Spectre: 9 Simple Fixes That Would've Made It Awesome
5. Give The Focus Puller A Break
Youll be familiar with the idea of pull focus, sometimes known as rack focussing, even if youve not heard of the term: its when you start a shot with the focus on one object or area of the frame (say, a lamp at the back of the room) and then, without an edit, switch the focus to another object or area (a chair closer to the camera, for instance). The person who does this is a focus puller, and they're generally regarded as having the hardest and least rewarding job on set, seeing as they can very easily ruin a shot by accident and make everyone resent them by forcing them to reshoot. Spectre really, really piles on the pull focus shots. The idea is that by using pull focus shots rather than simply cutting between one shot and another is that its a) much cooler and b) implies a lot about the world in which Bond operates now: shadowy, constantly shifting, uncertain. The thing is, it happened so often that it started feeling like they were very obviously doing it for effect, and it pulled me out of the story while I worried about the welfare of the focus puller. The poor guy probably has a decent claim for taking MGM to an industrial tribunal over his repetitive strain injury.
