Camera Focus

The use of camera focus is usually to ensure that the image your filming is clear and at the best quality when you actually film. However the use of a cameras focus is and is commonly used for other effects as I shall explain. Although we may not notice it, the human eyes never have everything their vision completely focused, this is why films that use shots that have the entire image in focus can appear un-natural to us the audiance. Therefore by adjusting the focus the director can achieve a naturalistic shot which is visually more apprpriate. Notice how the background in the image below is out of focus while the persons hands holding the camera are in focus.

Another common use of focu is to make the audiance aware of what is the subject. So for instance in the image below you can see the exact same image with two diffrent things in focus, by doing the director can communicate two completely diffrent things. The image to the left has the building in focus, maybe this forshadows that the next scene will occur in this building, maybe the director wants us to notice the person in the window. We can't be sure unless we see an entire scene with the cut in there, however the point is that the director has sucessfully got us to look at a specific subject. The picture to the right would tell us the audiance something completely diffrent. The fact the flowers are in focus means this may be an establishing shot of a picturesque village, maybe the flowers symbolise something to do with the movie. Once again we can't be certain unless we saw it in a sequence, however once again the director has communicated a completely diffrent thing with the exact same image.

                                       

Finaly the director may want to just have everything out of focus. This is used slightly less in film than the others, however is still considerably popular and some of the most iconic films have used it. By having everything out of focus can symbolise a number of emotion or communicate certain things about a scene. To make a scene calm and naturalistic is a good example as things that may be visually sharp are softened down when out of focus. Feelings of confusing can be represented due to us the audiance not beeing able to quite see whats occuring in the sequence. Finally a exstremely iconic sequence with this technique was in the film Gladiator. When General Maximus Decimus Meridius passes away we see shots of him walking through a field of wheat, sections of this we see just his hand touching the corn, all of this out of focus. This communicates to audiance that he has passed onto the afterlife which is calm a scerine for him.