Through the careful choice of focal length and field of view, a DP can dramatically affect how the audience sees a character and their relationship to the world around them.
“The choice of focal lengths will affect how we see the world as an audience is modulated,” says Alex Grigoras. “If our normal human vision gives us some kind of reference point, then we can go towards putting the audience in a more familiar place, or a more special or unfamiliar or new place of seeing a world.”
Grigoras is the DP of Atom and Void, a unique sci-fi short starring live spiders as its main characters. “This was the dilemma: how do we make something that’s quite repulsive appear familiar to the audience?”
Shooting initially on a full-frame camera, Grigoras and director Gonçalo Almeida purchased a 24mm Laowa probe lens. “What we discovered was that the images were quite impressive, because the field of view was quite wide,” says the DP. “It was pushing us to reduce the subject-to-camera distance, to get really close with the camera to the spiders, which created this impression that we were watching aeroplanes in a hanger.”
Over a long period of testing and filming, the filmmakers progressively reduced the field of view without changing the lens, by moving to smaller sensors. They ultimately landed on micro-4/3, using a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K, where the 24mm was equivalent to about 50mm in full frame. Here they found the spiders appeared less frightening and more relatable.
Although Grigoras used a Fotodiox 0.7x focal reducer to get occasional wider shots, the field of view in the finished film is mostly constant. “We felt like having a limited variation of perspective through the combination of focal length and camera/subject proximity would contribute to – let’s call it – familiarity of the audience, and also the feeling that we were travelling together with the spider.”
Visual shifts
Trevor Forrest made canny use of focal length when he shot Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Martin Luther King in Genius: MLK/X. “Having recently completed his role in Chevalier, shot by Jess Hall ASC BSC, Harrison arrived significantly slimmer than the historical Martin Luther King Jr.,” Forrest reports. “Although he worked diligently to gain weight for the role, we employed wider focal lengths to enhance his physical presence on screen (24-35mm) for the first two episodes, and then tailored our approach to longer lenses [40-50mm] with the shift of Kelvin’s weight and the period… This subtle evolution of focal lengths paralleled his character’s journey from emerging leader to iconic historical figure.”
For King’s counterpart Malcolm X (Aaron Pierre), Forrest’s lensing again got progressively longer, but started in the 35-75mm range and ended up at 75-100mm. “The pivotal prison sequence marked a significant visual transition,” explains the DP, who chose Panavision Primo sphericals for the series. “When Pierre donned Malcolm’s signature glasses post-imprisonment, we shifted exclusively to longer focal lengths, enhancing the sharpness and intellectual intensity that defined the historical figure.”
Reflecting on his approach, Forrest adds: “Most of the time there is a need for continuity and matching the feeling of the lens, but the decision to shift is a decision that moves the audience and punctuates the storytelling… The abrupt transition from Harrison’s wide-lens framing to Pierre’s telephoto portraits created a visually dynamic editorial rhythm.”
Turning point
Rudar, or The Miner, is a feature about a Slovenian miner who discovers a mass grave. DP Matthias Pilz and his director, Hanne Slak, decided that the moment of this discovery was a crucial turning point. “We chose to restrict ourselves with the lenses in the sense that we said: up to a certain point in the story, we use wider lenses, wider than the 50,” Pilz relates. “Then we changed to longer than the 50 after the dramatic turning point.”
The longer lenses in the second half of Rudar reflect the miner’s desperation as he tries to decide on the right thing to do. “We changed onto the longer lenses to compress the space around him, to single him out in the world, to get more into his head and into his perception of the world… He’s sleepless. He’s haunted by dreams.” The long lenses were applied to wider shots as well as close-ups. “When we find him in spaces, the focal plane is on him, and it’s not on the whole space. It narrows the rooms down. It doesn’t show as much breathing space as if you use a wider lens.”
A dramatic turning point also guided Helena Gonzalez’s lens choices when she shot Sense Filtres (No Filters), a Spanish limited series. The three episodes follow Alícia, a young aspiring rapper who gets into a toxic relationship with an established musician. “At first, he seems like someone who can help her career, offering her opportunities and guidance, but as their relationship deepens, she realises he is not who she thought he was,” the DP explains. “A pivotal moment in episode two drastically alters the tone, pushing her into a darker, more isolating emotional space.”
Working primarily with Cooke Panchro S2 glass, Gonzalez shot her protagonist with varying focal lengths “to shape how she perceives people, spaces, and environments… In the first half, we framed Alícia with wider and mid-range shots, maintaining some distance (using the 25mm and 32mm), as everything in the story remains relatively positive. As her world becomes more overwhelming in the second half, we introduced extreme wides (12mm and 18mm) to isolate her within negative space, making her surroundings feel distorted and oppressive.”
A second tier of shots in Sense Filtres are Alícia’s “private” close-ups – moments that only the audience witnesses. “After the turning point, when she is in shock, unable to react to what she has experienced, we used profile close-ups on tighter lenses (50mm, 75mm, and occasionally 100mm) to emphasise her detachment,” says Gonzalez. “As she begins to acknowledge her emotions and process what has happened, we started using the 18mm and 25mm for close-ups, forcing the camera physically closer to her. The subtle distortion of her face made her internal struggle feel even more tangible, visually reinforcing her emotional journey.”
Distortion was something that Lorene Desportes was cautious about when she employed wide lenses on a Remington shaver commercial. The ad intercuts a bathroom mirror’s POV with extremely close coverage of the shaver travelling over the actors’ faces. “The main challenge was to find a lens that gave us the right amount of distortion to achieve the eccentric look whilst maintaining a certain amount of appeal,” Desportes explains. “We tested about five or six different lenses ranging from fisheye to 35mm before settling on the 12mm Signature Prime.” A magic arm between the razor and one of the camera’s moose bars kept the frame locked to the product’s movement.
“Commercial cinematography can be quite codified,” Desportes reflects. “We still see some classic, high-fashion and beauty ads being shot on the more flattering end of the spectrum to inspire confidence in an established, long-standing and sophisticated brand. Meanwhile, food and other products targeting the younger generation tend to show faces on a wider lens… The good news is, we need rules to break them, so once each of us plays their part in adding to those rules, we can all start to play with them and eventually break them when necessary.”
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Words: Neil Oseman
