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In The Perfection, director Richard Shepard uses a handful of filmmaking techniques to up the scare factor and keep the audience on their toes, from a time-rewind to a Snorricam shot. One camera trick you’ll see again and again in the film are split diopter shots. (thread) 
Looks familiar right? You’ve seen split diopter shots in some of your favorite movies. Cinematographers have used this striking optical technique in everything from Jaws to Pulp Fiction to Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
But first *pushes up glasses* some film school 101 without the student loan debt — what exactly is a split-focus diopter? Essentially it's a piece of magnifying glass that covers half a camera lens, allowing both the foreground and background of a single shot to be in focus.
Now split diopter shots aren’t the same thing as deep focus; they merely create the illusion of it. With the former, the space between the two in-focus objects is blurred. Check out this example from Slow West, where the area between Silas and Jay is out of focus:
On the other hand, with true deep focus, you get a shot with continuous depth-of-field. One classic example of deep focus is a flashback scene cinematographer Gregg Toland famously shot in Citizen Kane.
OK back to The Perfection. Director Richard Shepard and DP Vanja Cernjul use split diopter shots across a handful of key sequences in the psychological thriller. The unnaturalness of the shots create a disorienting effect & helps enhance the film’s constant sense of trepidation.
But these shots also thematically tie into the twisty narrative – We visually wrestle over who to focus our eyes on in a single shot, just as we psychologically wrestle over whether to trust Charlotte or Lizzie throughout the film.
Ultimately, the diopter shots serve as a metaphor for Charlotte and Lizzie's narrative arcs – even as power dynamics shift throughout, both women remain in sharp focus in either the foreground or background, hinting that these two are far more connected than we initially realize.
But we can’t talk about split diopter shots without talking about Brian De Palma, whose use of the technique has been a hallmark of his career. You’ll spot these shots in Blow Out, Carrie, Obsession, Mission: Impossible, Scarface… the list goes on.
In the 2015 documentary De Palma, the filmmaker explains how his use of split diopters grew out of one of his other signature techniques: split screen.
In Scarface, De Palma uses a split diopter to hint at imminent danger. Before the Miami deal goes awry and Angel gets killed, DP John A. Alonzo uses a split diopter to keep both the Columbian dealer and Angel in focus; we know to keep our attention outside as well as in.
Directors also use split diopters to pair a close-up of an object with a character’s reaction. In Wet Hot American Summer (2001) it’s a D&D geek marveling at his 20-sided die. In The Fifth Element (1997) it’s Korben’s mail. In Tusk (2014) it’s Wallace racing towards his phone.
One of the most impressive diopter shots is the 6-minute take in All the President’s Men. The scene begins wide with Robert Redford’s Woodward & the newsroom in focus, both wrestling for our attention as cinematographer Gordon Willis ever so slowly zooms in on Redford’s face.
While a traditional split diopter creates two planes in focus, Robert Wise took it a step further in The Andromeda Strain, a film full of diopter shots. In it, DP Richard H. Kline uses a double split diopter in a few scenes, creating *three* planes of sharp focus.
Awesome right? Film editor @vashikoo edited together 71 of the 206 diopter shots in The Andromeda Strain in this great video essay that’s definitely worth a watch: vimeo.com/179107560
While Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs’ diopter shots may be the most famous of Quentin Tarantino’s filmography, let’s take a moment to appreciate his outstanding use of them in The Hateful Eight.
And who could forget the Trinity split diopter shot at the opening of The Matrix, which stylishly puts both our hero and her opponent in sharp focus.
This doesn’t even scratch the surface of the long history of diopter shots used in movies (and TV!). What are some of your favorite split diopter shots?
