How'd They Do THAT?! (making real life look like miniatures)

Pictures played back at 24fps. I bet if you introduce some/any camera movement it will destroy the semblence. I am sure of it, it will look like a terribly focused aerial shot.
 
I tried a couple in PS

Kind of a cool effect; think I'll use this technicque in a flick.................

blur1dj.jpg


blur28ih.jpg
 
As mentioned a few post earlier, I tried it with 25P footage, and it looks cool. Trucks moving down the road look like toys or tiny models.

Moving the camera though... Hmmm.... You may have a point. Without shooting through a lens which removes perspective, you'd have to keyframe perspective correction.

Regardless, it's a cool effect. I'm already planning a music video. :)
 
If anyone knows of a better blur plugin for Vegas, let me know.

An accurate distortion plugin would be nice too.
 
I saw another practical use of this technique which would require use of movement - having title cards or slides appear as if they were placed in front of the lense by hand... simulating old style titles... hard to explain...
Or even to simulate a live hair or speck getting into a projector...
Hope this makes sense to someone...
 
pmark23 said:
I spent a few hours experimenting in Vegas. No stills because so far everything still sucks, but am getting close.

What I did is:

1. Take footage shot from a high angle, but where you can't see where the vanishing-point is. Seeing the vanishing-point ruins the illusion. High contrast images work better.

2. Distort the image to reduce parallax. Lines should not converge. I used the "deform" plugin, and squeeze the top and bottom (actually, unsqueeze the top, and squeeze the bottom so that parallax lines become parallel.)

3. Blur the area outside of the center. This is where the image becomes sucky, because Vegas doesn't have the proper blur. I could only use the "zoom" blur, which isn't the right effect. What you need to do is have a horizontal section clean, then blur the edges, and especially top and bottom. The blur should be increasing sharply from the center of focus. Unfortunately Vegas can't do this.

Otherwise, this looks like the right direction. It will look really cool done on video -- in fact it already looks cool. Trucks moving down the road look like toys (I used video I shot from a high crane looking down onto a busy oilfield.)

Anyone else experiment with this? I think this could be done easily in After Effects, but I don't have it on my 'puter.
Click to expand...

Break it into layers; use crops/bezier masks.
 
It's just a lensbaby. Super simple little lens. Lots of fun too.
I think it is anyway.
 
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Ill bet you could makeup people, like in appliances, sort of like Max Headroom-ish and then people wouldn't ruin the effect.

Could someone explain reduce parallax? I looked up the word and i'm still fuzzy. So you take an image or video clip, then break that into pieces? and reassemble them so that it's not uniform and then blur areas ? Am i way off?
 
Just today I happened to see a video of Rome by this guy, in an Italian art gallery. Man, that looked amazing... Not only the buildings, but the people walking by, even in the center of the frame they looked so clean but detail-less, more eroded than blurred... it didn't look that easy to do in post. I don't know what it was shot with, tough.

Leandro
 
Someone tried this with video. I can't tell if it's cool or not, because even the latest version of Quicktime can't play it on a PC. I wish people would stop using Quicktime and encode with something a little more universal. :furious3:

Direct link here. Site here with before and after pictures (warning: embedded Quicktime which crashes Firefox.)
 
pmark23 said:
Someone tried this with video. I can't tell if it's cool or not, because even the latest version of Quicktime can't play it on a PC. I wish people would stop using Quicktime and encode with something a little more universal. :furious3:

Direct link here. Site here with before and after pictures (warning: embedded Quicktime which crashes Firefox.)
Click to expand...
I'm glad I'm not alone. I thought something was wrong with my machine.
 
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