Kurosawa Lens selection constructs the viewer's experience or subjectivity. Film subjects can be made to appear close together or far apart, while time can be expanded and contracted. In very early films characters moved through two dimensions from one side of the film frame to the other, conveying little sense of depth within the frame. Deep focus is the ability to keep those elements of action in focus. Until the early 1940s, Hollywood was a shallow focus aesthetic, but after Citizen Kane 's innovative use of faster film stocks, short focal length lenses, and intense lighting, which permitted greater depth of field within the shot, Hollywood increasingly resorted to staging action in depth or on multiple planes.
Action can enter and exit the frame from each side, the top or the bottom.
Film is unique in its ability to manipulate on and off-screen space and the relations between the two. In addition, the cinematographer controls many variables when framing the shot. These include the size and shape of the frame, the angle of view, and the distance from the subject. The viewer is always looking at the screen from a point of view, which can be that of the camera lens, a character, or a more objective, external perspective. One of the factors which makes cinema so seductive is that we can fuse together these multiple perspectives.