Alright, so you’re trying to film a scene that has some depth to it, like a fairly distant background with some stuff in the foreground. However, you really don’t want that background to be shown in the scene as it’s too busy and doesn’t help portray your message. So you try just to focus your digital camcorder on the foreground hoping the background will be blurred out. But, to your horror, you find everything is still in focus even if you zoom in on just the foreground.
This effect is really all to common in lower end digital camcorders (actually even low end prosumer models have issues with this). The problem is caused by the physical size, not pixels, of the CCD chip inside the camcorder. The larger the CCD, the greater your ability to shorten the depth of field which will blur out anything not in focus. This is why in movies you see this great shallow depth of field because either they’re using really expensive, and I mean expensive, digital camcorders or 35mm movie cameras. The 35mm movie cameras obviously use 35mm film which has a much larger surface area that the picture is captured on compared to cheaper digital camcorders’ CCD.
However, there is a fix for this, and it doesn’t even involve ripping apart your $2000 camcorder to replace the CCD. You can build an adapter that allows you to take lenses from 35mm SLR still cameras and attach it to your camcorder. There’s a couple of different styles documented around the internet, but they all are based on this basic principle. You take the 35mm lens, set it the proper distance from a ground glass, and then focus your camcorder onto the picture displayed on the ground glass.
The style I’ll be building is documented at Daniel’s 35mm Adapter site. I’m going for the static version, as my Canon GL2 camcorder isn’t HD. So far, I got an old Canon FD lens, an achromatic lens to allow my camcorder to focus on the ground glass, a Nikon ground glass, and some parts from Daniel’s site to hold it all together. Keep an eye out for further updates on this project as I get the rest of the parts.
Microsoft decided to hire Jerry Seinfeld to do a batch of television commercials for Windows Vista. Here’s the first of the series:
The commercial shows Jerry Seinfeld in a shopping mall going past a “Shoe Circus” and spotting Bill Gates in the store. After meeting with him in the store, they talk about the shoe Gates is trying on and about wearing clothes in the shower. Once done with that, Gates buys the shoes and heads out the store with Seinfeld. Now finally in the parking lot, Seinfeld asks Gates if Microsoft is going to come out with a computer that was like ‘cake.’ Then at the end, the words “The Future” are displayed followed by “Delicious” before the Windows Vista logo.
Now here comes my critique as both a filmmaker and a television commercial producer (and probably quite biased as I’m not a MS fan and a co-owner of an independent shoe store). The commercial has some major issues concerning its message. Seinfeld, being who he is, was used to draw the audience to the plot as he’s well known. Once the audience takes notice, Gates is shown. Gates is synonymous with Microsoft so the audience is expecting a message about something to do with MS. Unfortunately, there’s a long and cumbersome story line to go through before a single thing about computers is even mentioned. This story line about the shoe store and the shoes is drawn on too long making the audience think that somehow their previous assumption was wrong and that this commercial was actually about the shoes. Then as the plot finally gets to talking about computers, nothing is mentioned about any actual product, just Seinfeld’s wish to have computers that are edible. And once his questioned is finally answered, we get to the final few scenes with the Windows Vista logo being shown for only a few seconds. By that point, any person watching this commercial is probably confused as to what the commercial was about.
What needed to be done was to edit the commercial down to at most a one minute slot, removing much of the babel at the shoe store. Also, mentioning a real product instead of a conceptual one may help get a stronger message across. And maybe having a voice over at the end with the words and logo will help garner attention from the part of the audience that may not be visually focused on the TV at the time of airing.