('THEIR FIRST TIME' BY ADAM TAYLOR PLAYS)
Since around 2008,
when the DSLR revolution put full-frame sensors
in the hands of amateur film makers and videographers,
super shallow depth of field has become something of a cliche in indie film making
For a lot of film makers, myself included, this effect was used not just as a tool,
but as a crutch to achieve that, "Cinematic Look"
These days, super shallow focus is everywhere
It's a fashion more than a technique,
so it's really, really cool to see an episodic show like "The Handmaid's Tale"
incorporate the effect in a systematic way as a motif of its visual language
The director of the first 3 episodes of the show, the director who set the tone is
Reed Morano, a former cinematographer
She and her own D.P. for this project, Colin Watkinson, created an extremely concentrated aesthetic
One that is beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
To capture the dystopian world of Gilead meant choosing the right camera and the right lenses
Morano shot on the ARRI Alexa Minis in 4k and used
lenses that opened all the way up to apertures of 1.3 and 1.4, which means
your depth of field is going to be razor thin
and everything outside of that field is going to be blown out in a pretty uniform blur
Now this shallow focus serves the story in 3 ways
First to capture the main character's point of view
Offred, played by Elisabeth Moss, is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead
a theocratic and totalitarian state that has overtaken America in which women no longer have any rights
Handmaids are the last women who can still have children, the rest of society being largely sterile
and they're forced to bear children for leaders of the regime
But it wasn't always like this, before the revolution, Offred lived in the America of our time
and the story of "The Handmaid's Tale" is really the story of the transition between America and Gilead
told through the experience of Offred
To dial us into that horror, Reed and Watkinson focus on the face
It's hard to remember a show that relied so much on one extreme close-up
but Elisabeth Moss is definitely up to the task
With a camera mere inches from her nose, the filmmakers combine
a wide 28mm ZEISS lense, used only for these shots, with a shallow depth of field
to create intense intimacy
And with her bonnet on, it's almost as if we're under a blanket with the character
The shallow depth of field extreme close-ups are an effective way to get the audience to identify with Offred
But they also point to an important theme,
that as a slave in an authoritarian state, where your physical being is affectively controlled by someone else,
your only agency is mental. The mind is where you have to retreat, to escape, to plan, and to remember
It's only a thin plane of focus, but it's still yours
The second, shallow focus is used to help create the world of Gilead
Unlike many dystopias you see in film and TV, Gilead is not a post-apocalyptic world of rubble and ruin
It's actually the opposite. A meticulously manicured New England full of sunlight and green foliage
Reed and Watkinson cite Kubrick as an inspiration, and they echo a lot of his one-point perspective framings
and definitely capture the creepiness of that
But, for the women of Gilead, what's notable about this world is how little they know about it
Think of all the knowledge that's accessbile to you through the internet
In Gilead, women are not only prohibited from going online, they're prohibited from reading anything
The result is a perspective that's extraordinarily narrow
The shallow depth of field captures this perfectly, because it literally narrows the visual information in focus
"The Handmaid's Tale" is constructed in fragments
You have America, and you have Gilead, and the show gives you pieces in-between the two,
but never the full time-line
This is in part because the show's primary characters don't have the full time-line themselves
This brutal new world, or at least the conditions that made it possible, snuck up on them
MAN: I have to let you go EMPLOYEES: What?
But that doesn't mean it came out of nowhere; that they aren't somehow connected
For example, even though Reed and Watkinson adopt a more hand-held verite style for the flashbacks,
the shallow focus remains
And they do this--I think--to suggest that both worlds suffer from problems of limited perspective
In Gilead, perspective is limited by force, but in our world, perspective is limited by choice
We keep our heads down, eyes glued to our screens, stuck in our echo chambers
while the blurry world around us changes
It brings home a vital message, that our rights are not guaranteed by the world
We fight for them, and have to protect them everyday,
because they can be taken away from us if we don't pay attention to the world beyond our focus
Everyone likes shallow depth of field: it's beautiful
And because it's beautiful, everyone uses it to make their work look better, more professional, more cinematic
And as a result, we get used to seeing it
When I watch "The Handmaid's Tale,"
I was amazed at how much the depth of field influenced
my feelings about the characters, and the world, and the story
It's just rare that you see this device used with such purpose, so methodically, and so effectively
And it really is effective
If you don't believe me, binge-watch a few episodes of "The Handmaid's Tale," then go outside
I guarantee you'll have a newfound respect for how much there is to see
('I CAN'T TAKE IT' BY BLUE WEDNESDAY PLAYS)
One of the questions I get asked the most is what software I use to make these videos
To edit, I use Final Cut Pro X, and since X is so different from the version of the program that came before it
I depended a lot on online videos to teach me the new features
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Thanks guys. I'll see you all next time