Shooting Day 1 Review: Auto-Focus Messing it Up

It is generally considered common-knowledge that when shooting a film you should use manual focus in order to ensure the focus is correct at all times - additionally it gives you more creative freedom. When shooting I chose to use auto focus though as it was what I was comfortable with. Unfortunately this made much of our footage unusable. In many of our tracking shots as I walk behind the subject my camera is constantly focusing and then-refocusing. Though auto-focus is good in some high-speed/action situations such as sports - which I'm accustomed to filming - it is not good for shooting things like this. 

This issue is also in part due to my camera's poor low-light capabilities. Since the camera couldn't recognize the subject within the image it couldn't properly focus on it - thus producing the constantly refocusing footage we ended up with. 

As you can see from these two stills the camera's constant focus and refocus ruins the image. Unfocused footage can be good, but only when done intentionally and the constant switching conveys to the viewer that this was not done intentionally. Additionally, it simply renders the footage unusable. On a go forward I will be using manual focus to ensure footage is usable and we get the look from the footage we want - selective focus gives us a lot of power in what we're able to convey to audiences.