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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

The 'film look' is a Crock, Shallow depth-of-field is Banal and Rack focus is Lazy.

Haven't read it all, but the general hunt for shallow DOF is quite off-putting.

But then again, the "general" hunt for anything specific like that as a holy grail, is quite off-putting...
 
Shallow depth of field is a simply put, just a tool in a filmmaker's arsenal. Like anything, it can be overused, but when you are using the camera to tell a story there are plenty of times I can think of that shallow depth of field is far superior then deep depth. I found the article extremely interesting, and true in most cases, but I still would argue with the authors absolute opinion on shallow depth of field.

Say, we have two characters, a guy and a girl... childhood friends. One day at the fair they suddenly have a romantic moment, and they kiss. The fair is full of people, events, busy things, but you want the audience to be trapped in the moment. The characters would just be focused on each other, everything else would seem to stop. How do you tell that story with a camera? Shallow focus. I see no sin in using shallow focus for this shot. It's not lazy, it is helping me tell the story I want to tell.

My two cents.
 
balance...is key.

new film makers with a video camera and a 35mm adaptor tend to shoot everything shallow. He's just lashing out at all those new "filmmakers".

right tool for the right job, or situation.....

he's just stating the obvious....for those out there who have a hard time with that sort of thing...
 
Many scenes in Fight Club would never work without shallow depth of field - but, like in most cases, it`s the amateurs who misuse or overuse effects and techniques...cough...Michael Bay...
 
Pedro Guimaraes said:
balance...is key.

new film makers with a video camera and a 35mm adaptor tend to shoot everything shallow. He's just lashing out at all those new "filmmakers".

right tool for the right job, or situation.....

he's just stating the obvious....for those out there who have a hard time with that sort of thing...
Click to expand...

Awwww but shallow depth of field is soooo beautiful. Haha I fell into this same trap on my first feature. Shot way too much shallow (I just couldn't put that 85mm down) and I think it hurt the film overall. Was it a total disaster? No, but I learned from my overuse and toned it back a bit.
 
Shallow depth-of-field -- it's another expressive tool. Why do painters and draughtspersons, say, use 'selective focus' in their work? For a cinematic example, look at Scorsese's Taxi Driver .. the shot in which Travis (in his red sport jacket) is about to meet his date (Cybil Shepard), where Travis is walking (singularly in focus) afloat in a sea of people. Would this separation (loneliness) have been expressed with deep-focus? Probably not.

I agree, the effect (like many) can be overused or used without emotional or structural purpose.
 
Curious: How is the word "penultimate" being used in the article at the top of the thread? Its actual definition is "next to the last". In the context of the sentence, the author seems to be using the word as meaning "exemplary". Am I amiss on this?
 
That article was long overdue; I hope he follows it up with another one about the urge of many filmmakers to keep their camera moving when there is no need for it, except to cover up the fact that there is no content. As video looks are associated with cheap video productions and too much shallow depth with people who want video to look like film, I can't anymore help associating fast cameras with footage aimed at children, who combine a need for lack of serious content and the feeling that something very dynamic is happening
 
Joseph Podlesnik said:
Curious: How is the word "penultimate" being used in the article at the top of the thread? Its actual definition is "next to the last". In the context of the sentence, the author seems to be using the word as meaning "exemplary". Am I amiss on this?
Click to expand...

I don't know if I'm blind, or what, but I cant for the life of me find the part you're talking about. Where is it?
 
It's right under the second image --

"Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, and the superb camera work of Gregg Toland, stands as a penultimate (next to last?) example of the power of deep-focus and spawned the host of new thinking about cinema aesthetics that was embodied by the French New Wave and scholarly journals such as Cahiers du Cinema."
 
hans de vries said:
That article was long overdue; I hope he follows it up with another one about the urge of many filmmakers to keep their camera moving when there is no need for it, except to cover up the fact that there is no content.
Click to expand...

I totally agree with this. :emote_whack: Bad filmmakers, use a tripod.

I'm also getting tired of every other movie being totally desaturated.
 
I noticed the use of "penultimate" too. I think we can let it pass because much of what he says is true.

A wide "deep focus" shot is a challenge because it requires grown-up lighting and composition, much easier for the munchkins to go long and drop out the focus on the background. Indeed, if I read, "nice bokeh" one more time I think I'll eat my arm
 
...and then there's the bleach bypass effect....

It sort of reminds me of a story I heard about the people at Disney favouring the 50mm lens, just because Walt once said that he really liked that lens...

There is no one "best" way of doing things; use the appropriate technique/tool to tell the story you want to tell in the most interesting and effective way...
 
Danish P.V. said:
..it`s the amateurs who misuse or overuse effects and techniques...cough...Michael Bay...
Click to expand...

Sorry, are you referring to Michael Bay as an Amateur? What qualifies him as an amateur? And how has he misused effects exactly?
 
The point here is more about indoctrination and creative restriction. Like I have said many times before the DOF issue is obviously a natural instinct from penniless Indies. Only able to afford to shoot on small sensored vid cameras and lived a so-called 'hell' of the video look...which is the deep DOF. Of course resolution and latitude is dismissed here as the penniless indie is only worried about trying to get it to look cinematic. When the idea of DOF adaptors came to be it gave the penniless Indie a new tool to play with and boy did thy play with it.

We still get a lot of people posting about the 2/3" Scarlet and people asking about putting DOF adaptors on them...I won't preach to the converted about something so senseless. But what they fail to realise, havin likely never even used a 2/3" camera is the beautiful range that 2/3" native lenses have. For the shots where a shallow DOF aids the story, this can be relatively easily accomodated.

This is indoctrination through cinematic experience as the article suggests. We see, we attempt to effectuate ourselves. Outside of this is the public opinion, the indie fears the lowbudget student film look and will do whatever he/she can to escape it, wanting to give a 'film' look in order to give the audience what they percieve to be a 'Film'.

The same argument applies to writing structure. The public has been indoctrinated into the 3-act structure. They want to know what will happen in the grand scape of the story but want to be surprised at several points through the story. It has almost become a Jungien archetype the 3-act. It is biblical. Like a story can only be told this way. The audience and the industry are to blame for this blinkered look. This is innately the difference between entertainment and art...although it shouldn't be.

Eugene Scribe can be blamed for his 'Piece bien Fait' if you so wish or while you are at it blame Ibsen and Wilde. As long as no-one brings up Poetics (or i start to break bones). We try to give the audience what they want in order to tell our story. To lull them into a state of security, a state of trust and assurance that they can relax in our hands as a storyteller.
 
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