DOF & beauty

[Tom Lowe]

This shot reminds me that you don't need shallow DOF to produce an incredibly beautiful frame.

Can you guys post other examples of "beautiful" deep-focus shots? I'm looking for gorgeous shots, not just utilitarian deep-focus shots that get the job done.

 

[hans de vries]

Isn't almost everything in the Harry Potter movies with deep focus?

 

[Felix K.]

I watched Shining yesterday. Almost no shallow focus. Still really nice imagery. The foreground/background separation is done a lot with colours, e.g. in the kitchen.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, a gorgeous women is still gorgeous in deep focus...

I mean, it's hard to know what you mean by "gorgeous" -- deep focus mainly helps to create strong dynamic compositions, so is a strong composition "gorgeous"? Or are you talking about more conventional notions of "prettiness"?

Deep focus is particularly powerful in b&w where you aren't distracted by extra color information coming into focus and can create a graphic image:

Now here's a color image from a Sergio Leone film, not pretty, but a strong compostion:

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I'm just pulling old stills I already have, but here's a shot from "Cromwell" (DP Geoffrey Unsworth) that I like because it looks like a painting, fairly deep-focus considering it's an interior anamorphic shot:

I don't have a prettier shot, but the "Raiders" movies were shot in anamorphic with a fairly deep stop for strong compositional opportunities:

These aren't exactly deep-focus, but show the 2D painting-like opportunities of fairly soft frontal lighting and flatter focus to the lens:

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I've always liked Kurosawa's use of deep focus:

 

[David Mullen ASC]

The thing to remember is that a frame is an information delivery system, and color is one layer of information, texture is another, contrast is another, etc. So the more of the image that is in-focus, the more information the viewer is receiving, which puts more burden on the filmmaker to make that information visually pleasing or dramatically appropriate, etc. Which is one reason why location matters so much -- if you are going to see more of it, it better be worth seeing. To be crass, for example, I'd rather a shot of a room of beautiful women be in deep-focus than a room of fat, ugly men... So a period movie, with a beautiful location, period costumes, etc. -- plus a lot of color control over the image because it's either nature or costumes -- can stand to be more in-focus than a modern urban movie with the riot of aggressively obnoxious detail coming at us from all directions, most of it distracting to a dramatic scene.

 

[D Fuller]

Thank you for posting these, David. I feel like I've just seen the curtain over your private collection of inspirational images pulled aside for a moment. There's a ot to be learned from these frames.

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

I think Antonioni was really inspired by Kourosawa's use of deep focus. He was also very interested in natural landscapes and man made ones. He often used deep focus to show the characters relationship to the landscape or the architecture they were within.

[/IMG]

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Since color is an extra layer of visual information, it has to be controlled, which is why good-looking deep-focus images in color are harder to pull off, because you have to work harder to remove distracting colors, not an issue in b&w.

A good exercise is to compare "The Last Picture Show" and the sequel "Texasville" -- both shot in deep-focus, the first in b&w (and nominated for an Oscar for its cinematography) and the second in color, with some reviewers complaining about the tackiness of the color schemes, etc. (though that was intentional to some degree.) As Nestor Almendros said in his book, it's hard to be visually tasteless in b&w, it's like a black evening dress.

 

[Matt W.]

Just continuing on that point, the biggest issue with deep focus isn't inherent "beauty" so much as it is one's ability to parse a more complex frame. (It's also laziness: it's so much harder to light for deep focus as you need to be more precise on top of the far-increased light levels--not only is it like painting a faberge egg rather than finger painting, but you're also forced to use larger, inelegant brushes (fewer soft lights, bigger fixtures in general).)

Most of the best B&W deep focus films are 4X3 and shot on sound stages (Citizen Kane, Magnificent Ambersons, Best Years of Our Lives) and the examples from Antonioni here rely heavily on leading lines and a a limited or B&W palette. In such cases we have decreased and more easily-controlled visual information. The Kurosawa shots are all telephoto and showcase borderline planometric staging. We may also note that minidv cinematography and deep focus photography in general is more conducive to telephoto work than traditional 35mm not just because zooming gives you a little bit of shallow focus, but also because you "select" what you show with more than just focal length; both focal length and depth of focus select a limited portion of the frame for the viewer and the absence of one cue often requires more of the other.

That really great shot from Last Crusade uses high contrast, leading lines (there's a "V" or a "swoop" centering on the Joneses if you trace between the characters' eyes) and backlighting on a nearly colorless palette (excepting skintone, which should pop out) to be easily readable. The shot from New World likewise relies on a limited palette: brown and green, near complements, and a horizon line near eye level.

I've been really fascinated by how summer blockbusters have recently adopted extremely limited palettes. The deep, saturated photography in the Transformers films and most of Michael Bay's most recent movies are basically just blue and orange (skin tone), with set design and lighting selected carefully to emphasize only those colors. "Grittier" movies (the overrated new Batman films, the Bourne films, Terminator 4) are simply becoming incredibly desaturated to support fast edits and shakicam camerawork. To some extent I prefer Bay's approach to Nolan's, heresy though that may be.

 

[Steve Gibby]

Some good examples there David...

I recently watched the multiple Oscar-winning feature "The Sting" (1973, starring Newman and Redford) for the umpteenth time. There were very few examples of shallow DOF in the movie - it was almost all medium to deep focus. The director (George Roy Hill), and cinematographer (Robert Surtees) made the choice to use what they felt was best DOF to tell the story - and the Academy voters seemed to like their choices - the movie won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Cinematography. Significantly, the movie also won Oscars for Best Costume Design and Best Art Decoration - Set Direction, so I'm guessing the medium to deep DOF choice was an active choice by Hill and Surtees to immerse the viewer in the time period (1920's Chicago), the beautiful sets, and to weave parts of the story into the mid-ground and background.

In that film there were so many interesting costumes, things going on, people doing things, cars, etc. in the framings in the mid-ground and background, that I think the medium to deep focus choices were spot on. I don't have any still frames from the movie to post...

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Actually, though "The Sting" won a boatload of Oscars that year, the winner for Best Cinematography was "Cries and Whispers" (Sven Nykvist), the other nominees were:

Jonathan Livingston Seagull (Jack Couffer)
The Exorcist (Owen Roizman)
The Sting (Robert Surtees)
The Way We Were (Harry Stradling Jr.)

http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Awards/Academy_Awards_USA/1974

But "The Sting" is a great example of an earlier b&w aesthetic being applied -- deeper focus, medium shots, harder lighting -- which is appropriate since the movie is somewhat of a stylistic homage or throwback. I believe Surtees did a lot of the work with a bunch of small quartz movielamps, like 1K Baby Babies.

Also, George Roy Hill was a master of staging in depth, and using foreground elements -- in fact, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" uses so many objects as foreground elements in artful compositions that the cast must have gotten a bit fed up with the time and care that Hill and Conrad Hall were taking to design these shots, leaving gaps in the frame for the actors to appear in... in some behind-the-scenes footage from the movie shoot, the cast showed up for work one day with tree branches stuck into their shirt collars, obscuring their faces.

 

[Steve Gibby]

David,

Good catch on Surtees Oscar nomination, rather than win. I glanced at the iMDB Oscar list for "The Sting" too quickly, and somehow I missed that he was nominated, but didn't win.

I'm a big fan of George Roy Hill's work, including his use of the techniques (foreground elements, staging in depth, etc.) you mentioned for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". He was a master of directing the scenes he directed - and effectively telling the story at hand. I really enjoy watching his work...

I definitely like it in any production when the selected focus depth is appropriate for most effectively telling the story of each scene, and the overall story. Focus depth is a tool to help viewers understand the story - but IMO that tool should be used judiciously.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I think a true "deep focus" shot has to have objects in the near foreground that are just as sharp (or nearly) as the far background, that show how deep the focus is -- it gets a bit confusing when wide-angle shots simply look deep-focus because they are wide-angle. For example, is this a deep-focus shot or merely a wide-angle shot?:

You can see in the tighter coverage that the f-stop was not particularly closed-down:

 

[Jamison Stark]

I don't really have anything to add except... Wow, what an awesome thread. Thanks y'all.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Some more deep focus shots in my collection of frames:

 

[Bill Anderson]

Ahem, It's not Tarkovsky, but it's deep. Scroll down to # 26 ( :

http://www.photography-now.net/listings/index.php?option=com_alphacontent&section=29&Itemid=293

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Tom, you started this thread... where are you?

 

[Gunleik Groven]

I love these B&W deep focus compositions.