Shallow Focus Research

I looked into this website to do some research into shallow focus

http://www.izzyvideo.com/depth-of-field/

We aim to use shallow focus in our film to help us use figures in the background. Shallow focus is when the background of the shot is out of focus, making it blurry. These types of shots are often used in horror films to create jump scares, and so that strange figures can walk in the background.

How to do this shot:
1. Move far away from the subject.
2. Zoom in a lot.
3. Open the aperture (or F-stop [lowest number] or iris) of the camera all the way. If the camera has a mode called portrait, choose that.

Some tips that might help with the focus problem:

• Maybe don’t open the aperture ALL the way up. If you’re shooting video of a person’s face, and one of their eyes is in focus while their other eye is a little out of focus, well it might be time to close the aperture a little. As you close it down, you get a deeper depth of field which means that more area is in focus.
• You’ll need a tripod for shallow depth-of-field work. Shaky-cam can look good with a wide angle lens, but with a long lens and shallow focus, shake doesn’t look very good. 
• You might need someone else to handle the focus. When shooting, it can be a difficult job just to keep the subjects in focus within the image.