An alert goes out to all film schools, art colleges and institutions where videography is taught. An outbreak of EOSitis has been declared in student final works and staff need to be aware of the symptoms and ready to provide care and treatment for the sufferers.
Symptoms
EOSitis is a condition where focus in student video work becomes pathologically constricted. Both foreground and background of every shot are unfocussed, leaving a small island of clarity that barely includes the subject. This shallow focus can over time become so severe that an actor’s eyes may be in focus while their nose is blurred. Every scene in a production looks like it is ’tilt shifted’.
The EOSitis sufferer will constantly adjust focus throughout an otherwise static framed conversation, as if draping gauze over each actor in time with the dialogue. Although obvious and annoying to the audience, the student will somehow believe that they are creating something called a ‘film look’.
Pathology is defined by the completely meaningless use of focus pulling no matter what the storytelling purpose of the shot.
Differential Diagnosis.
Diagnosis is quite simple. The student need only be asked if they have recently bought or borrowed a Canon EOS camera. Usually the patient will readily provide the model number and an elaborate and tedious discussion of interchangeable lenses.
If the student is not available it may be deduced from the footage. Usually the entire image is not out of focus (although related disorders of competence can lead to this result). When the camera pans, you should see the image lean vertiginously in the direction opposite to the motion. There is little or no reason for any of it and you feel irritated watching it.
Treatment.
Fortunately the disorder can go into spontaneous remission. A student needs to frame a shot such that events in the background are visible and realises that this actually looks better … you can assist this by showing them Citizen Kane. Many other sufferers are able to find accommodation with the disease, actually using focus framing to assist rather than smother their narrative.
It is not advisable to try wean the student onto grading as a substitute. True, grading can take over the pursuit of ‘film look’, but this too can become pathological, around the point where every scene starts to look high contrast and green no matter what.