Why do a lot of filmmakers seem to hate deep focus cinematography?

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

It depends on the content, there are a number of modern films which are "single shot" films. If your actors can give performances (good timing etc) and have enough screen presence. plus your script is excellent, so it that can hold longer shots, it'll work. Although, small screens, like phones do introduce a difficulty, these older films are shot for the big screen, where you can see the details in actors' faces in the wider shots.

Editing is commonly used to cover flaws in the above.

Would people watching movies on their phones be a problem? Older movies that have more wide shots in are still watched by today's audience, so they would they have problem with it? Like when people complain about a movie, I never hear them say the actors were often too far away from the camera.

But I also feel that on modern movies, there are a lot of shots where the actors are too close, or they concentrate too much on 'singles', if that is the right term, for one actor in the shot only. So I thought I would do this project in an older style, where you have wide shots with more actors in the frame, more often.

[Brian Drysdale]

Again, these are decisions for the director of a film. They know the content, we don't

[Geoffrey Cox]

Originally Posted by Paul R Johnson

S/he actually cut multiple times within one sentence! What a nutter - It's actually worse because with the two very similar angles, it makes it even more annoying - almost like its snapping between two zoom angles. Maybe the intention was to spice up a boring monologue, when in fact it is the kind of content that's a bit specialist, so the viewers want the info, and this makes there be even less need for rapid cuts. No cuts enables real concentration. If it were for casual listeners/viewer, you could understand the idea to drive it a bit. Just horrible!

Makes you wonder how they did it. If two cameras then one would have to be virtually directly behind the other. The irony is that the topic - Sound Techniques studio - was all about spending the most time getting a great sound at source by careful use of microphones, placement of them and using the acoustics of the space, rather than post production work or even much tweaking on the desk. The filmmakers would have done well to take this approach themselves.

[Michael Stevenson]

Everyone knows that Orson Welles and his cinematographer, Gregg Toland, used deep focus in Citizen Kane. But it requires a lot of light and a small aperture opening.

[Brian Drysdale]

The lighting requirements would be a lot less today, they used a 64ASA film stock on Citizen Kane.

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Michael Stevenson

deep focus... Citizen Kane... requires a lot of light and a small aperture opening.

Not to mention the best part: some intricate triple-matte rear projection process shots, when nothing else will do.

[Paul R Johnson]

Thanks for that, I never noticed! Very clever.

[Bob Hart]

It is one of those "not because you can but whether and when you should" sort of things.

This debate was happening way back when the first home-made and affordable 35mm groundglass based film emulators for 1/3" and 2/3" camcorders became the talking point.

The signature of someone who had just bought themselves one or made one was the extreme shallow depth-of-field shooting going on.

The 35mm groundglass stuff was sometimes spoiled by the same threadbare economics which compelled the use of a groundglass device on a small format videocamera in the first place.

However, there were instances of serious skill, appropriate production values and post-production being applied to groundglass origination and then it looked good.

Three standouts for me were "Merantau", "Dear Wendy" and "Monsters".

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay. I actually thought about doing rear projection shots as well, like maybe during driving scenes, with car windows, if you don't want to have the actors actually driving a car with cameras attached to it.

One thing about rear projection that looks fake is that it always looks faded compared to the actors. So if you blacken the blacks for the rear projected footage, and brighten the brights, it will look less faded. Will that work better for rear projection?

[Brian Drysdale]

Video rear projection works pretty well compared to film, which involves going down a generation in film terms with the plate. However, you should run tests with the projection equipment and screen you're planning to use to see if they're up to the job during the planning stage. Doing it during the production may waste a lot of time setting it up.

A low loader with action car mounted on it may work out better if the rear projection doesn't work or you could test green screen. It depends on what you want to do and if you've got the lighting kit to produce an realistic effect. The rear projection would be easier for night shots than day time.

[Ryan Elder]

That's true, I do want to do night shots for one of the driving scenes. What do you mean by 'low loader'?

[Paul R Johnson]

Not sure what the US term would be, but essentially a very low trailer with the deck as low to the ground as possible, and then you drive onto it and the actors pretend to drive. You fix cameras and audio to it, and then you drive the car on the trailer around giving realistic backgrounds. Much safer than letting actors try to act and drive at the same time.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh yes, one of those.

I don't have one of those at my disposal unfortunately. One of shots I want is the camera mounted on the hood of the car pointed at the driver, but a dead on front shot through the windshield. We can shoot it on a road with not much traffic around, but would this be a bad idea, if we mount it to a car and he actually drives? Or perhaps we can pull the car with a pick up truck, rather than a low loader?

[Paul R Johnson]

Can the actor act and drive? Probably, but if you stick two people in a car and you're not in it as the director, have you got a video/audio link so you can monitor what theyre doing and how well they are doing it? On a trailer, you can be in the towing vehicle with cables between. No point towing them, he still has to steer = and I guess you've never been towed like this, because it's more stressful the driving!

[Pete Cofrancesco]

rear screen projection is no laughing matter

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