Shallow DOF VS. Deep.

I

ironpony

Carbonite Member
I have a project which I wanted to shoot with deep DOF cause of mastershots where characters are in different places, and I wanted them to each be in focus, like Citizen Kane or a movie from the deep focus era as such. Those are for the indoor scenes. I have some outdoor night scenes which I do not have the budget to light up as bright and those will have to be shot at an extreme shallow DOF.

So I wonder, will audiences think it's too odd to switch styles, if I switch from deep DOF indoors to shallow outdoors? The reason is not enough light, but will the audience see it as an odd choice of style change and find it looking too different for the same movie?
 
I love the Citizen Kane reference. I immediately thought of this shot:
citizen_kane_21-620x.jpg



I think having deep and shallow focus will be fine, and might even work to your advantage, depending on the story. Just make sure any cuts between the two aren't too jarring. Shoot a lot of extreme close ups (hands, eyes, objects, etc) to make sure you intermediate shots just in case.
 
I really doubt the audience will be able to tell the difference in a narrative piece. Anyways, it would be strange to have deep focus in night, because that is unnatural. In fact, the iris in our own eyes opens up to maximize the amount of light that reaches the back of the eye. So if in the night scene, all that is in focus is the subject, while the background is blurred away, that will probably feel more natural to the viewer anyway, since our eyes strain to focus on important things at night, like a bear that wants to eat us
 
Okay thanks. A lot of people do not realize that their night vision is shallow DOF though, when I asked them. So not sure if that will click with them. Especially since a lot of movies, with chase sequences like mine, are shot with deeper focus. I haven't seen many chase sequences shot with such shallow focus so it might be even more noticeably strange then, but maybe not.

As far as it looking to jarring between cuts I'm not sure. The gangsters are having a meeting and I want deep focus all around the table they are sitting at for the wide shots. Then they get an emergency phone call, and all run out of the room. It then cuts to outside and they get in the cars and hurry off, it will then be extreme shallow. Does that sound jarring?
 
You could always get a split diopter for the night stuff if you're really concerned. You will have have to hide the blur though.
 
How would a split diopter work? At night it's mostly a chase scene, so I don't get how a split diopter would be useful for that.

Another thing I forgot to mention was the lighting style. I want to shoot the indoor scenes with a hard lighting film noir style. But the outdoors will be very soft lighting at night. So the lighting style changes drastically too, if that's okay.
 
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