school. I don't mean to be mean, even though Im being a bit of a wise ass, but I'm mistified. What are they teachin?
"make preconcieved ideas about which lens to use, and only use that lens regardless of the story or the ability of other lenses to tell it?"

And more importantly Where TF are you Timur, weren't you suposed to come by and look at my rough cut tonight and make fun of me for using SDOF and IDOF in my film?

 

[TimurCivan]

Call me "Ghost JArred"

I am sorry dude i was in a late production meeeting on my commercial, and i had an interview for the position of DP on an actually budgeted short film. so i was MIA this week. I will come by tomorw night maybe? or Friday?

i say ghost, because i am like that if i get real busy i just vanish. sorry man.

 

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

PMing you.

Sorry for threadjack.