Well I sure agree about the 24fps thing, and I'd add lighting, sound, script and talent to it to boot.
But just lately as I read more and more I'm finding the movie going experience less appealing. Maybe I'm the odd man out but I find that being 'told' what I should focus on kind of annoying and no more so than when the point of focus is just a little off. I oftenly like to be the radical one and watch what's happening in the background of a shot but with limited DOF it doesn't work, my eyes cannot focus on that point because it's burnt into the medium out of focus.
Now this seems to be more of a problem as cinema screens get bigger and we sit closer due to cinemas getting smaller. Maybe DOPs need to rethink how scenes are shot and to preview their work in more typical cinema environments, I've noticed in the photos I've seen of typical preview theatres that the screen size is smaller than most commercial cinemas today.
Also we're making more happen in the frame, faster action, tyres flying off and explosions in the background etc. So our eyes are being pulled in many directions and across a larger viewing field.
To my thinking all this would work much better at high frame rates and maximum depth of field.
Perhaps it's all a question of semantics, instead of calling it "Limited Depth of Field" how about "Not Much in Focus"?
Bob.

Probably one of the longest threads since the discovery of the electron

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?f=70

how about "Not Much in Focus"?

Or how about watching a Jacques Tati 70mm movie such as "Playtime"?

Not only is everything in focus across the screen, it is all so sharp that you can easily follow the action in different places on the screen simultaneously.

Better than 2K projection even, assuming you're really watching a good 70mm print.

I found a cure for "less and less appealing movie experiences." Watching fewer movies, picking only the best ones, and of course occasionally a movie that isn't good but interesting, no names here to protect the guilty.

I live within walking distance of perhaps a dozen film studios, with hundreds more within range of a short drive. Still, I don't feel like I have to see every movie that comes out.

"Hollywood" makes beautiful movies with very high production values, but especially recently it's become a factory for "Return of Same'Ol XII" (but there are exceptions!).

Speaking of DOF, I saw a neat trick at a DV Expo seminar a few years ago.

By setting the backfocus "incorrectly" and compensating with the normal focus ring, DOF was reduced significantly. The live demo for this was set up with a manual lens on an XL1, but it would work with any lens that has a backfocus adjustment.

Or, go watch Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil." (If you prefer, you can check out Walter Murch's re-edit based on Welles' production notes.)

Welles worked really hard to overcome the naturally shallow depth of field of lenses and cameras of the day. Lots of things going on in all parts of the frame.

Yes, yes, beautifully shot film by a master.

Thinking of it, Citizen Kane used a lot of really deep DOF too, to good effect.

Still, I think the first rule of cinematography is to show as little as possible, just a little bit less than "enough," so that the viewer wants to see just a bit more than what they're getting.

The second rule could be about the situations where having everything in focus communicates a "vastness" (like the puzzle laying scene in front of the gargantuan fireplace in C.K.).

Yes, interesting how people attach all manner of magics to "film effect". To take a page from the real estate agent's book: quality, quality, quality (rather than position!). 24p is the least important. Most of the time we're looking at slow moving images and the differences between 50i and 24p is inconsequential. As farss has pointed out, many of the most impressive cinema images have been memorable because of extremely deep DOF, Citizen Cane and Lawrence of Arabia being two of that category. Composition, lighting, emulsions, processing and camera moves are more important than those things people latch onto to explain the magic of film over video. Have a look at how these same elements (in video) give the "cinema look" to GMElliot's work.

There isn't any magic to DOF. It's all to do with how fuzzy can a dot be allowed to be before you recognise it as "not in focus". This is the circle of confusion. Given the same magnification and the same diameter circle of confusion, you get the same DOF. The DOF at f/2 (for example) for a 25mm lens with a subject at distance D is the same as for a 100mm lens at distance 4D. It's a question of how large are image details in relation to the diameter of the circle of confusion. For 35mm film the standard is 0.025mm diameter and 0.015mm for 16mm. The greater the fuzziness you can tolerate the greater the DOF, all other parameters constant. And as the size of the viewed image increases, so the tolerable fuzziness (and DOF) decreases.

So this I think explains a lot. There's only one point where things are actualy in focus. It's how much they go out of focus beyond that point that created the illusion of depth of field.
But maybe this explains something else that I've heard still photographers talk about. Some of them favor the older uncoated lenses over the modern high acquity (hope I spelled that right and I'm not 100% I know what it means) ones. They claim the older style lenses give a softer transition within the depth of field and maybe the answer is that as they're not producing such as sharp image at the point of focus the increase in fuzziness appears more subtle.

If anyones interested there's an interesting piece in the latest American Cinematographer about the 'Artbox Camera'. Basically a home built 5x7 camera with movements but instead of film it has a ground glass screen and then you focus either a 16mm film camera or a video camera onto that. About 7 stops loss in the system so only for sunny days but the result is kind of interesting, imagine a turn of the century (well the one before the last one) photograph but with color and movement.

Bob.

It's all to do with how fuzzy can a dot be allowed to be before you recognise it as "not in focus".

This also means that a HDV camera with 1/3" CCDs will have less DOF than a DV camera with 1/3" CCDs.

Corollary: HD cameras are more difficult to focus, especially since viewfinders don't have enough resolution to make it easy.

Time to pull out the checkbook and buy an $18,000 Accuscene viewfinder, which has native HD resolution in color, plus a few other tricks so it can even focus easily on a white wall (really, I've done it!).