Dept. of Oddities

There's a new movie called "Bokeh." Listed under "Trivia" at IMDB, it says, "The title is a photography term for the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image." Which is at least a succinct and correct definition of bokeh!

Mike
(Thanks to Robert Roaldi)

P.S. The bokeh movies for me are still the old Kubrick film Barry Lyndon, parts of which were shot by candlelight, no small trick in the film era, and Pixar's Ratatouille, for which friend-o'-TOP and protean street photographer (and ace Pixar animator) Juan Buhler helped introduce many animated lens effects into the visuals, including bokeh.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Barry: "Having watched the movie Bokeh I can say there is some marvelous cinematography in the movie. It was shot entirely on location in Iceland. Sadly the story is lacking. A long journey with little reward."

Gavin Mclelland: "Over here in the UK there is also a Bokeh bike. Not sure how that relates to out-of-focus areas in a photograph."

Comments

[mike plews]

Back in 2013 you could rent one of the special lenses Kubrick used to shoot Barry Lyndon. Can't find a later entry so this may no longer be possible.
https://petapixel.com/2013/08/05/zeiss-f0-7-you-can-now-rent-two-of-the-largest-aperture-lenses-ever-made/
This is sort of OT but this weekend Mrs Plews and I went to see My Cousin Rachel. Not a bad movie but the cinematography kind of put me off. It was obviously shot digitally and it looked like an oversharpened, overly contrasty TV show more than a movie.
When digital cinematography first came along there was a push to make it look as much like film as possible. This is where the whole 24p business came from. Now there seems to be a move away from this and we are seeing movies that look like a cross between a TV show and a video game.
In fairness not every film looks this way but it appears to be a trend.
Personally I like the look of film and apparently I am not alone. The excellent Bridge of Spies was shot on film and it has a terrific look. Feeling like an old codger here but gotta call them like I see them.

[Stanleyk]

Barry Lyndon is perhaps Kubrick's most under appreciated film. If you are interested in an some information on his use of the Zeiss 0.7 lens there is a fascinating article here:

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/sk/ac/len/page1.htm

This is also good advice:

Yet Kubrick’s obsessive control over the final product wasn’t the whole story, according to both Vitali and Savage. “He’s got this huge reputation for being a control freak, but when he found the right actor for the role he would just let them go and see what they brought to it,” said Vitali. Savage agreed: “He was always trying things out and experimenting. He would improvise, and then if something interesting came out of it he would push it further.” Contrary to his tyrannical, precise image, Vitali claims Kubrick never used storyboards or planned his shots ahead of time. “He would take lenses and a viewfinder and get on the set with the actors, and maybe a grip with some tape. You’d have to go through the scene 10, 15, 20, 30 times while he looked at every possibility with every lens and figured out his first shot. Then everything grew out of that first shot, including you.”

From (with really good video on creating the camera/lens combination for Barry Lyndon):

http://filmmakermagazine.com/93683-how-stanley-kubrick-shot-barry-lyndon-using-natural-light/#.WUAT0Mdsb0c

[hugh crawford]

You really ought to see the movie "HER".
You really leave the theater humming the lenses. Good movie too.

[Ken]

My wife and I just watched that a few days ago - a little over a month after our first time visiting Iceland. Seeing some of the locations we visited was fun, and the scenery is filmed beautifully. But gawd, the movie has no plot, no real story, no arc to speak of. Two millennials get stuck by themselves in some post-apocalyptic version of Iceland and for the most part carry on living as if their parents went out of town for the weekend and left them the house and the car. I exaggerate but not by much - we probably spent more time afterwards trying to make sense of the movie than we did watching it to begin with. But that scenery...

[Paul]

Looking at that Bokeh Bike's tires I would say that it would perform well doing cross country cycling where depth of field is important but would be less useful on the road where the depth of field is tack sharp.