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

[Paul R Johnson]

Let's not drift into rolling shutter. It's covered in depth elsewhere and like everything, is a thing that should simply be considered in your preproduction planning. If a shot is needed that means it's a problem, sort it. We do this whenever we consider what we're shooting. Telegraph poles, street lights and passing buildings offer snags to be solved, but that's one of the DPs roles.

[Brian Drysdale]

Yes, rolling shutter is open to much "I was told" in this particular case, get your DP to test the production camera when testing your camera mount.

CMOS sensors are very common these days, even the Arri Alexa has one, as do full frame stills cameras. However, rolling shutter varies with each camera model and if it's been reduced as part of the design of the camera and its sensor.

So, "and that CMOS was better for it" is nonsense, it's a characteristic of all CMOS sensors, it's how well it's controlled in a particular camera that matters.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay, I was told that the larger the sensor, the more noticeable the rolling shutter is, if that's true.

Since so many filmmakers and DPs have blackmagic cameras now, are those ones good for rolling shutter?

[Paul R Johnson]

If we really MUST discuss rolling shutter, maybe a new topic would be best Ryan - this one has already changed direction quite a few times.

[Brian Drysdale]

Yes, rolling shutter is a whole new area of discussion.

Note that there are full frame high end digital cinema cameras, so the sensor size itself isn't the deciding factor, it's the read out speed that matters.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thanks for the advice. Well, trying to keep on topic, I could do the shallow DOF instead of deep if shallow is better in some ways, it's just it would be shot like High and Low, but with a shallow DOF, which means if I have say four characters in a wide shot, then I would have the camera team, racking focus between them in the wide, as oppose to them all being in focus at once. Would that look worse?

[Brian Drysdale]

It's personal taste, although with shorter focal length lenses you either need to be shooting at wide apertures or using full frame cameras to have a noticeable;shallow DOF effect. There are no rules, you have decide before you start filming, that's what the camera tests are for.

[Paul R Johnson]

Lots of lenses on wide have noticeable shift when focus is changed - In a wide, I personally hate pulling focus with a shallow image. I'm probably alone in this, but in a wide shot, I want too be able to choose what I look at, and out of focus just doesn't work for me.

[Ryan Elder]

Yeah I think I see what you mean, are you saying you prefer the out of focus background on CU and OTS shots, rather than a wide, where it's racking focus between multiple characters?

I asked a couple of other filmmakers about it, and they said that deep focus works in movies like in Citizen Kan, cause it's in black and white and they have total control over what the background looks like. Where as in my situation, I am going to be shooting in real locations that I am not allowed to paint. So an out of focus background is key, cause you don't want the audience to be distracted by colors you are not allowed to paint over or change. Is that true do you think? For example, one short I worked on way before, a couple of viewers pointed out how they were distracted by a green car in the background, which I couldn't control whoever parked there. They said maybe it should have been out of focus more to hide it. So therefore, maybe shallow focus in wide shots is better, when dealing with uncontrolled colors?

Even that short I posted on here, before, the wide shots looked like a home video camera to me, and I think it was because of the deep focus, so maybe deep focus looks like home video with color, but looks cinematic in black and white more so? Come to think of it, in color movies, the background is almost always more out of focus, compared to older black and white movies, so is that the reason?

Or is it better to shoot with a deep focus wide, so you can choose who to look at, but then recolor the uncontrolled background in post, which would take more time, cause you have to rotoscope out the background from the actors in Da Vinci, or something like that?

[Dave Baker]

Surely you mean deep depth-of-field?

[Ryan Elder]

Yes sorry deep depth of field.

[Brian Drysdale]

Black and white doesn't enter into it, but lighting is a key part of shooting deep focus or even shallow DOF. There are colour feature films that have pretty deep focus, the reason why your films look like video is probably because you're shooting video using REC 709, which always tends to look like video. Even with a shallow DOF it still looks like video.

The background colours will still be there with a shallow DOF and not many dramas can afford to repaint their locations. If the colours are distracting find another location with better decor, since the most you can generally do in practice is move the furniture around or hang a few drapes in real locations.

A shallow DOF isn't the answer to poor art direction.

If shooting dramas either shoot log or RAW, which allows you more colour correction in post, if you wish to avoid a video look.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh ok but the short film was shot in log and it still looked like home video though.

[Brian Drysdale]

You also need to add all the other elements. 16mm film looks like home movies if you don't do all the other stuff. Of course, some high end films intentionally make themselves look like home movies.

THE TREE OF LIFE Official HD Trailer - YouTube

[Paul R Johnson]

For example, one short I worked on way before, a couple of viewers pointed out how they were distracted by a green car in the background, which I couldn't control whoever parked there. They said maybe it should have been out of focus more to hide it. So therefore, maybe shallow focus in wide shots is better, when dealing with uncontrolled colors?

So because you can't remove a green car, you should have blurred it? You really must get better friends because this is complete tripe Ryan. Why is green annoying? No idea but a blurry green blob would surely be even more of a problem because people will want to know what it is. Where on earth has this uncontrolled colour thing come from? Monochrome works because of the mood it creates - the lack of colour has an impact on the viewer. The impact is very variable, depending on content. Old black and white war films do NOT look like Citizen Kane! It isn't the lack of colour, it's the creative look. If your frame has eye drawing elements in it then fix it - don't try to treat it to do a repair. I really cannot imagine doing all the prep, then getting to a location and having a shot where something in it means an entire rethink of the style.

This is just wrong Ryan. Where are these silly ideas coming from, and why don't you reject them as complete poppycock when these people come up with such stupid ideas.

There's rather a good youtube clip about Doctor Who - a very popular long running series over here and in the clips you see things going wrong because people cut corners and didn't think about the problems. Really obvious stuff. Mistakes in the shoot that wrecked the story in the edit, special effects that got a bit out of hand, and even leaving critical story wrecking bits of set in the back of the shot that when they came to edit it, ruined everything. They even forgot to close off a street and in the background you can see members of the public walking past the set, stopping and looking at the actors and Daleks. They even had an explosion and then expected the Dalek operators to try to manoeuvre the, over the top of all the debris on the floor.

If the BBC can get things so wrong - then you can be forgiven to. Here's the clip link - quite long, but so full of mistakes that really should have been thought of before they shot.

YouTube (Short URL)