It’s somewhat of a niche problem, but it’s one that’s worth addressing.Īnd then it dawned on me. While I like Canon cameras and love the capabilities of tilt-shift lenses, I would like to see if there are other ways to handle this issue. The only mainstream lens manufacturer I know of that sells tilt-shift lenses is Canon. Shift is used to adjust the position of the subject in the image area without moving the camera back this is often helpful in avoiding the convergence of parallel lines, as when photographing tall buildings. Tilt is used to control the orientation of the plane of focus (PoF), and hence the part of an image that appears sharp it makes use of the Scheimpflug principle. “Tilt–shift” encompasses two different types of movements: rotation of the lens plane relative to the image plane, called tilt, and movement of the lens parallel to the image plane, called shift. Sometimes the term is used when the large depth of field is simulated with digital post-processing the name may derive from a perspective control lens (or tilt–shift lens) normally required when the effect is produced optically. Tilt–shift photography is the use of camera movements that change the orientation and/or position of the lens with respect to the film or image sensor on cameras. So this is the kind of stuff I’ve been doing in my work life lately.I’m not sure when it clicked for you that tilt shift could be had easily and practically, in camera with some recent models, but that time was today for me. The “miniature” theme is obvious and literal in this movie, but I especially like the way tilt shift is employed in the title sequence to convey a sense of size distortion from the very beginning. One last movie where I’ve noticed the tilt-shift technique used to great effect is Jack Black’s 2010 Gulliver’s Travels. And their influence on campus, which they think is so significant, is actually equally puny, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing (as seen in their meeting with Harvard’s president). The twins think they’re such big shots, but this race is puny in the larger scheme of things. I decided it might be more “subjective” if the world around the races fell away in focus, leaving the rowers to move into and out of planes of focus to accentuate their piston-like effort.īut for me as a viewer, ignorant of Fincher’s shooting schedule and creative decisions, the use of tilt shift in that scene was to make the Winklevoss twins-portrayed in the film as holding very high opinions of themselves and their place in the world-appear diminished. The only way to make the date for release was to make the backgrounds as soft as humanly possible. We could only shoot 3 races at the Henley Royal Regatta We had to shoot 4 days of boat inserts in Eton. I read an interview with The Social Network director David Fincher ( here) in which he said the reason for tilt shift here was practical: Can you see the miniaturization effect on the longer shots? Take a look at the opening 20 seconds of this clip. I next noticed the technique in The Social Network, at the Henley Royal Regatta, where the Winklevoss twins are racing for Harvard’s rowing team in the Grand Challenge Cup. That London is Sherlock’s playground, his game board, and he sees the city as just a tiny, blurry setting against which the clarity of the intellectual puzzles he loves can take over as the central focus. The first place I noticed it was in the opening credits of the BBC’s “Sherlock” television series.Ĭan you make out the miniaturization of London in this clip? I have no idea why the tilt-shift effect (plus a cool use of time lapse) was employed, but I can tell you how I interpret it. It took awhile to learn what it was called (tilt shift), but I’m really intrigued by its use and what it contributes to my experience of a film.īasically the effect of tilt-shift photography is to create a visual impression that what you’re seeing on the screen is a miniature set, almost like a doll-house world. So when I teach them about lighting and lens focal length and camera movement, we are primarily concerned with the image within the frame-what we see when we view a movie.Ī few years ago I noticed something new onscreen that I’d never seen before. My students are analyzing films, not making them. For some basic background on tilt-shift photography, check out the Wikipedia article here. I’m no expert on the technology itself, except to know that what used to be done with camera lenses and movement can now be done post-production using software. I’m teaching film studies this quarter, and one of the small pieces of information I introduce to help students develop a vocabulary for talking about movies is the concept of “tilt shift” photography.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |