Whenever somebody equates "shallow depth of field" and "cinematic look," it's good to remember that the opposite is sometimes true. Gregg Toland, ASC was the first master of extreme depth of field, and movies like Citizen Kane and The Grapes of Wrath forever changed what it is possible for humans to do with cameras. Here's a look at what that means for YOUR shooting.
Re: Depth of Field: Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane and Beyond by Mark Suszko on Jun 14, 2012 at 4:32:15 pm
What Toland did for Orson, in one sense, with deep focus was let Orson work in a familiar mode, as if his movie was a theatrical stage play, where instead of only driving the viewpoint with the lens and the cutting alone, additionally you direct the audience's eye thru multiple techniques, of lighting and motion and physical positioning, but you leave additional material there to look at over multiple viewings.
One of the reasons Kane stands up to repeated viewings, IMO, is that with this technique you keep finding new things to see in it, seeing new interrelationships.
Re: Article: Depth of Field: Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane and Beyond by Tim Wilson on Jun 14, 2012 at 4:39:26 pm
Thanks for stopping by. This isn't really as much as an article as a cleaned-up version of a long-winded post in the COW's Film History & Appreciation forum.
Here are some other Gregg Toland resources:
The amazing original trailer, a unique performance piece of its own, complete with fantastic Gregg Toland cinematography -- not just from the movie, but for this frankly bizarre trailer.
As I mention, I actually feel more strongly about The Grapes of Wrath. This trailer is also bizarre, and has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the movie. But it also has some great work of Toland's from the movie, including some shots with (gasp!) very shallow depth of field. Honestly, one of the freakiest trailers I've ever seen.
And the not quite as bizarre trailer for Best Years of Our Lives. You get a quick glimpse of the frame I reference above, which actually features Hoagy Carmichael playing the piano. Embedding disabled by request, but
Re: Article: Depth of Field: Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane and Beyond by Clint Wardlow on Jun 14, 2012 at 5:21:51 pm
I always loved wonderfully-composed deep focus shots. Sergio Leone used them to great effect also. This where I think video is inferior to film. I mean the large chip cameras do approximate the shallow depth of field of film, but somehow there is a flatness to deep focus shots IMHO.
I guess you can do a lot of tweaking in AE or other graphics programs to get the look guys like Toland achieved. Still there is a sharpness to digitally-enhanced video that lacks the warmth of film.
Re: Depth of Field: Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane and Beyond by Chris Harlan on Jun 14, 2012 at 5:25:49 pm
I am a sucker for Greg Toland and deep focus. He and James Wong Howe are two of my favorite cinematographic inspirations. I was very happy to see how well some of their ideas were lovingly applied in Hugo. Thanks for trip. I will always stop for Greg Toland. One small note: William Wyler is actually the directorial force behind BYoOL.
@Chris Harlan by Nathan Walters on Jun 15, 2012 at 12:28:50 am
I completely agree. Jame Wong Howe was definitely another great cinematographer whom shouldn't be forgotten. Fantastic lighting techniques and a huge inspiration.
Re: Article: Depth of Field: Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane and Beyond by Robert Brown on Jun 14, 2012 at 7:11:30 pm
Yeah I think people need to just look at it as a choice. I have a 5D and have been playing around with Nikon and Mamiya primes. The auto iris feature no longer works with those lenses so when you put it at f/8 you see f/8. I kind of like this because even though it's darker I'm more aware of how changing the iris affects the image. I've debated this before but I feel frame rate and contrast have a lot more impact on what gives film it's look.
Robert Brown Editor/VFX/Colorist - FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Pro
Re: Article: Depth of Field: Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane and Beyond by Tim Wilson on Jun 14, 2012 at 7:42:49 pm
Frame rate is going to be its own pile of worms -- is 60fps really cinematic? -- but I agree that contrast is huge. I think that's why the hottest cameras are the ones with the most latitude. THAT's the thing that's flat about most video to me. Good film shooting can be as sharp as video, but until very recently, video sensors couldn't capture as much dynamic range.
We're coming around to a place where digital cameras have MORE latitude than film. Some of the true lions like Roger Deakins and Caleb Deschanel arre shooting digital and seeing the new possibilities it can offer.
The trick is going to be training the kids coming up to use digital cameras to make images that rival Deakins and Deschanel at their film-vintage best.
Re: Article: Depth of Field: Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane and Beyond by Robert Brown on Jun 14, 2012 at 9:08:41 pm
[Tim Wilson]"Frame rate is going to be its own pile of worms -- is 60fps really cinematic?"
Well IMO 60 isn't cinematic and it's always been my opinion frame rate is one of the biggest differences between the film and video. My favorite example is to look at the difference between footage from a feature and compare it to behind the scenes footage shot at the same time with a video camera. The video footage looks soap opera-ish. I've also noticed the when using old style film viewers where I could control the speed, if I sped it up a bit it started getting video like to me.
Of course since some big features coming up are going to be shot in 48P so it seems a lot of people don't feel the same as I do but I feel slower frame rates are better for telling a story and say "then" while faster ones say "now". Another interesting thing is that a lot of TVs now have this motion estimation feature that essentially ups the frame rate. I can't stand that. It looks like video to me. I would be pissed if I were a director and saw my movie at Best Buy looking like that - but that genie is out of the bottle.
I guess my main point is I feel there is a retinal stimulation factor due to the frame rate and to me that has big creative implications.
And back to dynamic range the thing with film is that it captures a very high DR but that doesn't necessarily print that way. In the old days when you printed to film you had to pick the shadows or the highlights as the print film wouldn't register all the information there. You really see that on "Citizen Kane" for example. I originally saw that I think on 16mm at film school and it looked awesome and God knows how many generations down that was from the neg. A number of years ago the DVD came out that was all remastered and transferred straight from the neg all that and it looked terrible. The contrast and edge were gone and things like the make-up of the actors became much more fake looking. It had an entirely different feel.
But in reality all of these things are just factors that make up the whole and different people like different styles but I tend to find the grit and organic qualities of film really appealing for story telling and find it can be hard to get digital cameras to give that because they're so f'ing clean. But people seem to be figuring it out.
Robert Brown Editor/VFX/Colorist - FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Pro
Re: Depth of Field: Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane and Beyond by Tim Wilson on Jun 14, 2012 at 7:50:10 pm
I can't believe I just now stumbled across this, but here's a 1941 article BY Gregg Toland, called The Motion Picture Cameraman. It begins with the sentence, "I enjoy being a motion picture cameraman," but picks up steam very quickly from there.
In the production of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles functioned in a fourfold capacity—as producer, writer, director and star. His authority to make decisions was virtually unlimited. To cap it all he proved one of the most cooperative artists with whom it has been my privilege to work. He let down all bars on originality of photographic effects and angles and I believe the results have fully justified that policy. Photographing Citizen Kane was indeed the most exciting professional adventure of my career.
Re: Depth of Field: Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane and Beyond by Clint Wardlow on Jun 14, 2012 at 8:12:13 pm
I think my favorite color cinematographer may be Jack Cardiff. The work he did on the Powell/Pressberger films (especially Black Narcissus) is breathtaking.
At the same time I am really wondering where the new video technology is taking us. I am excited to see the types of image that can be captured as the cameras get better and better (and I ain't meaning CGI)and cinematographers move beyond the "film-look" realm into areas only possible with video.
Re: Depth of Field: Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane and Beyond by Todd Terry on Jun 14, 2012 at 8:19:25 pm
Good finds, Tim... that Citizen Kane trailer ranks right up there with one of the more bizarre things I've seen. You'd certainly never know what the movie was about (or any of its mood or flavor) judging from that.
As for deep focus... well, while I am usually super-shallow focus director/DP myself, I am a fan of the deep-focus shots when done really well. I think there's a factor to the really good ones (such as the many from Kane) that I've never heard anyone mention before (or maybe just missed it)... I think many of these deep shots work so well because so many of the classic better ones are in stark black and white. The viewer can absorb all the minutiae of all the sharply-focused detail, because we are not also being bombarded with all the color info. Personally, that's why I think many of the classic deep shots look so darn good. I've rarely seen a full-color one that I thought could compare with the impressiveness of a B/W one.
What's impressive about things like Kane is the lighting and DoP work that went into orchestrating those shots. Any yahoo with a camera can get a deep DoF shot on a sunny-day exterior... just stop that lens down to f/22 or beyond. For interiors though (especially with the slow-as-molasses filmstocks of 70 years ago), can you imagine the truck fulls of light they had to pour onto scenes in order to get the apertures small enough? Even with wide lenses? Especially when you consider this is well before the HMI days, that's mighty impressive indeed.
T2
__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc. fantasticplastic.com
Re: Depth of Field: Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane and Beyond by Tim Wilson on Jun 14, 2012 at 10:15:02 pm
Todd, I'm actually a fan of shooting shallow too. Other folks here are right that shooting video max-depth often looks camcorder-y. No matter how well you compose everything else, it never actually LOOKS composed.
The lighting in Kane really is a story of its own. They had to really think this through because they couldn't always hang fixtures overhead: the ceilings were in so many important shots!
I have the clip that goes with the first movie still here. The background of Welles and the actors in live theater lends itself to actors being in exactly the right place all the time, to create a series of individual frames. But it's amazing to watch the actors and the camera move through this scene -- everything in focus, deep contrast, actors perfectly placed. Amazing.
And Clint, I LOVE Jack Cardiff! The two he shot for Powell and Pressburger are breathtaking - The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus, which I think I like better. A kind of wacky video, with a bunch of Black Narcissus clips and a Florence & The Machine song -- but the best images from the movie I've found online.
There's a wonderful documentary on him, Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff. I can't recommend it highly enough. It covers his work from the silent era, up through his work on African Queen, Rambo (!!!) and beyond. Sorry to keep loading you up with YouTube clips, but here's the trailer:
Re: Depth of Field: Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane and Beyond by Jim Giberti on Jun 14, 2012 at 10:23:38 pm
Great stuff Tim,
I'm on location shooting two campaigns right now and struggling over the composition of the establishing shot for one as I take a break.
Look forward to reading the GT article.
FWIW one of these is a mix of deep and shallow field, with several layers of lighting which is what I'm trying to suss out now...location isn't deep enough for what I'm seeing.
Either we can grow it in the next hour or I have to find a new location.
Re: Depth of Field: Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane and Beyond by TImothy Auld on Jun 15, 2012 at 11:07:06 pm
I've heard that it is fashionable to not like Citizen Kane but I am consistently amazed by it. Great article by the way. Thanks. If you like the use of deep focus take a look at "The Hustler," Ashamed to say I don't know who photographed it but there is a shot from one end of the pool table to the other in perfect focus (courtesy of a split field diopter) and used to stunning effect.
Re: Depth of Field: Gregg Toland, Citizen Kane and Beyond by Paul Provost on Jun 16, 2012 at 10:55:36 pm
Breakfast table scene in the leaky cauldron early in prisoner of azkaban is great use of this as well. Really some amazing camera work on that film. Article on the time lapse sequence available somewhere, ASC mag I think, is mind blowing. What they had to do with light...
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