As I teach my photo students every year, there are many compositional ways to create a sense of deep space in a scene. Depth-staging forces the viewer to look through a subject placed in extreme foreground to another subject far away. Depending on the elements in the image, results can be dynamic, mysterious, claustrophobic, and can evoke psychological relationships between subjects. Visually, the approach also creates the engaging effect of "frames within frames." One of my all-time favorite examples of the technique is the cult spy film, The Ipcress File (1965), starring Michael Caine. When the core team of James Bond filmmakers adapted Len Deighton's novel, director Sidney Furie and DP Otto Heller famously made over 100 shots in the film that used depth-staging. On the blog VashiVisuals, editor Vashi Nedomansky has posted an analysis of The Ipcress File that includes a 10-minute video of all 100 shots in the movie. A must-read and must-see for Spy Vibers! Link here. See video below. Many members of the James Bond movie franchise contributed to The Ipcress File, including Harry Saltzman, John Barry, Peter Hunt, and Ken Adam. The Deighton Harry Palmer movies starring Michael Caine are often out of print. There is a European Blu-ray edition of The Ipcress File that is apparently all-region. You can currently see the second installment in the series, Funeral in Berlin,streaming on Amazon. Enjoy!
