How did Welles achieve deep focus...

[tim1]

and why aren't other directors using this technique? (is b+w better in this respect?)
Also, what other camera techniques would you say were responsible for the unique 'welles look'?

[blunted by community]

to achieve deep focus you stop down the lens (shut the aperature to it's smallest exposure), and crank up the lights.

welles and ford were i think 2 of the first directors that were able to get extreme deep focus because of lenses greg toland had designed. ford used it not very prodigously to have a sailor wash into the lens from the extreme foreground. ford used it as an effect. welles of course invented a cinematic language, and deep focus was just a tool to be able to illustrate the language, welles never used it as an effect. like the scene where kane hands over power to thatcher. bernstein is in the extreme foreground, and stays in focus while kane travels (and stays in focus) to the extreme back ground and back to the midground.

that scene is multi-layered in meaning and has much more going for it than deep focus.

= the contract is put down to reveal thatcher, meaning thatcher is now in power. we know this because earlier in the film when we first see kane, we see him after thatcher puts a newspaper down to reveal a young, rebelious kane. at that time kane was in power. so now the reversal is nice contrast.

= kane walks to the end of the room and is not tall enough to look out of his own window any more, that is how much his empire has grown since the inquirer days when he had a regular office with a ceeling right above his head, and a window at normal height (we see this later in xanadu when he's actually standing inside his fireplace, telling susan this is their home).

= also in this scene thatcher tells kane he never made a single investment, he just used money to buy things. this is the brush stroke that tells us we like kane. it's an important brush stroke because part of the genius of kane is that we discover him. first he's good, then he's bad, then he is pathetic. welles' movies never had cardboard characters.

if i watched the scene bet you i could find 3 more layers. the point i'm trying to make is that deep focus is really nothing more than an effect, and means nothing unless it's used to say something, other than having a person sliding into the lens in focus the entire time.

---

i would say what characterises welles' style most for me is the unorthodox use of the wide angle lens, and the practice of having characters enter and exit frames at the point of maximum distortion. i love that.

of course, i could be completely wrong about everything.

[Glenn Anders]

Not wrong, blunted. RIGHT!! Masterfully so.

As blunted suggests, it is Toland who links John Ford (in THE LONG VOYAGE HOME, 1940 -- from Eugene O'Neil one act plays) to Welles (CITIZEN KANE, 1941). As expressed in these pages, Toland had experimented with deep focus since he worked with the German master, Karl Freund, on MAD LOVE (1935).

It was part of Welles' genius to gather this technique, and others, adding suggestions of his own, and apply them with such taste.

Directors since have incorporated deep focus into their bag of magic, although as Welles pointed out, it is harder to achieve in color film than in black and white. As in impressionistic painting, bright colors, where possible, are put in the foreground, dark shades to the back, to compensate.

A technique which Welles adopted, which may have been more original, was to place characters in the frame in relation to their emotional distance. Hence, in its most schematic form, the famous breakfast table marriage history of Kane and his first wife, Emily Norton Kane, using "swish pans" to show the growing gulf between them, as the years passed. Other examples abound.

He complemented the above techniques by raising and lowering sound volume, having diminished characters speak in lower, distanced tones than those in ascendancy or asserting themselves, etc., techniques he learned in Radio.

Glenn

[blunted by community]

toland experimented with coating on lenses that would allow them to shoot directly into light without over exposing the film. toland also made it possible for ford to shoot by candle light in GRAPES OF WRATH. toland did a lot, and there isn't much around these days that tells us about him, and gives him credit for all he did.

also, by sayin ford didn't make prodigous use of deep focus in LONG VOYAGE HOME, i don't mean to marginalize the film. it's a visually beautiful film that it should be watched half a dozen times by any one wanting to study the use of light in cinema.

[blunted by community]

tim1:
b&w is very flexible, you can push and tug in developing for different effects. you can push and tug during exposure also.

color film is very expensive, it's not as flexible. there is NO pull and tug during exposure. you have to light for the desired effect, where in B&w you can reduce lights for effect.

we've all seen color movies that have that green tint. that green tint is ugly. green is what you get when you under exposed color film. when you under expose b&w you get a dark scene, which is very acceptable.

with color it's an intricate balancing act with the lights. before shooting there is a lot of light metering to make sure your actors don't walk into hot spots or dark spots. that is what stand ins do, they do the tedius work of walking through the scene over and over again while techs balance and meter the lights, and the camera crew figures out what they are going to do. after all that is done then the actor comes out of an air coditioned trailer and act the scene.

if it's a welles film, there are no stand ins, no air coditioned trailers, and no tedious hours of running over scenes to balance lights, welles did all this rather fast. even with b&w there is light balancing, just not as much as with color.

also with color lighting the bulb has to be balanced for color, they have a blue tint. they are larger, more expensive, and require a lot of power, making color very expensive for location shooting. you need a truck with a lot of power generators. then while you are filming, the hum the generators always creep into the film exactly where it will be hardest to remove.

[TheMcGuffin]

Tolland lived far too short of a life...its sad to think how many other classics he could have shot had he been around longer. Does anyone know of any biographys or other books dedicated to Tollands life and/or work?

[Glenn Anders]

McGuffin, what you say is too true. I should think that a book might well appear this year. He would have been 100 years-old on May 29th, and I notice that the University of Illinois is collecting papers and memorbilia for an exhibition to take place in September of this year.

Glenn

[blunted by community]

mcguffin, the other problem toland had was that i suppose he had to pay his bills and took refuge where he got the most money, and work. for such a prodigous guy he only worked on 4 or 5 good films. after kane the only noteworthy film he worked on was the disney film, SONG OF THE SOUTH. before KANE he worked on LONG VOYAGE HOME, GRAPES OF WRATH, DEAD END. the rest of the films he worked on could have been made by any cameraman.

yeap, glenn, toland will be 100 this year. all my minority friends from south of the border have a huge bean and taco shell bash planned in his honor. all the participants have to dress like a character from a toland film. toland is very big in mexico.

[PT Caffey]

Following up on your mention of the University of Illinois symposium on Gregg Toland (apparently, it's Eastern Illinois University btw)...

September 25, 2004 is Gregg Toland Day!

In Charleston, Illinois--as part of the festivities--expect to see Wuthering Heights and Citizen Kane screened at the historic Will Rogers Theatre.

http://www.greggtolandday.com/index.html



http://www.greggtolandday.com/index.html

[blunted by community]

it's not a very dedicated toland day celebration. 2 toland films, and then---

Juried Fine Art and Craft Show
Children's Arts Activities
Live Music
Walking Tours of the Downtown and Surrounding Areas

i fail to see the connection between toland and all this crapolla! unless during the walking tours they discuss the lens coatings toland developed.

that is a suspicious picture of toland they have on their page. looks like a game show host from the 60s. toland died in 1947. that picture looks 1960s.

[Glenn Anders]

I might add that Toland, like many an artist, was not satisfied with being the most inventive cinematographer of the 1930s and '40s; he also wanted to be a director -- perhaps because of his late association with Ford and Welles. Before and after, he was always under the thumb of dictatorial super-producers like Goldwyn and Selznick. His failure to get a feature movie project may have hastened his death.

Blunted, we are talking about modern Americans, Americans who in their heavy majority probably have not noticed that we are lapsing into totalitarianism; they're occupied with paying off the mortgage and picking up a third job; we are talking about Downstate, Eastern Illinois. They may have only vague ideas of who Toland, and Welles were. Historic walks, arts and crafts, hot dogs and lemonade necessary to bring out a crowd.

Toland is just an excuse, and a good one. He was born in Charleston, Illinois. More power to 'em.

Glenn

T

[blunted by community]

toland got his shot at directing. he directed for the armed forces, Dec 7th, but it was such a bitter indictment of the japanese, alledging that every japanese person was a spy, that ford had to be brought in to de-anger toland's angry film.

every now and then in a war documentary you see a bitching scene, so artistic, so bold it doesn't fit the surrounding footage. it's a snippet from toland's Dec 7th.

if i'm not mistaken and i usually am, a few years back toland's cut of dec 7th before ford 'fixed it' was found. right now the ford/toland effort is in the pearl harbor commemorative double dvd set, along with 2 huston war films and a bunch of other great war footage. don't confuse it with the commemorative release of the shitty pearl harbor movie that was made a few years back.

glenn, stop agreeing with me so much, it makes it hard to argue with you.

[Glenn Anders]

Dear Blunted: You are right again about the Toland war documentary, but he thought that effort, harsh or not, showed he could direct as well as photograph. The key words in my remarks on the subject are "feature movie." He seems to have been very depressed at not getting a shot at one.

True, Blunted, we are becoming "The Sunshine Twins" here.

But hey, Blunted -- hey, guys and gals -- in our contentious ruminations, in our fatuous celebrations of our various triumphs, such as being born, we are forgetting another reason for the sunshine in our lives this day.

On this day, eighty-nine years ago, May 6, 1915, our hero, George Orson Welles, a ten-pound baby, was born!

Where's the Champagne, Blunted?

Love.

Glenn

[blunted by community]

yes, toland's directorial effort was quite unique.

[Christopher]

Hello, Glenn,

Would you mind sharing with us how you know that George Orson Welles was a ten-pound baby at birth? It's the first I've heard of it. Thanks.

Christopher