Sharpening out-of-focus footage

[stevedocmaker]

My cameraman, or shall I say x-cameraman, shot an interview that is pretty badly out of focus. Any suggestions on sharpening? Of course I can just drop and unsharp mask or sharpen filter on the clip, but I'm hoping for a little more magic than that.



Steve Keller
Differential Films

 

[Rainer]

Basically you're stuck. Use a lot of cutaways. As well as a judicious use of an unsharp mask, it helps if you blur the background, looks like you might be in a good position to do that. I've seen camera people who messed up wedding vows saying they deliberately went to a lot of trouble to produce a romantic soft focus look.

 

[txdp]

Yes if you can defocus the background more, that will help. You can also add more contrast to the guy, which fools the eye into thinking its sharper, although that can bring out skin imperfections.

 

[kostas]

The right hand side of the t-shirt appears to be in focus.
Is it all of the footage that is out of focus?
Most probably it was shot at a wide aperture and the guy moving back and forth at times resulted in out of focus shots.
I am only mentioning this because you will have more trouble matching slightly out of focus shots, with crisp in focus shots.
If everything is slightly out of focus, at least, it will have a uniform look and you can get away with a slight unsharp mask or increase of local contrast.