Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Cosmic Closet (A) on June 18, 2009 at 11:38:27

In Reply to: RE: "Sugar"-technical question. posted by powermatic on June 07, 2009 at 17:46:47

You can only mess so much with the laws of physics without it showing, so I would venture the following (I have not seen the film; my background is as a broadcast videographer and part-time photographer):

If we assume the shot is indeed 'real', as in everything you saw was shot on a sound stage at the same time (and not matted in later):

To get more depth of field in an existing shot, there are two ways to do it on-set and in-camera:
Either:

Go to a wider angle on the zoom lens (inconspicuously) as the SteadiCam travels with the protagonist. Thus at a given f-stop, depth of field increases. This, possibly combined with a stepless shutter on the camera, could yield greater depth seamlessly.

Or:

Have the lighting being increased steplessly while the C2 closes the f-stop ring slowly in sync with the lighting. This would not be easy to do without a fair amount of rehersal, but it wouldn't be completely impossible either. The shutter angle may play a role here too.

Digital manipulation is available, whether the shot originates on film or video.
In post, you could throw the neg into a digital scanner, and selectively soften the areas surrounding the protagonist, and then remove the softening to reveal what was all along a shot with good depth of field.

This would perhaps not look quite the way a classic change of depth of field might look, but it might work.
I am not familiar with all the post techniques available, so I am merely offering this one as a possibility.

CC.