If you've ever been watching a film, say Carrie or Reservoir Dogs, and you've seen a shot that had incredibly deep focus, then maybe you were looking at a shot that used a split focus (or split field) diopter.
These lens attachments produce a signature look that puts objects near and far into focus, a look that made Gregg Toland a legend, and later swept over the filmmaking world in the 70s. Vashi Nedomansky of Vashi Visuals takes a look at the use of split focus diopters throughout cinema, and picks out all 15 shots from Brian De Palma's 1981 film Blow Outthat use one.
Today, we're going to go over split diopter shots in cinema.
A split diopter shot is a cinematic technique that achieves a unique visual effect by using a special lens filter. This filter, the split diopter, is a half-circle of glass that attaches to the camera lens. It essentially splits the focus of the lens, allowing for two distinct focal planes within a single shot.
How it Works:
The split diopter divides the lens into two sections: one with the filter and one without.
The section with the filter becomes nearsighted, focusing on objects in the foreground.
The section without the filter remains farsighted, focusing on objects in the background.
This creates a shot where both foreground and background elements are in sharp focus, while the space between them remains out of focus.
Visual Effect:
The split diopter shot creates a striking visual contrast, with two distinct areas of focus separated by a blurry line. This effect can be used for various purposes:
Emphasizing duality or conflict: The split focus can represent two opposing forces or ideas.
Highlighting relationships: It can visually connect two characters or objects despite their physical distance.
Creating a sense of depth: The sharp focus on both foreground and background enhances the perception of depth within the frame.
Stylistic choice: It can simply be a visually interesting technique to add flair to a scene.
Who's Using These shots?
Maybe you've used split focus diopters in your own work, so you're aware of the great shots they produce. But, for those who aren't familiar with them or have never considered using them in your films, many, many movies, especially in the 70s and 80s, used split diopters to get that deep focus look. Probably the most famous use of diopters is in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, but All the President's Men, The Thing, and many of De Palma's films also utilize the effect.
Since split focus diopters are half convex glass, when attached to your camera's lens, it makes one side nearsighted, and the other farsighted. What this allows you to do is focus on multiple planes -- you could have objects in the foreground and background completely in focus. This also means that the staging of your scene must be copacetic.
The way that many cinematographers use this is to add a little mystery or uncertainty to their shot. Since our eye doesn't see things in this way naturally, it can be a jarring and disorienting experience when it does. In fact, some shots look almost like two separate images juxtaposed together, which immediately adds a layer of fantasy.
'The Untouchables'
'Reservoir Dogs'
In the shot from Reservoir Dogs above, you can see that the split diopter creates a clear line down the frame, which can be masked using several techniques, like shooting the split against vertical lines or darkness.
While split diopters were more commonly used in the past due to limitations in lens technology, they have become less frequent with the advent of digital cameras and advanced focusing techniques. However, they remain a valuable tool for filmmakers seeking specific visual effects and stylistic choices.
What is your experience with split diopters? What are your favorite shots from films that utilize them? Let us know below in the comments.
Sometimes, when you have a clear and distinct vision for something, you're driven to see the whole thing through on every level. In filmmaking, that can mean taking on various roles, from writing, directing, or even starring. But for Vivian Kerr, it meant all of the above.
Vivian Kerr is the writer/director and star of the independent feature Scrap, which follows single mom Beth as she moves into her car and struggles to hide her homelessness from her estranged brother Ben.
The film has screened at several independent film festivals across the country, including the Coronado Island Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Narrative Feature.
It was a blast to sit down with Vivian Kerr and hear about how she handles every facet of production.
Let's dive into the interview.
Vivian Kerr Interview
Editor's note: the following interview is edited for length and clarity.
No Film School: Hi, Vivian. Your independent feature Scrap arrives on VOD on Friday December 13th. What would you like readers to know about the film and your work as an actress-writer-director on the project?
Vivian Kerr: It’s been such a long journey to bring Scrap to this point. I first got the idea in late 2016, so it’s essentially been 8 years since I wrote the very first scene, and it took even longer for me to believe in myself as a director. I started as an actor, then began writing for myself and my actor friends, and we would shoot these low-budget shorts for no money in my Koreatown apartment in my 20s that I would act in. I started to write and produce in between TV jobs, and after awhile, of that indie filmmaking experience I felt so strongly that I wanted to level up and make a feature, but I had no idea how to make it happen.
By the time I had the feature script for Scrap polished in 2019, I was meeting with various directors, but every time I would have coffee with yet another director, they would show up with a pile of notes about what I needed to change about the script, why it needed to be grittier, or the humor needed to be toned down. In hindsight, I’m glad that I never found the perfect director, because it got to a point where I was disagreeing with everyone and I thought, wait, I know exactly how this film should look and feel and sound…why am I not directing it myself?
I also really have to thank my friend, producer Sapna Gandhi. She was the one who told me I could and should direct it. The day I decided I was “all-in” on directing the feature was the day that things started to happen. And then by the time I shot Scrap in 2021, I was completely obsessed with directing. I just completely fell in love with it. I felt like I was finally doing something that utilized all my skill sets, and I knew I wanted to make a second feature as quickly as possible.
NFS: The film experienced a great deal of success on the festival circuit, winning awards at such notable festivals as the SoHo International Film Festival and the Coronado Island Film Festival. What was it like to share Scrap with so many different audiences nationwide?
Kerr: I had no idea when Scrap premiered in Deauville in 2022 that we’d go on to do another 42 festivals! It quickly began to pick up momentum. I spent 18 months crisscrossing the US. I think I visited 17 different states. I’d never been to North Dakota, Arkansas, Iowa, Connecticut, or Michigan before, so it was fascinating that no matter where I took the film that audiences had very similar reactions.
A lot of people connected to Beth’s struggle to keep up appearances despite her dire financial situation. I heard so many stories from audience members who said they had slept in their car and showered at their gym, just like Beth. And a lot of people also connected to the fractured sibling relationship between Anthony Rapp and myself.
My background is in theatre and I always loved the great American playwrights — Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, and Thornton Wilder — there's something about going to all these places and seeing how people related to the intimacy of the family drama that reminded me why those plays are successful. Scrap is really about how these characters strive for their version of the American dream, and how that impacts their relationships and sense of self-worth. That feels universal.
Vivian Kerr Dana Patrick
NFS: Scrap follows your character Beth, a single mother who struggles to hide her homelessness from her estranged brother Ben. What drew you to this subject matter?
Kerr: I’ve lived in LA for almost twenty years, and there were suddenly a lot more people outside of my apartment building sleeping in their cars, so the idea of writing something about that was lurking in my brain, and then I had always loved sibling dramas such as You Can Count on Me and The Savages. Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman had a big impact on me as a young performer, and I wanted to write something tender and funny about dysfunctional siblings, so it was marrying those two ideas. It became a real-life family affair as my sister Marion Kerr ended up helping to produce Scrap and cameos in the film as our characters’ mother in the flashback scenes!
NFS: You followed up the heartfelt drama of Scrap with Séance, a gothic horror film set in 1892 California. Are there any films or pieces of literature that inspired you to make a film like Séance?
Kerr: Of course, I was inspired by traditional Gothic novels — Wuthering Heights and The Turn of the Screw — but more so by the early 1960s films The Innocents and Robert Wise’s The Haunting. The sequence with Deborah Kerr in the white nightgown with the candelabra in The Innocents was something I thought a lot about. Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman was another one. I love how these films use lighting, deep focus, and slow dolly movements to build the atmosphere, but you never see any actual “ghosts.”
They’re intensely psychological and are essentially dramas exploring the breakdown of relationships. This genre felt like the chance to explore profound themes such as love, grief, and regret while also challenging myself as a director in my visual storytelling. I think sometimes filmmakers worry about veering into melodrama, but I always loved it when more recent films such as The Others, Firelight, or Dead Again would just embrace the heightened emotion of these genre pieces, so that inspired my writing, too.
Once I started working with our incredible cinematographer Johanna Coelho, she talked about Portrait of a Lady on Fire and bringing a softness to the period visuals, which I loved, and we actually shot it 1.85 ratio as well, which was perfect for our more narrow Victorian interiors.
'Seance'Rue Dangeau
NFS: What was the most difficult part of the creative process on Séance?
Kerr: Unfortunately, my original DP for Séance quit two weeks before our original start date to shoot a sketch comedy series, so the hardest part was honestly recovering from that. It wasn’t an option in my mind to plug in a new DP last minute, so I was suddenly looking at a six to eight week push and I had no idea if we could even retain our locations.
But it turned out to be a huge blessing because I was lucky to find Johanna Coelho and in re-prepping the film from scratch with her, it completely changed me as a director. I became so much more specific and hands-on with the cinematography decisions, my confidence with the technical side grew, and the film became much more visually developed.
Originally Séance wasn’t going to shoot on vintage lenses, but JoJo suggested Super Baltars and we went down to Keslow and did tests with our candles and gas lamps, playing around with different filters and seeing how far we could push the low-light levels and what we could achieve in-camera. From that point on, the film opened up for me creatively in a brand new way.
And I truly have to thank Johanna for her patience and generosity, because not a lot of cinematographers would want to explain technical elements of the Sony Venice to their director, but she is so collaborative. She helped me step up my game, and I’m excited to keep challenging myself and to work with cinematographers who want to push things like that. I never thought I’d be the kind of person watching lens tests on Vimeo for fun, but here we are!
NFS: What did you learn about yourself and your work as a multi-hyphenate across your first two feature films?
Kerr: So much! Scrap and Séance were the first two features I produced with my production company Rue Dangeau, so I got to learn everything. It was a crash course. I’ve been with both films since before day one, and I’m self-distributing Scrap with Rue Dangeau, so I learned a huge amount about film sales and distribution in addition to physical production and festival strategy. But if I had to boil it down, I learned how resilient and resourceful I am.
When you step into the role of a feature director it’s a huge responsibility, and the best but also the toughest thing about it is that it will show you exactly what you’re made of. Especially on an indie, you’ll have to be relentless to get the film done with the right level of quality control. And you have to be flexible and be able to pivot when things outside of your control threaten to derail the film. I wasn’t sure I could walk that tightrope but it was so empowering to find out that not only can I walk it, but also I’m good at it. I remember joking with a friend that after Séance I felt ready to work for Marvel.
I also learned that as a multi-hyphenate, I need to ask for help. Especially if you are the lead producer and the director, it’s a massive amount of work. So I have to thank some of the people who really helped me — producers Marion Kerr, Suresh Cedrick Pereira, Makenna Tuttle, Savannah Lindblad, my editor Toby Yates, and our DI team at LightIron. If not for them, neither Scrap nor Séance would have made it across the finish line.
I’ve always admired multi-hyphenates such as John Cassavetes, Orson Welles, and Kenneth Branagh, but I’ve had to remind myself sometimes, “Okay, Vivian, you know Orson Welles did not make The Magnificent Ambersons all by himself.” I’ve learned the importance of seeking out experienced collaborators so I can loosen the reins a bit more.
'Seance'Rue Dangeau
NFS: How does your approach to directing a scene change when you are also performing in it?
Kerr: I was very fortunate to work with editor Toby Yates on both films. He, unfortunately, passed away last year, but even from our earliest conversations during pre-production on Scrap, I knew that he and I were on the same page in terms of acting taste, so I had faith on set that if I could generate enough raw material, he and I would put something cohesive together in the edit.
I’ve worked mostly in television and independent film as an actor, and you’re lucky to get a third take in those mediums, so I’ve developed a way of prepping with my acting coach Saxon Trainor so I can be very self-sufficient. I don’t watch playback and I try not to be too precious about my own performance. I also worked on both films with a terrific script supervisor, Carissa McQueen, and she is a godsend in reminding me to match my energy or emotion for continuity.
When I’m directing a scene I’m in, I focus on the other actors. I know I’m incredibly advantaged because I have so much more knowledge of the coverage and what we’ll be using from each set-up than the other actors do, so I try to make them relaxed and comfortable. But also, when you have these incredible actors such as Anthony Rapp and Lana Parrilla, it’s not like they need “notes” from me. They know exactly what they’re doing. So I’m just there to make sure everything is tonally cohesive and we get what is needed for the edit while allowing them the freedom to explore as artists, feel safe to try something risky or be open to something unexpected.
NFS: With Scrap and Séance each occupying a different genre of storytelling, do you have a long-term vision for the kinds of films you would like to make?
Kerr: I really see myself as a journeyman director. I’ve always admired directors such as Ron Howard who really center the story, rather than impose a specific visual language on all of their work. I enjoy directing for the same reason I love acting and writing—I want to explore worlds and characters that are different from my own life.
To be able to take risks and go from Ocean’s Eleven to The Knick like Soderbergh can is the goal. I’d like to make a big-budget studio movie someday and then also get to continue my weird period pieces, and then run off and make something more indie, raw, and intimate like Andrea Arnold’s films. If I could look back on my work in forty years and all my films felt like individual, fully realized pieces, I’d be so thrilled.
The goal for me is longevity and getting to create a meaningful body of dramatic work with talented people I can learn from and grow with over my career. I saw an interview with Sean Baker recently and he called this kind of filmmaking “stories for adults,” and that’s exactly right. It’s the story and the script for me, first and foremost.
'The Untouchables'
'Reservoir Dogs'
Vivian Kerr Dana Patrick
'Seance'Rue Dangeau
'Seance'Rue Dangeau
