Depth of Field in Cinematography

Depth of Field in Cinematography

In today's blog we will be learning about depth of field in cinematography. Depth of Field is another word for focus. The focus of the screen. This can be used to tell a story, emotion and etc. The ways to do it is through: Deep, Shallow Soft Focus, Rack and Tilt Shift. Deep focus is when the entire screen is in focus. Shallow focus is when one specific area is in focus usually the middle ground of the screen. Soft focus is used for more of reality changes dreamy and blurs and makes information harder to see. All are used to show/convey conflict, character and/or development. There are others but they are harder to do with pictures/stills.

Depth of field in film:

The Incredibles 2 (2018) uses a deep focus shot. This is to show unity. Allows the expressions to be all shown. 

John Wick Chapter: 4 (2023) uses shallow focus for the still. This scene uses this to show isolation and sorrow 

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) use soft focus to convey one a memory scene and creates a scene with conflict not everything is like it seems. This shot also uses shallow focus.

My attempts at Depth of Field:

This is a basic deep focus shot. Everything can be seen the setting and what the characters are currently doing. To only develop peace.

The still uses a shallow focus with the focus on the character in the back to create emphasis on this character. Since he is behind someone this make you feel like something nefarious is happening. 

This still that I made uses a soft focus shot with a tilted angle to make the entire scene unbalanced. This shows something is wrong. In this example.

Personal Problems with Learning Depth of Feild:

The main problems with making the photos were identifying how to make the photos to begin with. The definitions were illuding me. With thinking the reverse with deep and shallow depth of view. My thought process was that shallow view is something without a focus an over-all screen. This was the reverse for the deep view at first. But after further research and asking around, I found out that I was mistaken. 

After learning what exactly each type of depth of field (deep, soft and shallow), I now had to practically do the prosses. This is where I also took a while to learn. The phone wasn't giving the shallow blur effect I wanted for the shot. I went to Google to ask how to create this "shallow blur" using an android: You want to zoom in more than needed and get close to another target or object then see if it blurs. If it does, then hope the other object is in focus and bravo. You got a shallow shot.

Back to the topic at hand, the deep shot was the only other shot with nothing fancy to alter and do just have to pose them and make it look pretty. Just a photo.

The next type of depth is soft focus. This was the hardest to do in my opinion. The reason for this was a simply the know-how. The way it was created originally was either Vaseline or skin tights put on and around the camera to blur the image. There are filters but I wanted to stay practical. To find something similar around my home was hard until I found an old curtain that was very see through. That is how you got the photos above.

It was easy after solving that.

Cinematography: Distance, Hight, Level and Angle

Cinematography: Distance, Height, Level and Angle

In today's blog, we are going to tackle cinematography. Cinematography is the movement of the camera to tell a story. The way they do this is through: distance between the focus and the camera. The height of the vertical movement of the camera without tilting it. Furthermore, the level of the height of the camera relative to the ground or eyes of the focus. Lastly Angle, the tilting of the camera. All forms of cinematography can work together in union create better effects some of these include a high angle, low angle and many more.

Stills from an existing film:

This still from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollow's part 2 represents a high angle. (Height can be used to convey conflict, development and character.)

This still from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse represents distance between the camera and the man falling. (Height can be used to convey conflict, development and character.) 

This still from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 2 is an eye level shot that has close distance. (Height can be used to convey conflict, development and character.)

This still from The Matrix uses height of the Agent Smith is exaggerated by the angle to create a scene of fear and imposed. (Height can be used to convey conflict, development and character.)

My attempts at it:

This still, is using of lower height or low angle shot. This shows a take-over she is overpowering the screen. When people feel small, they feel scared, and this works towards that.

This still, is using a ground level to emphasize the setting and to show movement.  

This still, is using distance to advantage to make the obvious focus the closer character but, at the other hot spot there is a character who is blurred (glare) to make it more ominous. In other words, conflict.

This still, is using a high angle shot to make the intended effect more of fear and makes the characters focus on the same point. This shows helplessness they can only on look.

Personal Problems with Cinematography:

This entry had a slew of easier problems to solve than mise en scéne because, more about camera positioning than contextual design in the camera. The problems I did personally experience was the overall mixing of ideas. They are all perfectly intertwine with each other. To get height, most examples also used, distance and angles to get the more intended effect. In my shots you can see this for angle and height are more intertwined than any other form.

Level and height also got mixed up while making both of those stills. The reason why, it happens because the level in geography is the vertical movement. This is different in film making: it is when the camera is balanced with something else. Some examples include eye level, ground level and etc.

Specifics in each Category:

While focusing on angles I came upon some cross-roads of sorts. Which angle should I do? High, low Dutch, which angle? I might have mentioned this in the about me section. So, I had multiple decisions to do. I did a simple low angle but, that was hard with-out showing the table and staying in universe with-out continuity errors. The Dutch Angle only had one problem could not get the exact shot I was looking for. So, I decided to do a high angle of the easier of the bunch.

When doing the level shot, I imminently knew that I wanted to use a ground level shot. This problem already happened with angle, but the continuity of the world was at risk with the table reveling itself.  But after like 4 attempts until I was satisfied with the still. Another problem occurred the static poses of the Lego people. So, I redid it to get the wanted still.

Balancing Mise en scène

 Mise en scène

Mise en scène is the contents in a film, this includes the staging and arrangement of the environment. The main elements that help a viewer's focus include: Color, Contrast, Frontality and Size. Everything you see in a film is part of this rule except, the camera movements and angles that is cinematography. In Today's Blog we will look at examples of stills from film and make some of our own.

Stills From Films:

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 2001
This image represents Size.

In this scene even though the camera is zoomed on the ring in the snow this I personally think would be Size. In the frame it-self the ring takes up the majority of the screen creating the illusion of size importance or power. This is what the ring is in the story, the dark power and importance the key to victory. Wanting you to abuse its power to tempt you.

Wall-E 2008: This image represents Frontality.

In this still from Wall-E is a good representation of Frontality. When used in a fill it creates more emotions, and empathy makes you recognize the scene and its importance. I pick this scene especially for the romance it tries to do. But it also shows the loneliness from both of them. One filled with life and another out of this world but not really there.

Indiana Jones: The Raiders of the lost Ark. 1981
This image represents Contrast.

This still from the beginning of Indian Jones is a great representation of Contrast. The muted green and brown background then the leather and gold, the shiny materials all create contrast through color. The natural colors verse the unnatural colors. The Idol and Indiana Jones also have the contrast of reflection. They reflect the light. Like a coin in a empty basin. That shine attracts the eyes.

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back 1980

    In this still from a film Star-War Episode:5 is an amazing representation of Color. The iconic coloring of the red and blue draw your eyes in to show the center conflict. This is a fight of two opposing primary colors; this is a form of visual color. The character is blacked out to show they are the key focus of the overall action. Other blacked out parts are visual cues to help focus the action or leading lines.

My attempts at Mise en scène:

This picture shows color.

This image shows size. 

This picture shows contrast.

This picture is my attempted at frontality.

My personal challenges using Mise en scène: 250-300

The most difficult picture to make almost 75% pure to the ideologies of Mise en scène was color and contrast. Why you ask? It is easy, because they share similar principles. Color is about contrast of colors with it being brighter or darker than the environment while contrast is the lighting, texture and different colors in the environments. I kept using color over contrast which the final picture because the lighting department off, so I had to relied on natural lighting from the sun and textures to make it fit all together. The add on with the color book was to show more contrast between the books. This challenge forced me to re-do multiple ideas and the movie stills along with that. The contrast picture with the books, heavily relies on breaking up a pattern by a new selection of books that has a different spine than the rest. So, I learned to use textures and breaking patterns over abusing color to get variety. 

Furthermore, all the other categories (size, frontality and color) had slight nick picks that took me awhile to get a photo I was satisfied with. The black and white picture of size was difficult because the lighting was not working with the scene, so I decided to go to black and white to create that more imposing feeling I was going for. 

The picture of the frontality I made was just a cliche romance but the flowers in the background where way to overcrowded when I first made it but afterwards and keeping it simply made the frontality stick out more. 

The color was quite the easiest. To encapsulate the points made contrast is the thing I struggle with the most in my opinion. 

Rule of Thirds

The Rule of Thirds:

Today, I started to learn about the rules of thirds. Some background information about the rules are that it helps creators of a visual media to make things ascetic as possible through symmetry and tracking where the eyes naturally follow through hot spots. When used in film this can portray feelings and help to focus the scene. When using this rule your job is to align or be near the lines and interceptions points. 

Examples of the rules in film:

Still image from, Doctor Who Season 3 Episode 10 June 9th 2007

This still that I took from a show has so much conflict built into it. The center focus is the girl and the statue of an angel reaching out towards her. The positioning of this shot creates a sense of tension like somethings going to go wrong. The girl's eyes are on the top line at a hot spot. To focus on her worrying eyes. Looking around she is looking around every were but behind her. Away from the statue. The statues hand intersects one of the vertical lines of the line make your eyes drawn to it. The girl body takes up the majority of the center of the two vertices which is called neutral space and when film and art have something occupying this space and the two lines it creates Tension and conflict. However, the girl is not the main form of conflict. The statue takes up purely neutral space. But the angle is blurred except the hand, the lurking hand, is going to the girl's direction. This along with the tension from earlier creates dread and feels like she is going to get attacked. 

Examples without rules of thirds

Picture A without the "Rule of Thirds"

Picture B with the "Rule of Thirds"

Even though one picture is zoomed in, and the other is not, dose not determine if they applied the rule of thirds. The zoomed in picture or Picture B has a horizon line that matches with the bottom horizontal line and matches with the pier. Compared to Picture A the pier is in the middle, not near or on the horizontal lines and no hot spot areas either.

The one figure Test: With Lego!

This Picture Is a representation of how not to follow the rule of thirds. The focus is none-existent your eyes look centered, and the figures are not there.

This is ultimately better for the rule of third. The hand is on the lower horizontal line, and the head is on a hot spot. It is over all more noticeable. Since your eyes are naturally drawn to the Lego now the posing dose everything else.

The two figure Test: With Lego!

a.) The one that dose not follow "Rule Of Thirds."

b.) The one the has neutral space in "Rule Of Thirds."

c.) The one that suggest attraction in "Rule Of Thirds."

d.) The one that suggest conflict in "Rule Of Thirds."

Written analysis of "The two figure Test: With Lego!":

The Picture: b, c, d are all a continues story and do not even need words. Let's focus on picture c. Specifically, the two Lego figures let's say their names are John and Mary. At b they are in neutral state looks like they just met and does not know what's going to happen it creates suspense. In the next still(c), they take up the neutral vertical spot or in other words the middle of the screen. When character is both in the neutral space, they are close to some form of tension or conflict. The tension in forms of media is released through ether an argument, fight or romance. The situation that happened was romance. They embrace looking like they are dancing or kissing a touching moment of any normal story. But, in d she gets push and falls this creates conflict because of the framing he in her space not the other way around this was purposeful.