Deep focus
Encyclopedia
Deep focus is a photographic and cinematographic technique using a large depth of field
Depth of field
In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, depth of field is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image...

. Depth of field is the front-to-back range of focus in an image — that is, how much of it appears sharp and clear. Consequently, in deep focus the foreground, middle-ground and background are all in focus. This can be achieved through use of the hyperfocal distance
Hyperfocal distance
In optics and photography, hyperfocal distance is a distance beyond which all objects can be brought into an "acceptable" focus. There are two commonly used definitions of hyperfocal distance, leading to values that differ only slightly:...

 of the camera lens.

Deep focus is achieved with large amounts of light and small aperture
Aperture
In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture of an optical system is the opening that determines the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. The aperture determines how collimated the admitted rays are,...

. It is also possible to achieve the illusion of deep focus with optical tricks (split focus diopter) or composite two pictures together. It is the aperture of a camera lens that determines the depth of field. Wide angle lenses also make a larger portion of the image appear sharp. The aperture of a camera determines how much light enters through the lens, so achieving deep focus requires a bright mise en scène
Mise en scène
Mise-en-scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story"—both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in poetically artful ways through direction...

. Aperture is measured in F-stops
F-number
In optics, the f-number of an optical system expresses the diameter of the entrance pupil in terms of the focal length of the lens; in simpler terms, the f-number is the focal length divided by the "effective" aperture diameter...

 (T-stops on lenses for motion picture cameras are f/stops adjusted for the lens' light transmission. Do not use T-stops for depth of focus determination.) with a higher value indicating a smaller aperture.

The opposite of deep focus is shallow focus
Shallow focus
Shallow focus is a photographic and cinematographic technique incorporating a small depth of field. In shallow focus one plane of the image is in focus while the rest is out of focus. Shallow focus is typically used to emphasize one part of the image over another...

, in which only one plane of the image is in focus.

In the cinema Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

 and his cinematographer Gregg Toland
Gregg Toland
Gregg Toland, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer noted for his innovative use of lighting and techniques such as deep focus, an example of which can be found in his work on Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.-Career:...

 were most responsible for popularizing deep focus. Their film Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...

 (1941) is a veritable textbook of possible uses of the technique.

Deep focus and deep space

When deep focus is used, filmmakers often combine it with deep space (also called deep staging). Deep space is a part of mise-en-scene, placing significant actors and props in different planes of the picture. Directors and cinematographers often use deep space without using deep focus, being either an artistic choice or because they don't have resources to create a deep focus look, or both.

Directors may use deep focus in only some scenes or even just some shots. Other auteurs choose to use it consistently throughout the movie, either as a stylistic choice or because they believe it represents reality better. Directors like Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

, Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...

 and Kenji Mizoguchi
Kenji Mizoguchi
Kenji Mizoguchi was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. His film Ugetsu won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and appeared in the Sight & Sound Critics' Top Ten Poll in 1962 and 1972. Mizoguchi is renowned for his mastery of the long take and mise-en-scène...

 all use deep focus as part of their signature style.

Deep focus and different formats

The choice of shooting format affects how easy it would be to achieve a deep focus look. This is because the size of the sensor
Image sensor
An image sensor is a device that converts an optical image into an electronic signal. It is used mostly in digital cameras and other imaging devices...

 or film gate
Film gauge
Film gauge is a physical property of photographic or motion picture film stock which defines its width. Traditionally the major film gauges in usage are 8 mm, 16 mm, 35 mm, and 65/70 mm...

 dictates what particular lens
Lens (optics)
A lens is an optical device with perfect or approximate axial symmetry which transmits and refracts light, converging or diverging the beam. A simple lens consists of a single optical element...

 focal length
Focal length
The focal length of an optical system is a measure of how strongly the system converges or diverges light. For an optical system in air, it is the distance over which initially collimated rays are brought to a focus...

 would be used in order to achieve a desired viewing angle. Smaller sensors or film gauges will require an overall range of shorter focal lengths to achieve any desired viewing angle than larger sensors or film gauges. Because depth of field is a characteristic of lens focal length (in addition to aperture and focus distance setting), it is easier to achieve a deep-focus look with a smaller imaging sensor or film gauge. For example: a 40mm lens will give a 30-degree horizontal angle of view in the Super35 format. To achieve the same viewing angle with a 1/2" 16:9 sensor, you would need a 13mm lens. A 13mm lens inherently has much more depth-of-field than a 40mm lens. To achieve the same depth of field with a 40mm lens would require a very small aperture, which in turn would require far more light, and therefore time and expense.

Some filmmakers make deliberate use of the deep focus aesthetics of smaller-than-35mm digital formats. Miami Vice
Miami Vice
Miami Vice is an American television series produced by Michael Mann for NBC. The series starred Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as two Metro-Dade Police Department detectives working undercover in Miami. It ran for five seasons on NBC from 1984–1989...

 (Michael Mann, 2006) is among the many big budget movies that have been shot digitally in recent years. Cinematographer Dion Beebe
Dion Beebe
Dion Beebe, A.C.S., ASC is an Australian cinematographer.Originally from Brisbane, Australia, his family moved to Cape Town, South Africa in 1972...

 believed that HD's depth of field is something to exploit:
We also decided that there were attributes of HD technology we liked and wanted to exploit, like the increased depth of field. Because of the cameras' chip size (2/3"), they have excessive depth of field that we decided not to fight, but rather utilize.

Split-focus diopter

In the 70s, directors made frequent use of the split-focus diopter. With this invention it was possible to have one plane in focus in one part of the picture and a different plane in focus in the other half of the picture. This was and still is very useful for the anamorphic widescreen format, which has more depth of field.

A split diopter is half convex glass that attaches in front of the camera's main lens
Photographic lens
A camera lens is an optical lens or assembly of lenses used in conjunction with a camera body and mechanism to make images of objects either on photographic film or on other media capable of storing an image chemically or electronically.While in principle a simple convex lens will suffice, in...

 to make half the lens nearsighted. The lens can focus on a plane in the background and the diopter on a foreground. A split diopter does not create real deep focus, only the illusion of this. What distinguishes it from traditional deep focus is that there is not continuous depth of field from foreground to background; the space between the two sharp objects are out of focus. Because split focus diopters only cover half the lens, shots in which they are used are characterized by a blurred line between the two planes in focus.

Manipulated deep focus is not a new phenomenon, as it had also been created in other ways during the golden age of 20th century. The Diopter gave the opportunity for spectacular deep focus-compositions that would have been impossible to achieve otherwise. In the American New Wave, director Brian De Palma
Brian De Palma
Brian Russell De Palma is an American film director and writer. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense and crime thriller films, including such box office successes as the horror film Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission:...

 explored the possibilities of the split-focus diopter extensively, as did other 70s films such as Robert Wise
Robert Wise
Robert Earl Wise was an American sound effects editor, film editor, film producer and director...

's The Andromeda Strain
The Andromeda Strain
The Andromeda Strain , by Michael Crichton, is a techno-thriller novel documenting the efforts of a team of scientists investigating a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism that rapidly and fatally clots human blood, while in other people inducing insanity...

 and Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a 1979 American science fiction film released by Paramount Pictures. It is the first film based on the Star Trek television series. The film is set in the twenty-third century, when a mysterious and immensely powerful alien cloud called V'Ger approaches the Earth,...

.

Use in modern films

Starting in the 80s, American cinema has developed a trend that film scholar David Bordwell
David Bordwell
David Bordwell is an American film theorist and film historian. Since receiving his PhD from the University of Iowa in 1974, he has written more than fifteen volumes on the subject of cinema including Narration in the Fiction Film , Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema , Making Meaning , and On the...

 calls intensified continuity. Bordwell claims that 1) The average length of each shot in a film has become shorter over the years. 2) Scenes are built up by closer framing. 3) More extreme focal lengths are used. 4) The scenes include an increased number of camera moves.

This trend has led to deep focus becoming less common in Hollywood movies. As mentioned in Bordwells' second point, master shots where two or more characters hold a conversation have gone out of fashion, lessening the need for deep focus. In a contemporary Hollywood movie a dialogue scene may consist only of tight close-ups, with the master shot abandoned. If more than one plane in the image contains narrative information, filmmakers switch focus ("rack focusing") instead of keeping both focal planes sharp. In addition, modern sets tend to have less lighting for more comfortable working conditions, and use of deep focus tend to require more light.

The development of intensified continuity may be due to directors' desire to capture the action or dialogue from many different angles and views, so-called coverage. The U.S. film critic Dave Kehr
Dave Kehr
Dave Kehr is an American film critic. A critic at the Chicago Reader and the Chicago Tribune for many years, he writes a weekly column for The New York Times on DVD releases, in addition to contributing occasional pieces on individual films or filmmakers.-Early life and education:Dave Kehr did...

 explains it this way:

If there is a single word that sums up the difference between filmmaking at the middle of the 20th century and the filmmaking of today, it is "coverage". Derived from television, it refers to the increasingly common practice of using multiple cameras for a scene (just as television would cover a football game).


To stage a whole scene in one shot is no longer common. Director Steven Soderbergh
Steven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...

 claims:
That kind of staging is a lost art, which is too bad. The reason they no longer work that way is because it means making choices, real choices, and sticking to them. (...) That's not what people do now. They want all the options they can get in the editing room.

Notable uses

The following films and television programs contain notable examples of deep-focus photography:

Black and white

  • Twilight of a Woman's Soul (1913)
  • Foolish Wives
    Foolish Wives
    Foolish Wives is an American drama silent film produced and distributed by Universal Pictures and written and directed by Erich von Stroheim. Although uncredited, Irving Thalberg, aged 22, was in charge of production and would go on to become one of the most famous studio heads of all time at...

     (1922)
  • Nosferatu (1922)
  • Greed
    Greed (film)
    Greed is a 1924 American dramatic silent film. It was directed by Erich von Stroheim and starring Gibson Gowland, Zasu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Dale Fuller, Tempe Pigott, Sylvia Ashton, Chester Conklin, Joan Standing and Jack Curtis....

     (1924)
  • Downhill (1927)
  • Working Girls (1931)
  • Waltzes from Vienna (1934)
  • Mad Love
    Mad Love (1935 film)
    Mad Love is a 1935 American horror film adaptation of Maurice Renard's story The Hands of Orlac. Directed by German-émigré film maker Karl Freund, the film stars Peter Lorre as Dr. Gogol, Frances Drake as Yvonne Orlac and Colin Clive as Stephen Orlac. The plot revolves around Doctor Gogol's...

     (1935)
  • Dead End
    Dead End
    Dead End is a 1937 crime drama film. It is an adaptation of the Sidney Kingsley 1935 Broadway play of the same name. It stars Humphrey Bogart, Joel McCrea, and Sylvia Sidney...

     (1937)
  • Grand Illusion
    Grand Illusion (film)
    Grand Illusion is a 1937 French war film directed by Jean Renoir, who co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Spaak. The story concerns class relationships among a small group of French officers who are prisoners of war during World War I and are plotting an escape.The title of the film comes from a...

     (1937)
  • The Rules of the Game
    The Rules of the Game
    The Rules of the Game is a 1939 French film directed by Jean Renoir about upper-class French society just before the start of World War II...

     (1939)
  • The Long Voyage Home
    The Long Voyage Home
    The Long Voyage Home is an American drama film and directed by John Ford. It features John Wayne, Thomas Mitchell, Ian Hunter, Barry Fitzgerald, Wilfrid Lawson, John Qualen, Mildred Natwick, Ward Bond, among others....

     (1940)
  • Rebecca (1940)
  • Citizen Kane
    Citizen Kane
    Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...

     (1941)
  • The Little Foxes
    The Little Foxes (film)
    The Little Foxes is a 1941 American drama film directed by William Wyler. The screenplay by Lillian Hellman is based on her 1939 play of the same name...

     (1941)
  • The Magnificent Ambersons
    The Magnificent Ambersons (film)
    The Magnificent Ambersons is a 1942 American drama film written and directed by Orson Welles. His second feature film, it is based on the 1918 novel of the same name by Booth Tarkington and stars Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead and Ray Collins...

     (1942)
  • The Best Years of Our Lives
    The Best Years of Our Lives
    The Best Years of Our Lives is a 1946 American drama film directed by William Wyler, and starring Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, and Harold Russell, a United States paratrooper who lost both hands in a military training accident. The film is about three United States...

     (1946)
  • Drunken Angel
    Drunken Angel
    is a 1948 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa. It is notable for being the first of sixteen film collaborations between director Kurosawa and actor Toshirō Mifune.- Plot :...

     (1948)
  • Ugetsu
    Ugetsu
    Ugetsu is a 1953 Japanese film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi. Set in 16th century Japan, it stars Masayuki Mori and Machiko Kyō, and is inspired by short stories by Ueda Akinari and Guy de Maupassant...

     (1953)
  • Sansho the Bailiff
    Sansho the Bailiff
    -External links:* at the Japanese Movie Database* * and QuickTime trailer* essay by Mark Le Fanu...

     (1954)
  • Seven Samurai (1954)
  • Mr. Arkadin
    Mr. Arkadin
    Mr. Arkadin is a French-Spanish-Swiss coproduction film, written and directed by Orson Welles and shot in several Spanish locations, including Segovia, Valladolid and Madrid.Its history is convoluted...

     (1955)
  • Ashes and Diamonds
    Ashes and Diamonds (film)
    Ashes and Diamonds is a 1958 Polish film directed by Andrzej Wajda, based on the 1948 novel by Polish writer Jerzy Andrzejewski...

     (1958)
  • L'avventura
    L'avventura
    L'Avventura is a 1960 Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and developed from a story he created. Monica Vitti and Gabriele Ferzetti star. It is noted for its careful pacing, which puts a focus on visual composition and character development, as well as for its unusual narrative structure...

     (1960)
  • Yojimbo (1961)
  • Knife in the Water (1962)

  • The Trial
    The Trial (1962 film)
    The Trial is a 1962 film directed by Orson Welles, who also wrote the screenplay based on the novel of the same name by Franz Kafka...

     (1962)
  • The Manchurian Candidate
    The Manchurian Candidate (1962 film)
    The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American Cold War political thriller film starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh and Angela Lansbury, and featuring Henry Silva, James Gregory, Leslie Parrish and John McGiver...

     (1962)
  • Birdman of Alcatraz
    Birdman of Alcatraz (film)
    Birdman of Alcatraz is a 1962 film starring Burt Lancaster and directed by John Frankenheimer. It is a fictionalized version of the life of Robert Stroud, a federal prison inmate known as the "Birdman of Alcatraz" because of his life with birds. In spite of the title, much of the action is set at...

     (1962)
  • High and Low (1963)
  • Seven Days in May
    Seven Days in May
    Seven Days in May is an American political thriller novel written by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II and published in 1962. It was made into a motion picture and released in February 1964, with a screenplay by Rod Serling, directed by John Frankenheimer, and starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk...

     (1964)
  • The Train (1964)
  • Chimes at Midnight
    Chimes at Midnight
    Chimes at Midnight, also known as Falstaff and Campanadas a medianoche , is a 1965 film directed by and starring Orson Welles. Focused on William Shakespeare's recurring character Sir John Falstaff, the film stars Welles himself as Falstaff, Keith Baxter plays Prince Hal , and John Gielgud plays...

     (1966)
  • Faces
    Faces (film)
    Faces is a 1968 drama film, directed by John Cassavetes and starring John Marley, Cassavetes' wife Gena Rowlands, Seymour Cassel and Lynn Carlin, who both received Academy Award nominations for this film....

     (1968)
  • The Last Picture Show
    The Last Picture Show
    The Last Picture Show is a 1971 American drama film directed by Peter Bogdanovich, adapted from a semi-autobiographical 1966 novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry....

     (1971)
  • Paper Moon
    Paper Moon (film)
    Paper Moon is a 1973 American comedy film directed by Peter Bogdanovich and released by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay was adapted from the novel Addie Pray by Joe David Brown, and the film was shot in black-and-white. The film is set during the Great Depression in the U.S. states of Kansas and...

      (1974)
  • The Good German
    The Good German
    The Good German is a 2006 feature film adaptation of the novel by Joseph Kanon. It was directed by Steven Soderbergh, and stars George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, and Tobey Maguire...

     (2006)


Color

  • The Bridge on the River Kwai
    The Bridge on the River Kwai
    The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 British World War II film by David Lean based on The Bridge over the River Kwai by French writer Pierre Boulle. The film is a work of fiction but borrows the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942–43 for its historical setting. It stars William...

     (1957)
  • For a Few Dollars More
    For a Few Dollars More
    For a Few Dollars More is a 1965 Italian spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Gian Maria Volonté. German actor Klaus Kinski also plays a supporting role as a secondary villain...

     (1965)
  • The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
    The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
    The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a 1966 Italian epic spaghetti western film directed by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, and Eli Wallach in the title roles. The screenplay was written by Age & Scarpelli, Luciano Vincenzoni and Leone, based on a story by Vincenzoni and Leone...

     (1966)
  • A Clockwork Orange
    A Clockwork Orange (film)
    A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. It was written, directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick...

     (1971)
  • The Offence
    The Offence
    The Offence is a 1972 drama film, based upon the acclaimed 1968 stage play This Story of Yours by John Hopkins, directed by Sidney Lumet under the working title Something Like the Truth. It stars Sean Connery as police detective Johnson, who kills Kenneth Baxter , a suspected child molester, while...

     (1972)
  • The Shining
    The Shining (film)
    The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, co-written with novelist Diane Johnson, and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, and Danny Lloyd. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. A writer, Jack Torrance, takes a job as an...

     (1980)
  • Rumble Fish
    Rumble Fish
    Rumble Fish is a 1983 film directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It is based on the novel Rumble Fish by S.E. Hinton, who also co-wrote the screenplay....

     (1983)
  • Brazil (1985)
  • Heat (1995)
  • Saving Private Ryan
    Saving Private Ryan
    Saving Private Ryan is a 1998 American war film set during the invasion of Normandy in World War II. It was directed by Steven Spielberg, with a screenplay by Robert Rodat. The film is notable for the intensity of its opening 27 minutes, which depicts the Omaha Beach assault of June 6, 1944....

     (1998)
  • Eyes Wide Shut
    Eyes Wide Shut
    Eyes Wide Shut is a 1999 drama film based upon Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Traumnovelle . The film was directed, produced and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, and was his last film. The story, set in and around New York City, follows the sexually-charged adventures of Dr...

     (1999)
  • Peter Pan
    Peter Pan (2003 film)
    Peter Pan is a 2003 fantasy film released as a joint venture of Universal Studios, Columbia Pictures and Revolution Studios. P. J. Hogan directed a screenplay co-written with Michael Goldenberg which is based on the classic play and novel by J. M. Barrie. Jason Isaacs plays the roles of Captain...

     (2003)
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (film)
    Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (film)
    Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a 2004 fantasy film directed by Alfonso Cuarón and based on the novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. It is the third instalment in the Harry Potter film series, written by Steve Kloves and produced by Chris Columbus, David Heyman and Mark Radcliffe...

     (2004)
  • The New World (2005)
  • Scrubs (TV series)
    Scrubs (TV series)
    Scrubs is an American medical comedy-drama television series created in 2001 by Bill Lawrence and produced by ABC Studios. The show follows the lives of several employees of the fictional Sacred Heart, a teaching hospital. It features fast-paced screenplay, slapstick, and surreal vignettes...

     (2000–2008)
  • Six Feet Under (2001–2005)
  • The Black Dahlia
    The Black Dahlia (film)
    The Black Dahlia is a 2006 neo noir crime film directed by Brian De Palma. It is based on the novel of the same name by James Ellroy, writer of L.A. Confidential and starred Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank. The story is based on the murder of Elizabeth Short...

     (2006)
  • Zodiac
    Zodiac (film)
    Zodiac is a 2007 American mystery-thriller film directed by David Fincher and based on Robert Graysmith's non-fiction book of the same name. The Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros...

    (2007)
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK