On how directors tell deep stories from classic movies.

Citizen Kane is a classic example of excellent application of depth of field aesthetics. Wells wants the movie to look like what the human eye sees, with clear foreground and background. Sometimes the film is shot from a slightly inclined lens angle to highlight Kane's authority, and sometimes it is shot from above to make the characters look weak, such as shooting Kane's second wife Susan Alexander. Throughout the film, whenever we see Kane in his environment, whether in the newspaper he runs or in the huge Shenandoah manor he built, all his property is clearly visible. He is a part of the world he created, and the world he created is also a part of him.

In the first act of the film, the mother entrusts the young Kane to a guardian, and the composition and depth of field reveal the motivation of the story itself. Kane is playing in the snow outside, completely unaware of his fate. You can clearly see him through the window. His mother is on the right side of the picture, signing to give up custody of him, while his father is standing on the left side of the picture, looking helpless. The mother and guardian are in a conspicuous position in the foreground of the camera, and the father is passive. Little Kane, deprived of choice and action, is in the background. Mother and guardian decide the fate of little Kane. He is both a father and a mother and guardian. This scene reveals the essence of the film, because later we saw his sleigh "Rosebud" abandoned in the snow.

Citizen Kane

In a scene shot with a wide-angle lens for greater depth of field, what the audience sees in the picture may be as important as the character itself. Depth of field can be used to express a person's living space, and their attributes may convey information to the audience visually and express their personality characteristics. Showing the characters' environment, as ridley scott did in thelma and louise, can often reveal the characters' personalities in subtle ways. We see that Louise's room is elegant and tidy, while Selma's home is messy and disorderly, which visually provides the initial clues for the characters' personalities and their personality changes during their trip together. Therefore, it is very important that the lens can clearly represent the environment.

Thelma and Louise.

According to Hitchcock's law, the size of an object in the picture should be equal to its importance in the scene at that moment. In the movie honey trap, the outstanding performance of that cup of tea with poison is to tell the audience how important it is.

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Many westerns directed by john ford often use wide-angle lenses to represent cowboys as part of the environment. Just like at the end of the movie "The Searcher", the characters ride to the sunset, and the endless earth devours the lonely hero. When the subject is far away from the lens, shooting with a wide-angle lens will make the audience feel that the character is slowly marching to the vast plain, which is enhanced by the use of depth of field.

Because most cameras use electronic zoom, large depth of field has become an inherent feature of digital cameras. When you shoot in digital (DV) format and want to weaken the depth of field, you need to use a fixed-focus lens. As mentioned above, the depth of field of the picture taken by high-definition camera is closer to the effect of super 16 mm than that of 35 mm film. There are some methods that can be used to reproduce the feeling of film on digital cameras, such as using focal plane or using medium gray density filter to open the aperture and reduce the depth of field. Some low-end digital cameras have fixed electronic zoom, which can't reduce the depth of field, which also makes their images look digital. In addition, there is the problem of resolution: of course, things change with each passing day, and focal planes are also used in high-definition cameras. But you prefer to watch movies with a shallow depth of field of 35 mm, more than 35 mm or distorted format, rather than digital things. This is something to consider when you decide how visual effects will affect the expression of the story.

Searcher

Shallow depth of field narration

The aesthetic reason for weakening or reducing the depth of field of a picture is to focus the audience's full attention on the main body of the picture focus. Other objects in the lens are blurred, only one character is clear, and the audience's attention is only focused on that subject or object. This can be used in many ways. An example is that the subject is in a complex urban environment, and only he is clear, which may imply that the subject is lonely in this busy world, or that he has failed to integrate into this world. It can also be used to show that from the subjective point of view of another character, he ignored the noise and chaos around him. It can clearly tell the audience where to look, and tell them that what they are looking at is the only important thing in the picture, because everything else is blurred.

Fallen angel

Another reason for using depth of field to blur the background is to cover up the original features of the location and blur the details of the environment to "fake"-make it look like it was shot elsewhere. Using or weakening the depth of field is not only a technical tool, but also an aesthetic tool. Directors need to know how to use them correctly to strengthen the visual narrative in movies.

You should also consider the depth of field when switching lenses. If you want to keep the continuity of the dialogue between two characters, you should shoot with a lens with similar focal length to keep the balance of depth of field in the background. If one subject shoots with a long lens and the other subject shoots with a wide-angle lens with a large depth of field, it will be strange for the two lenses to be spliced together.

The rise of the dark knight.

Controlling the focal length can also be used to create psychological effects. For example, you may want the audience to feel that something is wrong in the scene. But if you don't realize how you use the depth of field, you may have unnecessary implications, which will create a difficult situation for the editor, who has to try to cut out a scene to maintain objective continuity.