Rodger Marion

Depth of Focus is a photography term.  Two of the characters use cameras. Maureen, the middle sister, is a documentary filmmaker and Barbara, the youngest, is a still photographer.  For each of them, we have a unique camera.

Maureen uses a Sony DSR-PDX10 DVCAM camera. This is the camera we shot Impasse with, it was used as the TV studio camera in Nudged, and it returns again as a prop in the new film. Maureen will use the camera during interviews employing a method developed by Jennifer Fox called “passing the camera.” During an interview the subject and the filmmaker pass the camera back and forth. The camera has two microphones so both parties can speak and be recorded.

The method is explained in this article from Documentary Magazine, “The  ‘passing the camera’ technique becomes the great equalizer, as no one person in the conversation has more power than the other. Both film each other, both can ask questions of the other, both people are equally on the line. “On top of that,” Fox adds, “the whole question, ‘Can a layperson shoot with a camera?’ is so obviously answered in the film. My camera instruction to each woman took about 30 seconds, and within 30 seconds they were filming me, often quite beautifully.”

Barbara uses a Bronica ETRS medium format film camera that was made in the 1980’s. The film used in this camera is 2 inches wide and the resulting image is huge and detailed. Barbara’s camera has been converted to use a digital chip rather than film. This makes it more practical for modern photography.

There are several ways to convert the ETRS camera to digital recording, Jeff Bauers describes one approach. Barbara’s camera conversion is simpler than what is shown in the article and practically indistinguishable from the film version.

A lens focuses light to form an image behind the lens. This image is “in focus” not at a point but across a small distance. The image is out-of-focus in-front of and beyond this space.

The small diagram below illustrates three aspects of lenses: Depth of Focus, Depth of Field and Circle of Confusion.

For the new movie, the title relates to how the characters see the world in their minds. Each of us sees the world through a “lens” of our beliefs, superstitions, fears and joys.  How the character’s individual “lenses” process the events of the story, determines the clarity with which they see and the width of their in-focus space determines the breadth of their understanding. The characters see some things clearly and other things distorted.  The out-of-focus parts lead to conflicts and confusion.

The Circle of Confusion relates somehow too but at the moment the only confusion lies in the screen writer’s mind.

The new film will work on a number of levels: current time, flashbacks and dreams. For the dreams I’ve been exploring Celtic myths and characters from Irish & Celtic history and traditions. One such story is the hare and the hunter.

In this story a hunter shoots at a hare wounding it. The hare runs off and the hunter follows it into a cave. In the cave the hunter finds a beautiful girl on a throne with a wound in the same place as the hare.

This story, a bit elaborated upon, will be part of a flashback (a mother reading a story book to her son), part of a dream by the grown son and part of the current time of the story.

Dianne is creating the actual book that the mother will be reading. A rough sketch of the girl and the hare are on the right.