Scale Used to Create the Illusion of Depth

For centuries, artists were unsure exactly how to create the illusion of depth in a painting. It took the genius of Raphael to realize that simple manipulation of scale could be used to create an effective illusion of depth. His painting Marriage of the Virgin shows this use of scale. The respective sizes of the characters in the scene are carefully constructed in order to create the illusion of depth. This technique arises from the assumption that size of objects is constant, despite the apparent change as the object moves away from the viewer. This is used to create the illusion of depth in the painting. Though the building is assumed to be considerably larger than the characters, it is in fact the same size as the figures in the painting.

A photograph through a normal lens will naturally make the objects in the background smaller than those in the foreground. In a film, the same is true. A director has the ability to exploit this in order to create a scene which looks a lot deeper than it truly is. A good example of this is a scene from the movie Children of Paradise in which the director actually had the set built smaller as it stretched further from the camera, implying a great distance between the camera and the background. In some shots, he used midgets as extras in the background to give the impression that such small characters must be far off, furthering the illusion of depth.

In this shot from Reservoir Dogs, director Quentin Tarantino uses a split diopter lens, which keeps both characters in focus. There is no mid-ground apparent. In this case, it is only the size of the men which creates the illusion of depth.

The viewer's mind can easily misinterpret this still from George Lucas' first film, THX-1138. Since the black man is significantly larger than the white man, our mind automatically places him in the front. It is not until the next shot that we see that the black man was in the background.

Thus, there are many ways in which film directors can use scale to create the illusion of depth in either a realistic or a non-realistic fashion. By using different forms of lenses or by altering the set, perceived depth can be increased or decreased.

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