Question about filming technique by est120

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Question about filming technique

POSTED BY: EST120
UPDATED: Sunday, August 27, 2006 19:55
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Sunday, August 20, 2006 2:48 AM

I was watching the Angel episode "Conviction" from season 5 yesterday and I had a question about how some of these things get filmed. At the end of the episode, after

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Spike reappears because of the amulet

there is a shot that has three characters in it. Wes, Angel and Harmony. All three of them are in focus but Angel is in the front, Wes is a few steps behind him and Harmony is a few more steps behind Wes. How is this accomplished? Something about the way the shot looks makes it seem a little "off" meaning that it kind of looks like a digital effect but maybe that is just my brain playing tricks on me. Anyone know how this is done? Is it very simple and common?

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Sunday, August 20, 2006 3:40 AM

REGINAROADIE

I remember that shot, and it doesn't seem like the three are too far apart so that they're all in focus. But I know exactly what you're talking about.

In those cases, that kind of shot where both the foreground and the background are in focus is accomplished with a diopter in the camera. Half or a third or whatever of the lens is covered up so that they can get the one person in focus. They film that, then they shift it around so that they can film the other person. Then they take it to a processing lab and combine the two shots together, thus making it look like the entire shot is in focus.

I'm not sure if I've explained it correctly, but it's how a shot like that is accomplished. If you rent the DVD for SOMEWHERE IN TIME, there's a part in the making of featurette that explains this process when they're talking about one of the most important shots in the whole film. And if you look at CITIZEN KANE, there's tons of technical shots in there that stagger the mind. It's actually a pretty heavy special effects movie.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"There's only one "Return" ok, and it ain't "of the King", it's "of the Jedi."

"Maybe we should start calling your friend 'Padme' because he loves 'Mannequin Skywalker' so much, Right? (imitating robot) Danger...danger...my name is Anakin...my shitty acting is ruining saga."

Excerpt of internet teaser for CLERKS 2.

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Sunday, August 20, 2006 3:43 AM

DOPEYNAME101

Is everything in the shot in focus (i.e. background and all?)

It could be a wide-angle lens, which would also explain for the "offness." If it is, it's a very commonly used technique.

I'm not sure, I'd have to see the shot you're talking about. Any chance you could screen-cap it?

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Monday, August 21, 2006 6:12 AM

DREAMSOFTHESPIDER

dunno about with film, it could be exactly as the second post explains, but in single lens reflex cameras, a still-photograph having the same effect would be achieved by increasing the depth of field, which, if my rusty memory serves, means opening the aperture wide to let in more light and focusing about midway.

I'm probably way off, though.

~Tzegha

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Monday, August 21, 2006 5:22 PM

TRAVELER

The longer the lens the more you get in focus. A 50mm lens has a short range. A 200mm would have much more. Sports photographers use a very extreme lens to get any shot they require. Like the lens used in the most powerful observatory telescopes they use mirrored len's to bounce the image back and fourth inside the main lens. This keeps the lens short while increasing its focal length.
Even in portrait photography the popular lens is 135mm, so they can capture all the features of the subjects face. But with electronic technology we have today I suspect the answers preceding mine are probably what was used. I just wanted let you know you could produce this effect yourself, if you can get your hands on a 2000mm lens. I would not even guess the cost of such a lens. But they do exist and I'm sure even larger than that from some of the shots I've seen taken at auto races.

Traveler

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Monday, August 21, 2006 5:26 PM

DREAMSOFTHESPIDER

*head spins*

All's I know is that with the basic lens with my little ancient Minolta I got wicked depth of field.

~Tzegha

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Monday, August 21, 2006 5:39 PM

TRAVELER

It may be ancient, but I bet it is a one nice lens. Quality counts. Also the farther away the subject is the more focal length you get. If your taking pictures of a mountain a 50mm will actually work fine. But the if you want to take a picture of three people, standing close together, then a longer lens is the way to go.

The clerk at your local photo store can explain this better than me. I'm a little rusty. As I said I can only imagine what photographers at autoraces use. I've seen some amazing shots from these guys.

Traveler

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Tuesday, August 22, 2006 3:23 AM

DOPEYNAME101

Generally, the longer the lens, the shallower the depth of field, so it's actually less you get in focus.

However, the other aspect that contributes is the distance from the subject. If you set up a short lens and a long lens at the same point, the images will not be the same size. The long lens will fill more of the frame, but have a shallower depth of field and have less in focus.

Basically, if you want to get the same image size with a short lens that you do with a long lens, the short lens would have to be moved closer to the subject, which would, in effect, make it have the same depth of field as the long lens, making the point truly moot.

Hope that makes sense.

Any chance at all of a screencap?

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Tuesday, August 22, 2006 4:02 AM

GIXXER

Just a second there while I don me brown anorak.

Pre-Digital photography and Auto-everything 101...

Short focal length (front to film) lens (say 35mm or less for 35mm film) = Wide angle. Will have a lot of Depth of field. eg focus on 10 feet and pretty much everything from about 3 feet to Infinity and beyond will be in focus.

They do distort, though, close up stuff gets big very quickly, far away stuff gets small very quickly. Look at yourself in a shiny hubcap. No dude, dab antiseptic on the cuts and try it again with a stationary car...

Wide / short lenses are bad for portraits. Nose like a moose, ears like a Minbari.

Longer lenses 100mm+ focal length on 35mm film have a narrower depth of field. Focus on 20 feet and you'll get a sharp image of everything in the 19 to 21 foot range. Better for portraits, since you'll be further away for a given image, and so the relative difference in distance between nose and ears doesn't cause so much of a ballooning effect.

Back to the hubcap. Gross disortion if you move back and forth close up to it. Stand a 20 feet away, and the same degree of motion will case less ballooning (and not just because it's dificult to see at that distance. We could use binoculars, but really, I think that would be a little over complicated...

For any given lens, if the aperture is wide open, (f2.8 or less), you'll get a smaller depth of field than if the lens aperture is closed down (f11 or more) The f = "factor"

The hole in the front of a 50mm focal length lens at f2.8 is 17.8mm in diameter 50/2.8(lots of light gets in) at f11 it is 4.5mm wide 50/11(not much light gets in).

That buzzing noise is either a synchroniser going bad, or the last of the audience has dozed off, so I'll stop.

Cecil G DeMille

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Tuesday, August 22, 2006 1:57 PM

TRAVELER

Yes. Well you have to stand farther away as your lens gets longer, unless you like nose hairs.
After all are jargen you can see why I think they used hitech computer imagining. They probably would have had the poor cinamatographer pressed against the back wall of the sound stage if not even farther than that.

I bet your glad you asked this question?
But it was fun. I haven't pulled my Minolta out for years.

To many hobbies.

I aim to be impulsive
Traveler

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Tuesday, August 22, 2006 5:57 PM

JPSTARGAZER

I haven't seen the TV episode in question, but a previous poster mentioned a split diopter. I think it's an in-lens effect where the lens has two (or I guess three, although I wasn't aware there were such things) sections...think bifocals for a camera. That way, two subjects at different distances are in focus. Brian DePalma was a huge fan, and I remember listening to the commentary for Equilibrium with Kurt Wimmer and he talks about a split diopter shot in the interrogation scene.

I couldn't find a screenshot from Equilibrium, but I found one from Star Trek VI:

You can see both Scotty and Chekov are in focus on either side of the frame, and the giveaway that it's a diopter shot is the fuzzy line in the center of the frame. Hope this helps.

"All I got is a red guitar, three chords, and the truth...the rest is up to you"
--Bono

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Tuesday, August 22, 2006 6:15 PM

TRAVELER

That makes a lot of sense. I would imagine the cost would be far less with this type of lens. And when your always filming on sets with small rooms like those in spaceships it would probably be used quite often. Never heard of a diopter before. Try to remember that one.

Traveler

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Sunday, August 27, 2006 7:55 PM

SNARKANDTEA

Weighing in on the side of the focal-lengthers as opposed to the diopters...just thinking about Joss' attention to detail as evident in the commentary on Firefly, I have a feeling he'd talk to the DP (or make sure the director of that episode talked to the DP) about finding the perfect lens for that shot rather than using an effect. I'm not saying that effects are cop-outs; rather, this is my increasingly inarticulate assumption based on a theory on Joss' instinct for filming.

The reason I also advocate for the picky lens-theory rather than the in-camera effect is based on your statement that the shot looked "off". I haven't seen that epi of Angel, but I know that sometimes an extremely short or long lens can create a startling impression; one example from Firefly that I can think of is in the pilot episode, in the first dinner with the new passengers; there are shots that always stand out to me because the table looks wierdly enormous, and Simon and the Fed look very far apart - I believe this is probably because that shot employed a short lens which made objects appear farther apart. Longer lenses tend to "flatten" the look of an image, removing perceived space between objects and making it perfect for visual gags, such as one where a person in the foreground holds up a finger and a thumb and it appears as though she's pinching the Washington Monument between them (even though logic tells you it must be far in the background).

So perhaps to resolve your question you need to figure out in what way the shot appears "off" - is it because the grouping of characters is so close you know they can't be physically standing so near each other (perhaps because one appears too short, and thus must be farther away - even though a flattening of perspective eliminates the perception of space between)? In that case, your eye is being tricked by a long lens. Or is there too much space around them - do they seem lost in a deep shot? Perhaps that's the work of a short lens.

I hope this was useful or interesting in some way - I also hope I got my facts right. I'm still learning this myself! (And have also just inherited my own Minolta, with three pwetty lenses - one of which zooms!)

~~~
"Did he just go crazy and fall asleep?"
http://tea_and_snark.livejournal.com

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