creating a fake depth of field in post

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Paunch

Well-known member
I've seen some pretty sweet wedding videos out there @ http://www.stillmotion.ca/site.html

and wonder how in the hell do they have the time to set focus when doing a shoot like a wedding where everything is pretty much run and gun. Is there a way to do this in post? it'd sure make capturing these images a helluva lot easier if' i'm not constantly pulling focus when I'm doing an event shoot such as this.


sorry about posting in 2 forums, I have a shoot tomorrow and figured this forum might be quicker than premiere pro.
 
You can try to mask out sections in post and add blur but it will never really look natural. There are many shooters who are extremely good at pulling focus on the fly and that's how most get that DOF with run and gun shoots. It takes time and practice but thats the way to go.
 
I am and was a photographer, that's where I started. Shallow depth of field has always been a reality in that field, and it's no less 'run and gun'. You have to get a lot of shots that second, so you have to be quick making it happen. Quicker than autofocus, since sometimes autofocus tries to hit the wrong thing. Thanks to that experience in an environment that forces you to get good at it I can handle it pretty well on video, as well. Not as well as some of the people who have been doing it a lot longer, but it is possible with practice, a good eye and a steady hand.
 
It's not really that difficult to grab focus on the fly. Just get your shot, zoom in, focus, zoom out to your desired focal length. Should take all of 2 seconds to focus as long as it's not a rack focus move.
 
Andrew McCarrick said:
It's not really that difficult to grab focus on the fly. Just get your shot, zoom in, focus, zoom out to your desired focal length. Should take all of 2 seconds to focus as long as it's not a rack focus move.
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Not that easy when your DOF is just a few inches to each side. Not to mention a lot of SLR zoom won't track focus as you zoom in or out.
 
Paunch said:
I've seen some pretty sweet wedding videos out there @ http://www.stillmotion.ca/site.html
Click to expand...

Yeah, stillmotion does some really great looking stuff. As far as I know, they use 35mm adapters, as well as having 3-4 cameras and operators per wedding at a much higher starting price than the average wedding video. Not to say that one videographer couldn't get similar results, but I would bet that having those extra cameras and videographers would make it a bit easier for each shooter to focus on a specific part of the wedding at any given moment. Where in the case of a single videographer who is tasked with trying to capture a whole wedding with much less time for some of those creative shots due to having to cover more ground.

If they still have their blog, I would check it out. They talk about their tools and techniques there.

and wonder how in the hell do they have the time to set focus when doing a shoot like a wedding where everything is pretty much run and gun. Is there a way to do this in post? it'd sure make capturing these images a helluva lot easier if' i'm not constantly pulling focus when I'm doing an event shoot such as this.
Click to expand...

I personally wouldn't want to deal with the hassle of a 35mm adapter setup at a wedding unless I had a couple extra cameras and operators covering things also with a standard non-adapter setup just in case.

The thing is, you can achieve shallow DOF without an adapter for nearly the whole wedding. For ceremony shots, you will probably be zoomed in quite a bit anyways during the vows, so your background will be soft due to the longer focal length.

For outdoor shots, like pre/post ceremony pictures, use your ND filters. I've gotten some great shallow DOF shots with the assistance of ND filters. What the ND filter does is allow you to open the camera's iris up, so you can use an f-stop of around 2.0-2.8 or so, depending on your camera. I like this method as opposed to adapters because it is just so much easier to deal with yet still can look great.

Now when the whole vDSLR thing really pans out a bit more, then I think those types of cameras will be amazing tools for wedding videography, or wedding cinematography if you will.

You can also do the post route. Sure it doesn't look as good on every shot, but it can be a really nice stylized type of DOF that works great for some shots. I like to use Magic Bullet Looks and their soft focus and swing tilt filters. If you have Magic Bullet Looks then try those filters out, or download the demo. It is a great little color grading program to have for weddings. Just takes a long time to render if you use it on the majority of your video. Sometimes though, it looks great and is worth it.
 
I've done it once or twice on a few shots, but it's really dependent on the shotnwether or not it will work well. I'd only try it on a lock off where the subject doesn't move too much. Otherwise youll spend days animating a matte. In fcp you copy the shot and layer it above itself. Draw a matte overt the area you want to stay in focus, then blur the shot below.
 
They use Merlins, sliders, dollies... of course it's easier to get great shots when you're 3-4 shooters.

Also on one of their videos on Vimeo they recommend to use Tiffen dfx as opposed to Magic Bullet because they say it's easier and faster (for SDE's I suppose)
 
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