Racking Focus

This is a great way to make sure your camera is properly focused. You need what's called a Sieman's Star (also called a "Five Degree Focus Pattern") which I downloaded from www.rondexter.com, which is a great website for filmmaking info and downloads. It's a bunch of alternating black and white wedges connected at a point in the center. Each wedge is five degrees wide, hence the name.


Chad holding the card
What you do is this: make sure your camera has a manual focus setting, put it on manual, then have a production assistant hold the card at the focus position (for example, where your actor's face will be). Zoom in on the card, rack the focus back and forth until the fuzzy area in the middle disappears or gets very small. Zoom back to frame your scene, and you're done. It works like magic!