How is this effect achieved?

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Stewart
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One of the most iconic movie scenes of all time: "Go ahead, make my day." (From Sudden Impact, the 4th Dirty Harry film, 1983.)

Watch the whole scene (length 3:57) on YouTube here.
Or if you're short of time, jump to the crux here.

Now for the question. Look at the gun in Clint Eastwood's hand at around 3:17. The focus is clearly on the front of the gun. The depth of field appears to be quite shallow, because the back of the gun and his hand are going out of focus. And yet his face is, if not in perfect focus, at least recognisably and tolerably sharp. None of us in the office can work out how that is done, give how quickly the focus goes off from the gun to the hand.

full


What are we missing?
 
Deep depth of field in the original shot rendering all of the gun and actor in focus and then processed with a mask to blur between the gun and face. Easy to do in the darkroom with a still photograph and I would think not too hard with a movie.
 
Could it be a split filter like a close up diopter for the right of the shot

https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/secrets-of-the-split-field-diopter/
Oh! I'd never heard of that before, but I think you may be right. That article you referenced has a shot from Unforgiven in it, which was also directed by Clint Eastwood (as was Sudden Impact), so he would clearly have been aware of the potential of this technique. Thanks!

Incidentally I found another blog post where the author has compiled a huge long list of movie scenes that use split focus techniques, and it includes the same scene from Unforgiven, but it does not include this scene from Sudden Impact. Shame really, as it's such an iconic scene, and the split focus enhances it so much.

https://tadleckman.wordpress.com/2017/05/03/cheating-depth-the-magic-of-split-diopter-shots/
 
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Oh! I'd never heard of that before, but I think you may be right. That article you referenced has a shot from Unforgiven in it, which was also directed by Clint Eastwood (as was Sudden Impact), so he would clearly have been aware of the potential of this technique. Thanks!

Incidentally I found another blog post where the author has compiled a huge long list of movie scenes that use split focus techniques, and it includes the same scene from Unforgiven, but it does not include this scene from Sudden Impact. Shame really, as it's such an iconic scene, and the split focus enhances it so much.

https://tadleckman.wordpress.com/2017/05/03/cheating-depth-the-magic-of-split-diopter-shots/

Stewart I had never heard of them before (I think) but remembered those Cokin split filters of the past also being a macro shooter thought dioptre and started typing then googled what I was saying and found the info
 
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