Split Diopter and Mirrors in "The War of the Roses"

Look at this amazing two-shot scene from Danny DeVito's "The War of the Roses" (1989). In terms of craft, there's SO MUCH going on here, but none of it distracts from the characters and the story. The filmmaking craft on display here reinforces the narrative by creating a distinctive tone.

view on YouTube

Notice how the diopter is removed during the shot when Douglas hits the same distance from camera as Turner - choreographed to be removed in sync with his broad movement of hugging and kissing Turner, to make it nearly invisible upon first viewing.

"Jaws" De-Dioptered

direct YouTube link
Over on Twitter, we have fun pointing out split diopter shots in movies; shots that contain two fields of focus, allowing an extreme foreground object and a background object to simultaneously be sharp. Filmmakers like Brian DePalma and Steven Spielberg use the split diopter as a way of visually connecting foregrounds and backgrounds. It's supposed to be jarring, a little disorienting, and off-putting.
But some people absolutely hate the effect for that reason. (Monsters, all of them.) So I thought it would be fun to start removing the split diopter lens effects from movies, just to see how the scenes would play with more traditional depth-of-field. I started with "Jaws" (1975).
After finding all the split diopter shots in the film, I took each shot into Adobe After Effects and split up the frame into a foreground and a background by rotoscoping certain foreground shapes, and applied focus effects to simulate traditional depth of field. In some cases I had to do some background restoration (painting additional bits of background) to help sell the effect. In most shots I applied a rack focus in the shot from foreground to background (or vice-versa), based on the timing of the dialogue. Since the film was shot with anamorphic lenses, I made sure to use anamorphic-shaped bokehs, and also added the irregular lens breathing associated with these lenses that you see with dramatic focus changes.
This was a fun exercise. It's always a blast to see one of your favorite films from a slightly tweaked perspective.
As a bonus, here is a side-by-side comparison of the original split diopter shots, next to my traditional depth-of-field versions of those same shots.
direct YouTube link
If you want to learn more about the technique, read Cheating Depth: The Magic of Split Diopter Shots by my buddy Tad Leckman.