This weeks class consisted of a practical exercise involving the control and manipulation of the Depth of Field.
Learning about this, I felt as though I had a decent understanding due having some knowledge of Photography and how DSLR Cameras work.

During the discussion, we were informed that the Depth of Field can be controlled and manipulated by 3 variables: Lens Aperture, Lens Focal Length and Camera Position.
These 3 variables are able to change the depth of field and the shifting focus within a scene.

Subsequently, the topic of conversation shifted to the idea of a ‘Focal Pull’ – which is essentially an exercise that allows for the smooth shift of the depth of field within a shot. In order to achieve this, bright camera tape was used. Firstly, we focused the lens on our subject and marked a spot on the camera tape to indicate the position of the focus ring. Then, our subject moved within the frame to a position where a different depth of field was required. Consequently, we were required to move the focal length in order to maintain the focus on our subject, and thus another spot was marked on the tape.

We put this exercise into practice by recording a smooth shot of the subject sitting, standing and moving, all the while changing the focal ring on the lens in order to maintain the correct depth of field.

This exercise was rather interesting as it is an extremely practical and useful skill to have when filming. As we are slowly getting into our final project, this skill will prove to be useful when covering our different scenes.

For the coverage of dialogue – it would be interesting to experiment with having two subjects within the scene and changing the depth of field so the focus is shifted onto each of the subjects when the footage is shot.

I’ll hopefully have a practical experiment online soon.