The Physics of Focus - Text 5
We are in the presence, then, of a paradox, one difficult to admit and at times unjust: when the focus puller does his or her work correctly, no one sees it; on the other hand, everyone spots the slightest mistake. For many, it is thankless work. The following remark is attributed to Pierre Granier-Deferre: “In film, I could do every job except one: focus puller.” On this topic, the present author thought it would be interesting, to illustrate these comments on focus, to invite a very special point of view, that of Jean-Yves Le Poulain, who for twenty years was focus puller for the great director of photography Pierre Lhomme, whose name is associated with Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows (1969), most notably on Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) and Bruno Nuytten’s Camille Claudel (1987); he was also focus puller for Edward Klosinsky on Lars von Trier’s Europa (1991). Today he works for the company Thales Angénieux helping engineers manufacture new lenses based on his own experience on the ground. While he asserts that the focus puller’s first duty is of course to ensure that the images are sharp, and to manage all of the technical constraints connected with the camera during the making of a film, he believe that the focus puller’s “true” function is above all to manage the aesthetic and semantic choices made, which should be in tune with those of the cinematographer and with an interpretation of the script. This, according to Le Poulain, is a form of punctuation:
It’s a language in its own right. Focusing choices influence the editing and even the ability to hold the viewer’s attention. It is revealed to be an articulation between several sequences. For example, leaving an actor in soft focus in the foreground with an off-screen voice in the background is a decisive narrative choice. It is a question above all of addressing the viewer, who is not a filmmaker and who does not necessarily have the culture required to create sensations in their own minds. These sensations must be completely controlled by the cinematographer, but identifiable by the viewer without effort. Here is where the subtlety lies; these recurrences serve a purpose. It is often the case that the focus puller discusses them with the film director to make him aware of the way they can interfere with the beginning of a sequence or the matches within them. A director’s primary concern is to have the speaking actor in focus, but when there is a very shallow depth of field they must be informed, because decisive choices are required.[6]
This comment is reminiscent of that famous remark “focus on the money,” which basically meant that when the images of two actors cannot both be sharp at the same time, it was enough to keep in focus the better paid of the two, meaning the one who drew the most spectators to the movie theatre. Another solution to this difficulty consists in switching between one and the other. For Jean-Yves Le Poulain, “focus is not a static choice. Through the use of rack focusing or changes to the focus while shooting, it becomes a dynamic vector within a single shot. Rack focusing has a considerable role, because one can play on contrasts, meaning to focus on an actor who is not speaking but who is decisive when we pay attention to them.”[7]
While aesthetic and semantic choices are predominant, the purely technical dimension sometimes creates constraints, particularly in anamorphic formats.[8]
The profession was broadly shaken up with the arrival of the digital and the dematerialization of the image. The gradual shift from HD to 2K, then 4K, and now 6K or even 8K, requires much more precise focusing. It makes the job of the focus puller even more delicate, even though the image is constantly visible on a monitor. Jean-Yves Le Poulain adds:
With photochemical film, the image is latent, meaning that it will only be visible after it is developed. Cinematographers discovered the image, generally the day after the shoot, when the rushes were screened. With digital, having a monitor at your side at all times can be deceiving. In principle, these images are supposed to reassure you, but they are often deceptive, because there is an enormous difference between seeing something on an HD screen and seeing it in a cinema on a screen twenty metres tall. These images are not seen in the same way, and it affects the role of the focus puller. With photochemical filming you have to imagine the image, picture it on the big screen, construct it mentally. This work can only be done after having acquired considerable experience. Young cinematographers today make decisions directly from the on-set monitor and do not have the necessary distance, because there are differences between what you see live and the results, generally screened a few months later, mostly at Cannes, creating surprises which unfortunately are irreversible.[9]
This comment touches on the very basis of our concerns here, that of offering tools for mediating between various creative partners with respect to depth of field, and more precisely to blurry/sharp depth of field.
