Chapter 4 — Exercises

Focal length and aperture are the two dials that make an image look "cinematic," and you learn them the same way you learn everything in this book: by pointing a camera at something and watching what changes. A phone does every exercise here — its two or three lenses and its portrait mode are enough to feel every principle in the chapter. Where an exercise needs an adjustable aperture your phone lacks, a note gives you the phone-only version, which is almost always "use real distance instead of a wide aperture."

Do the shooting exercises. You can memorise every word of this chapter and still not know a lens; you learn glass in your hands, by keeping the subject the same size while the background transforms, by opening the aperture until the room melts, by pulling a focus until it stops lurching. Reading is the map; shooting is the territory. And keep the clips — several of these become raw material for your Production Checkpoint and, later, your reel.

Exercises are graded by effort and depth:

• ⭐ Warm-up — a few minutes; locks in a concept.
• ⭐⭐ Core — the real practice; do as many of these as you can.
• ⭐⭐⭐ Stretch — deeper or more ambitious; where the biggest gains are.

Model solutions and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises are collected in Answers to Selected Exercises at the back of the book. Attempt each one before reading its answer — a wrong attempt teaches more than a right answer you only read. For the pure shooting exercises, the "answer" is a self-critique prompt: the real grading is always whether you can name what changed and why, in one sentence you could say out loud on a set.

A. Seeing the lens (Eye & Ear Training)

No camera needed — just the eyes you are training. These build the reflex that lets you reverse-engineer any image you admire, which is the whole point of the Frame Log. Add at least one of these to your log this week.

1. ⭐ Spot the compression. Watch any three shots of a person outdoors in a film or show. For each, guess: wide lens (close, deep, open space) or long lens (far, flat, compressed background)? Write the tell that gave it away — the single most reliable one is how big the background looks relative to the subject. Do it fast and trust your gut; you are calibrating an instinct, not solving a puzzle. (Answer provided.)

2. ⭐ Find the shallow. In the next interview or talking-head you see, pause and ask: is the background sharp or melted? If melted, what does that separation do for the subject — how does it change where your eye goes and how "premium" the shot feels? Write one sentence in your Frame Log, and note whether you think the separation was optical or a phone's computed portrait mode.

3. ⭐⭐ The "alone" lens. Find a moment in something you're watching where a character feels isolated or watched. Describe the lens choice you suspect (wide or long, deep or shallow) and how it serves the loneliness — pay special attention to whether the camera keeps you at a distance too, because that distance is often the whole trick. (Answer discusses what to look for.)

4. ⭐⭐ Faces and focal length. Watch a close-up of a face you find flattering and one you find odd or "off." One is likely a longer lens from farther back; the other may be a wide lens too close (ballooned nose/forehead, bent edges). Note which was which, and connect it to the chapter's claim that "flattering" is really a distance effect — the lens only lets you stand where the face looks good. (Answer provided.)

5. ⭐⭐⭐ The rack in the wild. Find a focus pull (rack focus) in any video — attention travels from a near subject to a far one within one shot, no cut. Describe what motivated the pull (a sound? a movement? a line?), what the two focus planes were, and what would have been lost if the director had cut instead. This is the exact skill you'll use in Exercise 27, so watch closely. (Model answer provided.)

6. ⭐ Bokeh spotting. Find a shot with out-of-focus points of light behind a subject (streetlights, fairy lights, sun through leaves). Are the orbs smooth and round or edgy and busy? You are learning to see bokeh as a quality, not just "blur" — and to notice that some backgrounds render far more beautifully than others. Bonus: compare a phone's computed portrait-mode blur to a real optical blur in a film and see if you can spot the difference in how the two handle edges and light.

B. Reading Described Shots (Read the Sequence)

The Described Shot is how this book "plays" you a clip. Learning to read one closely is how you learn to plan one. Work these with the chapter's figures open beside you.

7. ⭐ Name the fields. Re-read FIGURE 4.5 (the interview that lifts off the room). Without looking back, say which field tells you the focal length and which tells you the aperture, and what each choice contributes to the shot's effect. Then check: did you correctly separate "how the face is rendered" (focal length) from "how the room dissolves" (aperture)? (Answer provided.)

8. ⭐⭐ Rewrite the lens. Take FIGURE 4.2 (the person watched from across the street on a long lens) and rewrite THE FRAME and THE EFFECT as if it were shot on a wide lens from up close instead. How does the viewer's relationship to the subject change — from watching to sharing? Keep the words tight; a good rewrite is surgical. (Answer provided.)

9. ⭐⭐ Diagnose the depth. In FIGURE 4.7 (the rack focus reveal), explain why the shot requires a shallow depth of field to work at all. What would happen to the reveal at f/11, and how would the director have to reveal the second person instead — a cut, a move, a light change? (Answer provided.)

10. ⭐⭐⭐ Write your own. Watch a 20–40 second scene built on a clear lens choice (a compressed telephoto street, a wide immersive interior, a shallow portrait). Write a full seven-field Described Shot of its strongest shot, and add a one-line note on how you'd re-create the lens look with your own gear. This is the same muscle Chapters 7 and 28 lean on hard; you are starting early. (Model answer provided.)

C. Focal length in the hand (Shoot This & Five Ways)

The heart of the chapter. Make things — a phone is perfect for all of these. The recurring instruction is the same one that unlocks focal length: keep the subject the same size and let the background do the changing.

11. ⭐ Same size, four lenses (the walk). If you haven't done the §4.1 🎬 On Set, do it now: one subject, one background with depth (a hallway, a street, a row of trees), framed the same size at four focal lengths — walk in for wide, back up for long. Phone: ultra-wide, main, telephoto + your feet. Watch the background transform while the subject holds still. This single exercise teaches more than the whole section's prose. (Model self-critique provided.)

12. ⭐⭐ Five Ways: the portrait ladder. Film one person's head-and-shoulders five ways, changing only focal length + distance: (a) ultra-wide up close, (b) wide, (c) normal, (d) short telephoto, (e) longest you have, far back. Watch back. Which is most flattering, which most distorted, and why — in terms of distance, not "the lens"? Keep the best as a reference for your talking-head; you'll likely reuse this exact choice in the Production Checkpoint. (Answer discusses the trade-offs.)

13. ⭐⭐ Perspective, proven. Shoot the classic proof that perspective is distance, not lens: film a person with a distinctive background object (a building, a sign) twice — once wide-and-close, once long-and-far — keeping the person the same size. Confirm the background object dramatically changed size while the person didn't. Write the one-sentence takeaway this forces you to accept. (Answer provided.)

14. ⭐⭐ The immersion shot. Using your widest lens, shoot a 15-second clip from inside an activity (cooking, a workshop, a game) so the viewer feels present and surrounded. Then shoot the same activity long, from the doorway. Which feels "you are here" and which feels "watching," and what specifically creates each feeling — the closeness, the openness of the space, both? (Answer provided.)

15. ⭐⭐ The normal-lens honesty test. Film a short piece-to-camera on a ~50mm-equivalent (or your phone's main lens from a natural distance). Notice how plain and believable it looks — no drama, no flattery, just truth. When would this honesty be exactly the right choice (a sincere testimonial? a documentary subject?), and when would it be too plain for the story? (Answer provided.)

16. ⭐⭐⭐ Compression as story. Find a location with real depth (a long corridor, a busy street, a row of parked cars) and use your longest lens from far back to stack the background into a compressed wall behind a still subject. Aim for the "alone in a crowd / watched" feeling of FIGURE 4.2. Shoot 5 takes, keep 1, say in one sentence what the compression made the viewer feel. If nothing stacked, you were too close or your lens too short — back up and go longer. (Model critique provided.)

D. Aperture and depth of field (Shoot This & Settings Drill)

Aperture is where beginners lose their heads and open all the way. These exercises build the discipline to open up on purpose and stop down on purpose.

17. ⭐ Read the scale. Without looking: put these in order from most light / shallowest focus to least light / deepest focus — f/8, f/1.8, f/4, f/16, f/2.8. Then state the two "backwards" facts that trip up beginners. Say them out loud until they stop feeling backwards. (Answer provided.)

18. ⭐⭐ The depth-of-field ladder. Adjustable aperture: film one subject at f/1.8 (or your widest), f/4, and f/8, everything else identical, background a few metres back. Phone: portrait mode ON vs OFF, plus a version with the subject moved far from the wall. Watch back; describe how the background changed at each step and where you'd use each version in real work. (Answer provided.)

19. ⭐⭐ Isolate the ordinary. Pick a dull, cluttered spot in your home. Using the three shallow-depth levers together (open the aperture, go longer, get close), make a beautiful 10-second shot of one ordinary object by erasing everything else into soft bokeh. Prove to yourself that "composition by subtraction" turns a bad location into a good frame — this is the trick that rescues real shoots in ugly rooms. (Model critique provided.)

20. ⭐⭐ Bokeh hunt. Find a background with small points of light (fairy lights, sun through leaves, distant streetlamps). Shoot a subject in front of it wide open so those points become soft bokeh orbs. Note what makes the bokeh pleasing versus busy — lens length, aperture, and distance from the lights all matter, and small changes make a big difference. (Answer provided.)

21. ⭐⭐⭐ Too shallow, on purpose. Deliberately shoot a talking-head at your very widest aperture and get it wrong: let the eyes drift soft while the ear or nose is sharp, or have the subject sway out of the focus plane. Then reshoot stopped down two stops to fix it. Keep both — this teaches the ⚠️ "everything wide open" lesson in your own footage better than any warning could, because you'll feel how little margin wide open gives you. (Answer provided.)

22. ⭐⭐ Settings drill: choose the aperture. For each, write a starting aperture and a one-sentence reason: (a) an interview in a cluttered office you want erased; (b) a product where the whole item must be sharp; (c) a run-and-gun event in a dim hall with unpredictable movement; (d) a landscape where a near flower and a far mountain both matter. There is no single right number — the reason is what's graded. (Model answers provided.)

23. ⭐⭐⭐ The story-driven aperture. Take a real subject with a meaningful background (a maker in their workshop, a chef in their kitchen, a musician with their instruments). Shoot it twice: once wide open (background erased) and once stopped down (background legible). Decide which serves the story — and notice that the "prettier" wide-open version may be the wrong one, exactly as in Case Study 2. Write the story reason for your choice. (Answer provided.)

E. Focus for video (Shoot This)

Focus in video is a performance, not a moment. These exercises make you fluent in the tools that keep it sharp and the technique that moves it deliberately.

24. ⭐ Peaking on. Find and switch on focus peaking (or your phone app's manual-focus aid). Point at a textured subject and watch the coloured outline appear on the sharp plane. Rack the focus by hand and watch the outline travel. Write down exactly where your camera or app hides this setting — that knowledge is the real deliverable, and you'll reach for it on every serious shot. (Answer provided.)

25. ⭐⭐ Pull a focus. Do the §4.5 🎬 On Set: two subjects (near ~1 m, far ~2–3 m), aperture wide, rack focus from near to far while recording. Five takes, keep the smoothest. Was it slow, smooth, and motivated — or a lurch-and-hunt? Notice how the wide aperture, which makes the pull possible, also makes it unforgiving. (Model critique provided.)

26. ⭐⭐ Autofocus stress test. Turn on eye-detect autofocus and try to break it: have the subject turn away and back, walk something across the frame, dim the lights. Note exactly when it hunts or jumps to the wrong thing. Now you own a personal list of "when my autofocus fails," which is precisely when to switch to manual on a take you can't reshoot. (Answer provided.)

27. ⭐⭐⭐ The motivated rack. Shoot a 15-second shot where a focus pull is motivated — the near subject stops talking and the focus travels to a person or object as a sound or movement calls our attention there. The pull should feel like the viewer chose to look. Self-review: could you defend the timing of the pull in one sentence? An unmotivated rack is just the focus wandering; a motivated one is storytelling. (Model answer provided.)

F. Diagnose and fix (Fix the Shot)

Reading a failed shot and prescribing the fix — by stage — is a producer's core skill. Each of these is a real failure you will meet on real shoots, usually when someone hands you footage and asks why it "looks off." The most valuable habit here is diagnosing the cause precisely (which lever went wrong — focal length, distance, or aperture) before reaching for a fix, because the wrong diagnosis leads to the wrong reshoot.

28. ⭐⭐ Fix the distorted face. A described clip: a talking-head shot on an ultra-wide phone lens held close for a "big" look; the subject's nose and forehead balloon and the edges of the frame bend. Name the cause and prescribe the fix in terms of lens and distance — and explain why the two are always linked. (Answer provided.)

29. ⭐⭐ Fix the flat interview. A described clip: an interview shot on a wide lens from close, the whole cluttered room sharp behind the subject, who blends into the background. The client says it "looks like a webcam." Give three lens/aperture changes that would make it read as premium, using no new gear — only choices you already have. (Answer provided.)

30. ⭐⭐⭐ Fix the soft hero shot. A described product clip shot wide open at f/1.4: the front label is sharp but the back half of the product is a blur, and the client needs the whole item legible. The shooter says "I'll sharpen it in post." Explain why that fails and give the on-set fix, referencing depth of field's three levers. (Answer provided.)

G. Recreate It

Stealing a technique — not footage — is how every shooter builds a vocabulary. Steal the thinking, use your own subject.

31. ⭐⭐⭐ Recreate the compression shot. Re-create the spirit of FIGURE 4.2 (or Case Study 1's dolly zoom) with your own subject and street/corridor. You are not copying footage — you are stealing the technique: long lens, far back, still subject, moving/compressed background. Show it to someone and ask what they felt, and whether it matched your intention. (Model answer provided.)

32. ⭐⭐ Recreate the phone "portrait" honestly. Make a shallow-depth talking-head without portrait mode: move the subject far from the background, get close with your main or telephoto lens, and let the real optics separate them. Compare to portrait mode's computed blur — which handles hair, glasses, and edges better, and where does the software guess wrong? (Answer provided.)

33. ⭐⭐⭐ The budget dolly zoom. Attempt the Case Study 1 challenge: coordinate a camera move (walk in, or roll on a wheeled chair) with an opposite zoom so the subject holds size while the background warps. Expect to fail several times — matching the rates is the exercise, and each failure teaches you which move is running too fast. Marry the finished one to a sound cue and a motivated beat. Do not chase perfection; a recognisable warp on the background while the subject roughly holds size is a genuine win, and it will teach you in your hands the truth this whole chapter argued — that perspective and framing are separate variables you can pull apart. (Model answer provided.)

H. Interleaved (mixing earlier chapters)

Real shooting never uses one chapter at a time — on set you set the sensor, the motion, the format, and the lens in a single unbroken flow of decisions. These exercises fold Chapters 2 and 3 back in so the whole of Part I works as one system in your hands, which is exactly how it will need to work the moment you are standing behind a camera with a subject waiting on you.

34. ⭐⭐ Lens + shutter + frame rate. Combine Chapters 2 and 4: shoot a 10-second clip at 24 fps with a 180° shutter (1/50) and a deliberate lens choice (a compressed long-lens look, say). Confirm you can set both the motion foundation and the lens look at once without one making you forget the other. (Answer provided.)

35. ⭐⭐ Story is the boss. Take your Project 1 concept (from Chapter 1). In three sentences, decide: what should the viewer feel about your subject, which focal length says that, and how much background separation the story wants. This is literally the pre-production thinking for your Production Checkpoint — do it well and the shoot is easy. (Model answer provided.)

36. ⭐⭐ Crop factor in practice. Interleave Chapter 2: if your camera has a crop sensor, work out what actual focal length gives you a 50mm-equivalent look, and shoot a test at it. If you shoot full-frame or phone, explain to a friend (out loud) why a 25mm lens on a 2× sensor frames like a 50mm. Teaching it is the test that you own it. (Answer provided.)

37. ⭐⭐⭐ Full Part I baseline. For one shot, write the complete Part I setup: resolution + frame rate + shutter (Ch. 2), a note on capture format (Ch. 3), and focal length + aperture + focus plan (Ch. 4), each with a one-line reason. Then shoot it. You now command every foundational choice a camera offers before light and sound enter the picture — which is exactly what Part I set out to give you. (Model answer provided.)

I. Synthesis and the Frame Log

The final exercises turn this chapter's knowledge into something you own and can teach, and feed the seeing habit that pays off all the way to your reel in Chapter 39.

38. ⭐⭐⭐ Teach it back. In about 200 words, explain to an absolute beginner why "perspective is distance, not lens." Use one concrete example (the same-size-four-lenses walk is ideal) and one story consequence (why a lonely character is shot long). Teaching a concept out loud is the strongest test that you actually own it — and this is the single idea most people get wrong for years. (Model answer provided.)

39. ⭐⭐ The lens self-audit. Watch the best video you have ever personally made (or your Exercise 11 walk). For each shot, ask: did I choose that focal length and aperture on purpose, or was it just whatever was on the camera? Grade yourself honestly on "intention" from 1 to 5. Wherever you scored low, you have found exactly where this chapter helps you most. Keep the number; you'll re-audit at the end of the book.

40. ⭐⭐⭐ The Frame-Log lens habit. For the next week, add one lens observation a day: the focal-length feel of a shot you liked, a depth-of-field choice that directed your eye, a focus pull you noticed, a face flattered or distorted by a lens. At week's end, read them back — you will find you can no longer watch video without seeing the glass. This single sustained habit will do more for your eye than any lens you could buy. (Model answer discusses what good entries look like.)

The shooting exercises matter most — a lens is a thing you learn in your hands, not your head. When you can walk the focal lengths, pull a clean focus, and choose an aperture because of what the story needs rather than because it looks pretty, you have the whole chapter. Next, Chapter 5 gives you command of the light this lens is gathering.