Before I was born, many directors tried to keep as much of the shot in focus as possible. Deep focus is both a technical challenge, because it requires brighter

Before I was born, many directors tried to keep as much of the shot in focus as possible. Deep focus is both a technical challenge, because it requires brighter lighting, and an artistic challenge because it makes composition of the shots more difficult. You need to pay attention to the background so there's no distracting things behind the actor's heads, for example. You can't get away with shoddy sets. And it's more difficult for the actors. They can't improvise movement and let the photographer track them, they have to exactly follow their planned movements so they line up with the background correctly. I don't have any statistics for it, but it seems shallow focus is more popular now. But I think shallow focus is lazy and insulting to the audience. If your foreground action isn't compelling enough for me to watch then the solution is to make it better, not blur the background so I have nothing else to watch. Deep focus looks more realistic. In real life I can choose to look at the background details, and I want that option in film. I want to see more use of deep focus. With the availability of high CRI LED lighting the technical challenge is much reduced now.