Deep Focus Technique and Lighting Schemes
Toland experimented freely on Citizen Kane, creating deep focus, collaborating with set designer Perry Ferguson so ceilings would be visible in the frame, and making a range of alterations to the Mitchell Camera to allow a wider range of movement.
The main way to achieve deep focus was closing down the aperture, which required more powerful lighting, lenses with better light transmission, and faster film stock. On Kane, the cameras and coated lenses used were of Toland's own design, which allowed for the many innovations of the movie. His lenses were treated with Vard Opticoat to reduce glare and increase light transmission. He used the Kodak Super XX film stock, which was, at the time, the fastest film available. Lens apertures employed on most productions were usually within the f/2.3 to f/3.5 range; Toland shot his scenes in between f/8 and f/16.
Read more about this topic: Gregg Toland
Famous quotes containing the words deep, focus, technique, lighting and/or schemes:
“In love’s deep womb our fears are held;
there God’s rich tears are sown
and bring to birth, in hope new-born,
the strength to journey on.”
—Rob Johns (20th century)
“Let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples of the earth—they are the focus of evil in the modern world.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“A mother’s happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“Science is a dynamic undertaking directed to lowering the degree of the empiricism involved in solving problems; or, if you prefer, science is a process of fabricating a web of interconnected concepts and conceptual schemes arising from experiments and observations and fruitful of further experiments and observations.”
—James Conant (1893–1978)