Despite an all-star cast, an Oscar-winning director and source material from one of Broadway’s most well-known composers, Cats managed to become a widespread commercial and critical failure. Because the film should have been a recipe for success, it may seem hard to pin down exactly what went wrong during the process, but one of the primary problems is not that complicated—director Tom Hooper’s misuse of one of the most foundational, fundamental tools in a filmmaker’s toolkit: depth of field. Hooper is famously (or perhaps infamously) a fan of shallow focus. He likes having extremely blurry backgrounds, while the shot focuses […]