This week was largely about depth of field.
There are a few reasons why this week’s subject was great and why it’s so important to stop and look at the basics of camerawork. Developing this technical understanding gives us more fuel for creativity in our work. The more we know about what can be manipulated and how, the more we can creatively and actively apply this technical knowledge in our work and perhaps even extend it. Familiarity through practice can make us more efficient at doing this. Plus it’s just necessary to have the ability to generate quality work as a filmmaker (especially these days where video work is so abundant / anyone with a phone can make video work).
NOTES
Only three things affect depth of field:
- Focal length (shorter = greater; longer = shallower)
- Aperture (higher F-stop/smaller aperture = greater; vice versa)
- Distance of object in focus from camera (further from camera = greater; vice versa)
We shot a few exercises involving simple setups – most requiring shallow depths of field and focus pulls. We were supposed to work with two people on the camera – a camera operator (/director) and a focus puller. But my group forgot about this until halfway through the exercise. It’d be interesting to compare the shots where we pulled focus ourselves with the shots where we had others pull focus for us.
It was great to be forced to use focus marks (on the set and on the camera). I’d say that it definitely changed our approach to thinking about focus in these exercises.
The more challenging focus pulls were those involving simultaneous camera movement (e.g. a tilt up while focus pulling). It adds another factor – you have to sync up two movements.
The most difficult (and amusing) exercise was the one which required us to focus on a person (stranger who would get freaked out) walking towards the camera and keep them in focus by constantly/slowly focus pulling. It was particularly difficult – I discovered – because of the difference in depth of field when the subject is far away compared with when they are close to the camera. It’s comparably much easier to keep them in focus when they are far away; there is a greater depth of field. But when they are closer, there is a shallower depth of field, and the subject’s movement within the frame (and towards the camera) becomes much more foregrounded and difficult to keep within the increasingly shallow depth of field (it’s harder to keep the subject sharp).