Blackmagic Forum

Hi everybody.
I know that the participants here are very professional DP's with a great lenses knowledge.
I really want to mimic R.Andresson's picture. For example, in his About Endlessness.
I understand that his lighting is great, etc., but how everything is in such perfect focus? Are these bifocal lenses (have no idea what they are, just heard Scorcese once mentioning them))
At first I thought these were CG's with an added backgrounds, but people walk between backgrounds and foregrounds.
Even the last part with the car look simple but very cool.
Anyway, any ideas will be greatly appreciated.
Just in case, this is a link to About Endlessness:

Thank you

I not know it, but it may be a good use of hyperfocal techniques. You should study a bit of photography and you can know the right distance and setup and you have all in focus.
Today all Videomaker are searching Bohen monster but often in past director prefer hyper focal like Orson Welles that force it also with post

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperfocal_distance


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Hey Carlo, I think this is exactly what I need!!))
Thank you so much!!

What Carlo said about using Hyperfocal techniques is right. However, watching the movie, I think it can be simply taking some principles of photography, especially that of composition, depth of field, and of particular experiences in landscape photography that will help making it possible to emulate the style.

First of is composition and stability. I think this are always going to be a stationary shots from a tripod. There are no camera movements of sorts and any movement of the subject is within the frame’s composition. It’s like shooting a landscape scene with a locked tripod (no pan, no tilt).

Second is the lens. Some lenses have markings like a red dot that marks the start of the focal length to infinity being the hyperfocal DOF. You can read about hyperfocal techniques in photography. But to keep it simple, a wide lens set to T11 or T16 will produce a good estimation of depth of focus and the angle of view. For example, a 20mm at T16 lens with good contrast characteristics will generally give you a foreground in focus with a sharp background to infinity.

Third, but with what’s said in #2 requires adequate lighting to light the foreground well enough that the entire focal range is almost equally lit, or that the foreground is lit well such that it correlates well with the background lighting. This is the most tricky part. If you watched the various sequence in his movie, you will quickly be mesmerized in how well lit it is. Even with the scene where the father was holding his murdered daughter in the room, the scene is so well lit so that the light distribution across the depth of focus is uniform. Without this lighting techniques, you will not be able to duplicate his style.

There's a documentary about Roy Andersson called "Being a Human Person". There's a lot of behind the scenes stuff as well as personal story and interaction with his team in it.

They use a lot of old school techniques like matte paintings and miniatures as well as green screens. Considering how naturalistic and simple everything looks (apart from the characters' emotions), there's a surprising amount of movie magic going on. It's all fake!

If I remember correctly, there was a BTS shot of a restaurant scene where the whole ceiling was covered in white cloth and evenly lit acting as a huge diffusor. There was a cut out matte painting of a ceiling in front of the camera blocking the lighting setup from view. This effect of course relies on a stationary camera and deep depth of field, which Carlo and Ellory mentioned. Nowadays you could replace the ceiling more easily in post, so I don't know why they did that in camera, maybe it was from an older movie shot on film.

Same kind of technique is used here:

Hey Ellroy and Timo!
Thank you so much for your reply!
Great suggestions and ideas. Really appreciate them!
I just watched that documentary about him..., WOW! All is fake, huh!? So well crafted and constructed, but he is simply making it... at home!))
But, anyway, it gave me an idea that the shallow depth of field is not the only way, and even if one does not build such incredible sets having everything in focus might be even more impressive, depending on the concept of course.
Yeah, the lighting is great, and somehow that use of physical pictures in front of the camera might be inspiring for him to have on the set, even though it is so much easier to add in post.

But be careful with aperture 11 or beyond. On cameras with S-35 sensor or even smaller, like MFT, your image may get softened by diffraction.

Hey Uli, thank you for the reply, I'll keep it in mind.
By the way, using those pictures in front of the camera rises a question about focusing, again!)
I read that to get everything in "acceptable" focus the distance to the nearest object in focus should be doubled, pretty straight forward trick, but, the "background" on the picture hanging by the camera is much closer to the camera than all the real objects, so, how to keep that combination in focus?
If one tries to use wide lenses and avoid zoom (if a zoom lens is used) then focusing on the real objects and the picture in front of the camera might be pretty challenging, right?

You could try this, it was used extensively in "Metropolis":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schüfftan_process

Hey Plank, thank you for your reply!
Metropolis, huh?)) I am pretty good with AE But it is very interesting to see all the tricks people were inventing before CG.

Hey Andrew, since you know AE, you should try doing it using matte painting/photograph techniques. I think you will find it easier to do, assuming you or someone you know are good with matte painting. Of course there are places you can get stock photos of backgrounds. Check out Steve Ramsden channel on YT where he shows matte techniques.

The matte painting technique was known as the Schüfftan process, after it's inventor. You can see it used to great effect on some early Hitchcocks and Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus, for example. Matte printing, from separate negatives, had the distinct disadvantage of camera registration misalignment, at times. Therefore the Schüfftan process was very popular for some time.

And if you'd like to leave AEFX for Fusion, this might be helpful: https://www.steakunderwater.com

Hey guys, thank you for your replies!)
Actually, I was kinda memorized by R.A. photography, and somehow I didn't remember it in his previous works, even though I like all of them. I was sure that he is doing it in a more conventional way, even though that scene with the apartment turning into a train (I think it was in Music From The 2nd Floor) look kinda suspicious))
I really like the idea of everything being in focus. I guess now, when everybody has a full frame camera (btw, what's up with Jim about that?)) the "artsy" shallow dof is not a "necessary" sign of a pro production, and there are other ways of separating a subject from a background. R.A. makes his picture look like a painting, and even impressionists had to use pretty much the same technic throughout an entire canvas.
It is a very interesting thing to think about and I am very glad that the people in these forums are not only into technical discussions but like to talk about the art concepts, too)

kesha55 wrote: the "artsy" shallow dof is not a "necessary" sign of a pro production, and there are other ways of separating a subject from a background.

Although photography and cinematography are two different worlds, there are many transferable concepts; the photographer Ming Thein has interesting things to say about isolating subjects here: https://blog.mingthein.com/2014/09/17/the-four-things/

"Beyond knowing what your subject is, there are five ways of isolating it: by light/ contrast, by colour, by depth of field, by texture, and by motion blur. Note that DOF and motion blur are really subsets of texture, and DOF is actually the weakest of the five and should be avoided so as not to make ‘maximum bokeh’ a habit. You might have an extremely fast lens, but if your subject is at infinity, then you’re still not going to be able to separate it from the background using depth of field alone. And finally, by the same token as a subject can stand out if it has the right combination of isolating methods, an unintended subject can also quickly turn into a noticeable distraction if it too is isolated in a similar manner."

Hey Brad, interesting points you make, and of course all that depends on the scene and the conditions, but such conceptual way like R.A. does definitely draws extra attention to his work)
Thank you for your reply.