Embracing Deep Focus and Telling Stories

Neil, your post said what I'd like to say, but about a hundred times more effectively. We should put that at the top of every video based forum as required reading.

Someone here mentioned Kurosawa's work, and I recommend viewing "The Hidden Fortress" to anyone interested in film making without the budget for shallow DOF. A lot of Spielberg's films are shot with deep focus too. Check out the Indy movies and especially Jaws (his finest directorial work, in my opinion).

www.philipwilliams.com
 
excellent point. I agree. Spend more time writing, less time relaxing and learning new cool technology. Hollywood lacks esthetic people, not technical people.

All the time I read your post my brain was making excuses to why you were wrong, but you are right, and I tell you from the bottom of my.... brain :)

all rightie! Now for some serious writing... Hmm... There was this cute girl I met.... And didn't ask for her phone number, and now she's lost.... I guess the clichés are as good an inspiration as any :)

happy writing!

BTW: anyone else wonder why the "screenwriting" forum goes under "off-topic" here at dvxuser.com?
 
I mentioned Kurosawa and he actually took the technique further than Welles did.

Welles, like John Ford, tended to use a lot of wide lense shots that have a pretty deep focus anyway. For longer shots he often "faked it" by using double exposure tricks and an optical printer to get both the foreground and background in focus (the 1940s equivelant to compositing).

Kurosawa, on the other hand, experimented a lot more with trying to get a deep focus while in extreme telaphoto. This means keeping the more two dimensional, compressed persective of telaphoto but with deep focus. The result is that the image is much more akin to that of a painting or drawing than that of a film image. The most striking examples of this technique are in Yojimbo and Red Beard (where he literally shot the actors from VERY far off with tons of light).

I personally have always been on the opposite side of the fence than most. I think that deep focus not only looks as good as shallow Dof, but in the right hands it can look far better. I think it offers you much more subtle and sophisticated composition options.

The first time I shot with the DVX, I asked my professor how I could get focus to be deeper. He was a bit shocked that I was asking this since every other student he'd encountered who had moved from 16mm to DVX always wanted the opposite. When I'm shooting, I do my best to get as much light as possible so I can close down the iris and get a very deep focus even in telaphoto. I love the creative options it gives me. It's just more fun and challenging.

For instance, my last film on the DVX had a shot in a classroom. In the first shot, we truck right accross rows and rows of students stopping on a pair of hands drawing in the back of the room. This was in deep focus so rather than getting the drawing hands to pop out at the end simply by blurring everything else, I did it in other ways. They were lit brighter than the rest so they popped out and they are positioned in bottom and top right of the frame where the eye is naturally drawn. Finally, the motion of drawing also gets you to look at them.

Another shot shows the main character in profile looking down at his drawing (offscreen). He fills almost half of the frame. He then leans back to reveal a girl sitting on the other side of the classroom looking out the window who he turns and sees. If I had shot this like many people, I would have just had him be in focus and done a rack focus to the girl when he turns his head to see her. Instead, I shot it in deep focus. He reveal her when he moves his head back and our eye is draw to her even more so when the guy turns his head in her direction. I find this a lot more graceful and interesting than a simple rack focus.

Now, you can do some cool things with shallow DoF. Most plain old close ups or inserts look far better with as shallow a DoF as you can get (and you can get pretty shallow on an HVX or DVX by just zooming all the way in). But ultimatly I think deep focus offers more exciting possabilities for me than a shallow DoF. If I was shooting 35mm, the first think I'd do would be to show my DP Yojimbo and ask him how we can get a DoF that deep. :)
 
I agree with everything that has been said about having a strong script. And I agree that there have been great things done with deep focus. I also think that shallow dof is a great tool for a variety of reasons. For one, it emulates the way we as human beings perceive our environment. We can only focus on so much at once, which is a good thing considering if we were able to concentrate on everything in our field of vision we might go insane from too much information. The same rule can be applied to watching a movie. If the audience is bombarded with tons of information, they become tired. As a director, the last thing you want is for the audience to become tired (or bored), because then they will start to lose focus. I'm not saying that keeping the audience's attention can be achieved solely with shallow dof, I'm just saying, that if used properly in conjunction with whatever other storytelling elements the director implements, then it can become a very powerful tool.

Concerning the "new film language." I don't understand exactly what is meant by this. In my opinion, every film should have its own vocabulary; its own grammar. Creating a "new film language" that can be applicable to all further productions sounds like an incredibly pretentious idea to me. Each new film should have it's own look, which ultimately is the manifestation or representation of what is going on in the story.
 
We can only focus on so much at once, which is a good thing considering if we were able to concentrate on everything in our field of vision we might go insane from too much information. The same rule can be applied to watching a movie. If the audience is bombarded with tons of information, they become tired. As a director, the last thing you want is for the audience to become tired (or bored), because then they will start to lose focus.
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But's why not make something more visually sophisticated for a more sophisticated audience? Any not chose to draw their eye to different things subtley instead of just saying, "You can't look at that!!! I'll put it out of focus just to make sure you don't dare look at what I don't want you to." We've had visual art for thousands of years. Those artists have been able to get their viewers eyes to move around the canvas without having to throw stuff out of focus. I've never gone to the National Gallery of Art and seen someone whining, "I can't take it! Why can't they blur some of the painting so I don't have to look at all of it!" Viewers are perhaps a lot more visually intelligent than we give them credit for. Hell, lots of people can look at a pianting by Pollock and have no problem with it.

Some people do interesting things with a shallow DoF and really use it as a tool. Ridley Scott. Steven Soddenberg in Solaris. Berteluci. Most however only seem concerned with a shallow DoF because a) they're too lazy to try to draw the eye somewhere in more sophisticated ways like composition, lighting, and movement b) they don't think their audience is smart enough to handle deep focus, or c) they think it'll make their digital stuff look more like film (which just isn't true).
 
Ursa said:
BTW: anyone else wonder why the "screenwriting" forum goes under "off-topic" here at dvxuser.com?
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Uh.... because the forum was originally about the Panasonic AG-DVX100 not screenwriting.

Also "Screenplay/Writing" is not under "Off-Topic", it is under "Filmmaking" along with Cinematography, Lighting, Audio, Directing, Journalism/Documentary, and Business/Post Production.
 
I haven't weighed in on this for a number of reasons, it's sort of like discussing religion or political preferences... anyway, here's my crappy 2 cents worth...

I will embrace "native" shallow DOF from any camera I use, but I simply don't like the hassle of what you have to do with these 1/3" cameras to get your 35mm depth of field. I don't like it the way I didn't like getting 16:9 from the DVX via an add-on element.

I believe if you're going to the expense of renting the Mini35 and a good set of optics for it, you're better off just stepping up to a different class of camera altogether. Here's a joke I use... "When is an HVX not an HVX? When it's 35lbs and 1/4 the value of the accessories attached to it."

Beyond that, I come from an old school visual effects background, where we would fight for deep DOF for many reasons. My God, I've even put foil with a pin-hole in it behind lenses to get greater DOF with long time exposures for EFX shots.

I just watched "November" last week... didn't notice the deep focus one way or another, and it felt plenty "film-like" to me. I would think that if you can get by with the standard DOF on this sort of character driven film, you can do it anywhere.

A shoot I was on as VFX guy in June used the mini35 and the AC didn't A.) turn on the motor and B.) didn't white balance to compensate for all the screwy extra glass. One mistake was recoverable, the other... not so much. Total disaster.

Having said that, I fully understand why people love the shallow focus, and I got roundly lambasted at a breakfast with ILM's Director of Photography Marty Rosenberg when I expressed my resistance to the whole setup needed for the HVX (He's independently DP'ing an extremely low-budgeted horror movie here in Colorado and they're using the Mini35 with the HVX's.) He (and most people I know) think shallow DOF is worth any "cost". I think it's unpredictable to take one half-baked camera and add a half-baked hack to it and then pretend it's something else.

Finally, there are so many cool toys like the Varizoom and Bebop focus/zoom/iris controllers that give you inexpensive freedom with the native HVX lens. All of these are worthless on a rig with this sort of glass.

Just some random bitter thoughts on an otherwise nice day... :)

Jim Arthurs
 
David, i somewhat agree with what you say, but you are coming off rather pompous and stating your opinion as fact. Thats your opinion about DOF, thanks for sharing it, now you can go and dont have to shove it down peoples throats
 
David,

I'm not exactly sure why you became so defensive in response to my comment when you just restated what I was trying to get across by saying that there have been good things done with shallow dof. I agree. I also agree that there have been bad things done with shallow dof. But that doesn't make it inherently bad.

Your statement about paintings is completely irrelavant when compared to the moving image. A painting requires long, repeated viewings. Film does not allow this convenience. Film is also not a single image like a painting, so instead it's like looking at maybe five or six paintings a minute.

Most films don't use solely deep focus or shallow dof anyway, but rather a combination of the two. So I don't see what the big deal is.
 
Kenneth said:
With my HVX, I am shooting a feature film this fall for festivals (with the hopes of landing a distributor--I know, "Join the club"), and a weekly webisodic series that will play 320 x 240!

We have to play all the markets to our advantage, to get an audience for our work! The venues are changing. So must we!
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Interesting. I'm beginning to think The Sarlacc got it right back at post #6 when he stated the following...

" Was this an alternate point of view? or some spam for a personal website?"
 
David, i somewhat agree with what you say, but you are coming off rather pompous and stating your opinion as fact. Thats your opinion about DOF, thanks for sharing it, now you can go and dont have to shove it down peoples throats
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You clearly don't know me very well :D Yes, it's my opinion and yes I'm damn forceful with my opinion untill someone else presents a good counter argument. If Ridley Scott wants to argue with me about it and show me all the cool stuff he's done with shallow DoF then I'll be happy to be quiet. If Soddenberg wants to talk about how he used shallow DoF to give a feeling of isolation to Solaris then i'm not gonna argue with him. But I don't have a lot of sympathy for all those who say, "I have to have shallow DoF so my movie will look like film!" or "I don't wanna worry about the composition so much so I'll just throw the background of of focus." If really want to use it as a creative tool them more power to you (we need to be creative in how we tell our stories visually and otherwise). Most people I see here though only talk about it as something to give them a quick film look and that's just not accurate. Deep focus can exist in film and it still looks like film. Unless you want to argue that Citizen Kane, Yojimbo, The Shawshank Redemption, or The Manchurian Canidate look like video, I don't see that as an opinion but a fact.

David,

I'm not exactly sure why you became so defensive in response to my comment when you just restated what I was trying to get across by saying that there have been good things done with shallow dof. I agree. I also agree that there have been bad things done with shallow dof. But that doesn't make it inherently bad.
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Didn't mean to sound defensive. I'm forceful with my opinions but I don't mean to communicate any ill will. Sorry if it comes accross that way.

Your statement about paintings is completely irrelavant when compared to the moving image. A painting requires long, repeated viewings. Film does not allow this convenience. Film is also not a single image like a painting, so instead it's like looking at maybe five or six paintings a minute.
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It's not completely irrelevant (unless you think Welles, Kurosawa, and any other director who derrives much of their style from paintings is irrelevent). Many of the most visually striking directors have a background in painting or some sort of visual art. Just because deep focus may be more challenging doesn't mean that is a bad thing. Most of our great works of literature and art are the most challenging. Deep focus is certainly harder on both the artist and the viewer but I'm up for that. That's why I argue it's more sophisticated.
 
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Great thread!

I would like to mention Gregg Toland, DP on "Citizen Cane" and many other memorable films.
He is truly the genius behind "deep focus" and he was experimenting with it way before "Cane".
That movie was an excellent opportunity for him to match his extraordinary creativity with the likes of Orson Welles and Mankiewiecz, resulting on the powerful and brilliant visual storytelling.

He is also a main influence on Roger Deakins' work.
 
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peter orland said:
Interesting. I'm beginning to think The Sarlacc got it right back at post #6 when he stated the following...

" Was this an alternate point of view? or some spam for a personal website?"
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What could I possibly be spamming? I don't understand this. If I post links to examples, is that not permitted?

I find it an interesting discussion too.
 
Cynic821 said:
you find it a big enough deal to continue to post...
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And apparently you find my posting a big enough deal to continue to post about yourself. So I guess the conclusion is that both of us need to shut up and just go shoot something (which I'm planning to do as soon as the sun gets a bit lower).
 
So, I'm assuming that if someone handed all of you DOF nay-sayers an M2, Letus, or whatever--

You'd turn it down because you're more interested in making something out of your HVX/DVX/XL whosamagigger ... something... ::Cough:: Sophisticated for a sophisticated audience.


I'm with Sarlacc, though I'm adding fuel to the flame.

If the venues were really changing, then why's the Red Camera equipped with the option for lenses that'll allow you the same DOF choices as a film camera?
 
Nice Kholi!

This is the same thing I hear about film. "I'm not going to shoot on FILM." Well, due to the costs of it, I probably won't either. But if it was on someone else's dime, yeah, I'd love the opportunity to shoot on film.

If I had a 35mm adapter, you bet your a$$ I'd be using it. :thumbsup:
 
Kholi said:
So, I'm assuming that if someone handed all of you DOF nay-sayers an M2, Letus, or whatever--

You'd turn it down because you're more interested in making something out of your HVX/DVX/XL whosamagigger ... something... ::Cough:: Sophisticated for a sophisticated audience.
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Do you need some water? You must have serious bug to feel so bad that you need to type the word "cough." :D

And no, I wouldn't use an M2 or Letus if I had one for free. I think I mentioned already that in my DVX projects I actually over lit and closed down the iris in order to get a higher DoF. I did the same thing when I shot 16mm.

The only time I really like a shallow DoF is in closeup and the HVX200 does that fine when zoomed all the way in. I guess the M2 could make it look even blurrier and that'd be pretty much all I'd use it for.

Never the less, I honestly wouldn't want an M2 for the reasons:

1. It softens the whole image.
2. You lose light.
3. It's big and heavy and makes the camera less flexible.

This is the same thing I hear about film. "I'm not going to shoot on FILM." Well, due to the costs of it, I probably won't either. But if it was on someone else's dime, yeah, I'd love the opportunity to shoot on film.

If I had a 35mm adapter, you bet your a$$ I'd be using it. :thumbsup:
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If someone was gonna give me a huge crew and a 35mm Panavision then I'd love to shoot film. If I was my own DP with a small crew however, I'd rather use an HVX200 over a Super 16mm camera. I prefer the control I have with the HVX200, the flexibility, and honestly believe that I'll probably get a better image out of it since I'm more comfortible and experienced with the DVX/HVX than 16mm these days. I'd long for the greater lattitude of film but ultimatly think I'd make something better with an HVX.

Honestly, you're argument of "I'd use an M2 and you're just saying that cause you can't afford it!," just seems to indicate that the reason you care so much about an M2 is because "everyone" wants one and sees it as a short cut to looking like film.

Of course you and Kholi are probably right. Kurosawa, Welles, and Frakenhiemer were probably just tring to pass video off as film and couldn't afford a decent 35mm adapter. That's why their movies looks so terrible and video-ish. If only they'd had you two to show them how to make a real movie.
 
DavidBeier said:
Of course you and Kholi are probably right. Kurosawa, Welles, and Frakenhiemer were probably just tring to pass video off as film and couldn't afford a decent 35mm adapter. That's why their movies looks so terrible and video-ish. If only they'd had you two to show them how to make a real movie.
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BRILLIANT!!!!!! OH ****!!!! I thought I was the only one that realized that!!!!!:evil:

DavidBeier said:
Honestly, you're argument of "I'd use an M2 and you're just saying that cause you can't afford it!," just seems to indicate that the reason you care so much about an M2 is because "everyone" wants one and sees it as a short cut to looking like film.
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I'm not sure where you got that quote from my post.

Talk about having a serious bug...:Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)
 
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