by Gil Bettman
For example, Figure 5.008 — the Brooklyn Bridge — and Figure 5.009 — the city of Dobrovnik — were both shot with a 10mm fisheye lens. The subject was large and the wide lens was able to see all of it.
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Our eyes can also see all of something even if it is as vast as the Grand Canyon or as tall as the Empire State Building. As described above, we have about 180 degrees of peripheral vision so what we see through our eyes is more like a very wide-angle lens such as a 10mm, when it comes to field of vision, than the “normal” lens, the 50mm, which is normal because it is identical to what we see through our eyes in terms of perspective.
Because our eyes have as much field of vision as a wide-angle lens then the correct lens to use for a point of view (a POV) shot is the wide-angle. Figure 5.008 and Figure 5.009 were both shot with extreme wide-angle lenses and both images would work as a POV shot.
If you do a shot of a teacher in a classroom facing his students and then you want to cut to his POV, or what he sees, you would do the POV shot with a 10mm or 15mm lens. This way you would see all the students in the classroom, as the teacher does through his eyes. If you shot it with a 50mm, or normal lens, you would only see about a third of the room and the students. The shot would be too narrow from one side of the frame to the other.
• TELEPHOTO LENSES — USE OF PROPERTIES DERIVED FROM FIELD OF VISION AND DEPTH OF FIELD
The longer the lens, the less it sees. Telephoto lenses have limited field of vision, which means that when you use a telephoto lens it’s as if you were looking through a tunnel or a telescope. The frame is narrowed on the sides as well as on the top and bottom.
Because telephoto lenses see less, they lend themselves to close-ups and other tight shots of just one or two things. The shot can be tight on something big or small — a car driving down the road, a boat at sea, a beautiful girl’s face (Figure 5.010) a butterfly (Figure 5.011) or a hawk (Figure 5.012). The bigger it is, the farther away from the camera it must be, because the lens has such a narrow field of vision. You cannot fit an entire car or boat in a telephoto lens, front and back or bow and stern in the frame, if you are too close to it.
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Telephoto lenses are ideal for close-ups and tight shots, not only because it is difficult to fit much more than one object in the frame, but also because the focal properties of these lenses make it unlikely that anything else in the frame, apart from that object, will be in focus. So the lens itself focuses all attention on that single object. As explained above, the telephoto has a shallow depth of field. So if the single object in the shot is a car, a girl’s face, or a hummingbird, and the lens is focused in on the car, the girl, or the hummingbird, then that object will be the only thing in the shot in sharp focus, no matter whether the object is in the foreground, the middleground, or the background. Everything else will be a little soft or completely fuzzy. The subject of the frame seems to be picked out by the lens.
This is why a 300mm lens was used to shoot the photo in Figure 5.013. The narrow field of vision and shallow depth of field concentrate all the attention on the goalie. In the same way, the telephoto lens focuses all attention on the girl’s face in Figure 5.010, the butterfly in Figure 5.011 and the hawk in Figure 5.012.
General Applications of Perspective
So far, for the sake of clarity I have only described the way that things look different when seen through a wide-angle lens in comparison to a telephoto lens with respect to field of vision and depth of field. Now I will discuss how different lenses force or change perspective and how this makes them best for certain kinds of shots.
The rule of thumb that states that differences in depth of field and field of vision make wide-angle lenses best for establishing shots and telephoto lenses the lens of choice for tight shots holds true when it comes to the other most important characteristic of lenses: perspective.
As I stated above, ultrawide-angle lenses distort the image so it ends up looking like what you see through a peephole in a door. Everything seems bowed and bulbous, as if the image was plastered to half a transparent sphere about the size of a soccer ball and then held up to your face. With the camera at eye level, a twelve-foot high pillar, two feet wide, right in the middle of the frame, would seem to be just inches wide at the top and the base, but fat, bloated, and about five feet wide in the middle. This is the “fisheye” distortion of an ultrawide, 10mm lens.
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All lenses on the wide side of the spectrum up to 30mm distort perspective in the same way. These lenses do not flatter the human face or figure. A close-up of a beautiful woman’s face with a fisheye lens would make her look like the cow in Figure 5.014. Her nose would be huge; her ears would be tiny and would appear to be about a foot behind her nose. That is the extreme example, but all wide lenses have a hint of this same distortion and so should be avoided for close-ups of people, in particular, and anything else that would not be flattered by being made to look more rounded.
On the other hand, the compressed perspective of a telephoto lens — the way that it seems to marry the foreground, middleground, and background so all focal planes seem to be on top of each other — actually makes objects in the camera look thinner than they do to the naked eye. This is why the shot of the girl’s face in Figure 5.010 was made with a telephoto lens. Telephoto lenses diminish depth and therefore bulk. Because of this effect, these lenses lend themselves to close-ups and tight shots of the human face and body.
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The narrow field of vision and the compressed perspective of the extreme telephoto lenses make them good for shooting a space and making it seem packed with people or things. This was the logic behind shooting the image in Figure 5.015 with an 800mm lens. The congestion of jets on the runway is enhanced by the telephoto lens. The lens makes them look like they are on top of each other. This same approach is often used when shooting a crowd of people coming to the camera on a sidewalk. The sidewalk appears jammed with humanity.
The expanded, rounded perspective of the wider lenses lends itself to that which is geographical and architectural. Big, wide-open exterior spaces — vistas, if you will — are made to look more like vistas by the rounded distortion of the ultrawide lenses. Not all wide lenses come with the added “fisheye” distortion that bends the horizon and curves the lines of perspective, but most people actually find this look pleasing — perhaps because it suggests the curve of the earth such as in Figure 5.009. The fisheye look has become a sort of visual shorthand that says “big.”
Buildings and interior spaces — courtyards, rooms, etc. — take on added depth when shot with a wide lens. A 50mm lens with its “normal” perspective lends no distortion to interior spaces, but this can actually make such spaces appear slightly cramped and smaller than they are in reality. The wider lenses, with their more rounded perspective, seem to open interiors up and make them more livable and attractive. The added fisheye distortion gives a noticeable curve to all the architectural lines of a room or building, but this actually calls attention to that which is pleasing in the configuration of the lines in the space. This is why an extreme wide-angle fisheye lens was used to shoot Figure 5.008 of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Some may disagree with all the above. These are purely esthetic judgments, and so mostly a matter of taste. But almost all of the DPs whom I have worked with would back up everything said above.
HOW LENSES AFFECT MOVEMENT
Film is movement. The effect of lenses on movement in the frame is the most important part of the role they can play in shaping the look of your film. If a shot is not static — if there is movement in a shot — when selecting the right lens for that shot, you have to give the greatest weight to how that lens will affect the look of the movement. This is because, if you are watching a film, your eye focuses on and follows whatever is moving in the frame. You may be looking at the whole frame, but what your brain reall
y sees is that which is moving.
Motion to the Lens or Away from the Lens — The Z-Axis
Let’s go back to the three cows in the field (Figure 5.001). This is how they would look to the naked eye or through a lens with a normal perspective — a 50mm. If a hawk were to fly into the frame, fly by the cow in the background, and then fly up to the cow in the foreground, and then over the camera, its movement (coming to the lens or away from the lens on the Z-axis of the frame) would seem normal — the same way it does to the naked eye. (See Figure 5.016.)
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Note: For the sake of clarity let me state that in this book motion in the frame to the lens and away from the lens, in other words, from the vanishing point on the horizon, up to and past the camera, is synonymous with motion on the Z-axis of the frame.
Now if the hawk were to make the same maneuver in a shot made with an extreme wide-angle lens — a 10mm — its movement (coming to the lens or away from the lens) would appear to be accelerated by the lens. The hawk is actually covering the same distance at the same pace, in the same amount of time. But, because of the distortion of the extreme wide-angle, as the hawk travels from the background to the foreground, it will go from being very tiny to being very large (Figure 5.017). As it passes through the foreground and out of frame by the camera, it will seem to explode in size and then vanish. This rapid change in size makes the flight when seen through the wide-angle as in Figure 5.017 seem faster than when seen through the normal lens as in Figure 5.016.
The ability of the wide-angle lenses to exaggerate motion on the Z-axis of the frame, from background to foreground, is one of their most useful and vivid properties. This makes the wide-angle a good lens for shooting action sequences.
If the hawk were to make the same maneuver in a shot filmed with the 300mm or extreme telephoto lens, its movement (coming to the lens or away from the lens) would be slowed down by the lens. Because of the distortion of an extreme telephoto lens, the three cows seem to be about the same size (Figure 5.003). So as the hawk flies from the cow in the background to the cow in the foreground (Figure 5.018), it will not seem to grow much in size. Again, it is covering the same distance at the same pace, but because its image in the frame grows imperceptibly, it doesn’t seem to make much progress on the Z-axis. Its motion in the frame is slowed. Even though its wings are flapping, it seems to hang in the same spot.
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This is how the extreme telephoto lens produces the classic shot mentioned earlier: the rider on horseback coming at the camera across the desert as the heat wavers up through the frame. The rider rides and rides but he doesn’t seem to get anywhere — because the telephoto lens diminishes progress on the Z-axis, and so seems to slow motion.
Remember, even though distance between the foreground and the background has been diminished by the telephoto lens, it seems to take longer to get from the back of the lens to the front of the lens, because movement has also been diminished and, as a result, progress on the Z-axis has seemingly slowed down. So the hawk flying from the cow in the background to the cow in the foreground (Figure 5.018) seems to be in the same place, but when viewed from an angle perpendicular to the camera (Figure 5.019) — a side view, if you will — it is actually making progress.
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Motion Across the Lens — The X-Axis
If the object in the frame is not coming toward the camera or moving away from the camera on the Z-axis, but crossing in front of the camera on the X-axis, across, or perpendicular to the lens, the wide-angle will seem to increase the speed of the object, provided — and this is key — the object passes close to the lens. The telephoto lens will also seem to speed up an object moving on the X-axis across the lens. But the two lenses do it in a different way.
With the wide-angle, such as a 10mm, it works the same way on the X-axis as it does on the Z-axis. Because of the way the lens distorts perspective, it will make the object in motion go from being very small when it is off to one side of the camera, camera left (Figure 5.020) to very large as it comes close to the lens (Figure 5.021 to 5.022). As it passes in front of the camera and the camera pans with it, it will stay large (Figure 5.023) but then as it travels off the other side of the camera (camera right) it will get very small, very fast (Figure 5.024 to 5.025). The object is going from being small to large to small, again, all very fast — faster than when viewed through the eye or shot with a normal or 50mm lens. In this way the extreme wide-angle seems to accelerate motion on the X-axis. The larger the object, the closer it comes to the lens, the greater the seeming acceleration. The very first shot in the video clip from the film Never Too Young to Die found on the Internet by following this link: http://hollywoodfilmdirecting.com/directing-the-camera.html uses an extreme wide-angle lens to accelerate the motion of a truck across the X-axis of the frame.
With a telephoto lens, such as 300mm, motion across the lens works very differently than motion to the lens or away from the lens. For the reasons explained above, motion on the Z-axis, to the lens or away from the lens, seems slower. But the telephoto lenses seem to accelerate the motion of an object on the X-axis across the lens because of the way the narrow field of vision and shallow depth of field of the lens turn everything else in the frame except the moving object into eye candy.
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As I described in Chapter 3, eye candy is generated mostly by motion blur. Without going into all the technical details, suffice it to say that you get motion blur when you move the camera past a static object or an object moving in a different direction or at a different speed than the camera. (See Chapter 2, Figure 2.001 to Figure 2.006, p. 12) The camera is moving with the van — at the same speed and in the same direction. So all the cars that the van passes will be wreathed in motion blur. Motion blur or eye candy energizes a shot and tells the audience that objects are in motion. The bigger, the brighter, the blurrier the objects the faster the motion.
To make this work using the example of the hawk flying past the cows, you would need more cows — fifteen in a row. Instead of shooting down the row of cows on the Z-axis from the nearest to the most distant, the camera would have to be off to the side — perpendicular to the row of cows — so they would be arrayed across the X-axis of the frame. And the hawk, instead of flying over the cows, would have to fly in front of their noses, between the cows and the camera (Figure 5.026). If the camera were fitted with an extreme telephoto lens, such as a 300mm, and the camera panned or dollied with the hawk as it flew on the X-axis from screen left to screen right in front of the cows, then the lens would accelerate the flight of the hawk. This appearance of acceleration is mostly the result of the narrow field of vision of the lens. The telephoto lens sees less from frame left to frame right so the hawk could fill the frame (Figure 5.027). And then as the camera pans left-to-right with the hawk from the first cow to the last cow, each cow’s head would appear frame right and then disappear very quickly out of left side of the frame (Figure 5.027). The way that the cows’ heads pop into frame, whip through the frame and disappear out the other side conveys speed. The bigger the brighter the objects passing through the frame, the faster they appear and disappear, and the more motion blur, the more eye candy, the more speed.
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The telescopic property of the lens — the way it distorts or forces perspective — also works to make motion on the X-axis appear faster. This telescopic property is going to enlarge the cows’ heads, as well as anything behind the cows or between the hawk and the camera. When the telephoto lens follows something in motion on the X-axis across the frame like the hawk, because it makes everything else in the frame bigger, the lens generates more motion blur, more eye candy, more speed. See Figure 5.028 to get a sense of how the telephoto lens when following an object in motion on the X-axis produces the illusion of great speed by adding motion blur
to anything that object passes.
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Because the cows are albino cows, they are brighter and will generate more eye candy than if they were Black Angus cows. If the hawk were flying in front of a forest of trees, instead of the cows, this would generate more eye candy, because the trees have stronger vertical lines to them and the camera is panning or dollying horizontally. The trees will pop in and out of frame more dramatically and noticeably than the cows. This will make it seem like the hawk is flying faster. This effect is enhanced if you pack the frame with more predominantly vertical, bright objects. So if there were trees between the hawk and the camera (as well as behind the hawk) these trees would also pop in and out of frame and add to the motion blur, eye candy, and speed in the shot. Figure 5.029 to 5.033, taken from the scene from Jerry Maguire discussed at length in Chapter 3, illustrate how packing a frame with bright vertical foreground and background elements adds eye candy to a shot which tracks an object in motion across the X-axis of the frame. To view a video clip of this scene from Jerry Maguire go to this link on the Internet: http://hollywoodfilmdirecting.com/directing-the-camera.html
