Depth of Field

The most interesting part of this article to me is the quote about how "depth of field is not a camera technique like filters or lighting style, but a seminal contribution to mise en scene". When you think of depth of field, or at least when I do, I always thought of it as just an aesthetic technique--how far or close the scene was and how much you could see behind a character just added to the visual effect. This, however, is not the only case. Depth of field also serves as a prop in and of itself, like in the Citizen Kane clip we watched in class where Kane is in the background playing in the snow. He is so clear to the viewer, that he becomes a kind of prop of his own--an additional piece of the scene. In this case, depth of field is not just an aesthetic technique, but an important part of every scene. While the rest of this article was a little hard for me to understand (at first, I thought they were talking about overlaying footage for early special effects, but then it became clear that this was not the case). I think the depth of field part is very important, however, and can be a good tool for our upcoming journals.