Dynamic Depth

Creating the illusion of depth is an important part of cinematography, despite being one of the last things you learn when in school. It requires skill, creativity, and ingenuity. To create the illusion of depth in a 2D medium, Mathew Rosen shared his top 5 favorite methods of achieving such a feat. He begins with the lighting. Skillful lighting is an important factor in any film and can help to create the illusion of depth. Harsh contrast between the darks and the lights with a fast falloff can make your 2D film pop off of the screen. Next, skillful manipulation of the depth of field should be used. Shallow depth of field is typically the safest bet for new filmmakers, but with experience, deeper depths of field can achieve the same effect. Moving cameras, also called "parallax", serve to add additional kinetic energy to your shots in addition to depth. Still shots seldom add much to the scene and don't give much for the audience to grab onto. Moving cameras give the scene a more dynamic feel and typically create more interest for viewers. Lastly, overlapping subjects on top of one another help to sell the idea of depth. It occurs in the natural world all around us, though it might be difficult to wrap your head around at first.

Useful article. Short and easy to understand tips. I learned of the different techniques to create depth. I actually had not thought that shading would play much of a role, but surprisingly enough, it did. How much is too much? Can these tricks be overdone and how? What would be the result? Overall good cinema tricks that we should all keep in mind for better quality videos.