I have watched dozens of Shaw Brothers films over the years and I have always been puzzled by the number of shots where the central image is out of focus. Obviously there are reasons this might deliberately be done. However the cases that I don't understand are the fairly static, usually indoors shots, where someone is speaking and his face is blurry; although that is exactly where you would expect the camera to be focused. To my eyes, nothing else seems to be wrong in these shots and it does not seem that the camera is sharply focused elsewhere. Often there are only a couple of instances of this in an entire movie, which would seem to rule out global causes (PAL to NTSC conversion, film deterioration, etc.) Furthermore, I do not recall seeing this anomaly in non-Shaw Brothers films. Those who are unclear of what I am talking about should view Shout Factory's beautiful blu-ray of Man of Iron, which seems particularly plagued by this.
There was a thread from 2007 in Kung Fu Fandom discussing this (https://www.kungfufandom.com/topic/3...test-releases/) and the most interesting claim is that only happens in the Celestial releases, not Dragon Dynasty and the others. I have not verified that.
There was a thread from 2007 in Kung Fu Fandom discussing this (https://www.kungfufandom.com/topic/3...test-releases/) and the most interesting claim is that only happens in the Celestial releases, not Dragon Dynasty and the others. I have not verified that.
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