Flip Camera Tilt-Shift Visual Experiments.

I have just taken the low quality video from a flip camera and was seeing how interesting I could quickly make it with some inspiration from tilt-shift techniques.

Due to interest in the song in the video, I've put it up on my music MySpace page so that anyone can download or stream it for free. Click here to get it.

Comments

[me]

what is this song? its great

[VitaminCM]

What did you use to create the effect?
Wat software and filter?

[bobsmo]

here is a link to info on using a lens or faking tilt shift.

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/27/fake-tilt-shift-phot.html

[Reid Gershbein]

Thanks! I wrote the song in Reason in about 15 minutes. :)

I used Final Cut Pro to do the effects. Essentially, just took the video and made three layers of the same video on top of each other.

1) Top layer put four or eight point garbage matte on it on the
area you want in focus, use feathering to smooth edges.
2) Middle layer put another garbage matte and have the area
slightly larger than the top layer, and put a small
gaussian blur of about 5-10 pixels
3) Bottom layer just put a gaussian blur on it 15-20 pixels.

Put some brightness and saturation filters on the video and crank up the saturation.

Added a widescreen matte to change the aspect ratio look.

Added some Time or Video strobe effects to remove frames and make it look more stop motiony in some of them.

Also used the Color Correction filter and increased highlights and mids to increase contrast (better than using the contrast increase).

[Claude]

VitaminCM, Thanks for the lensbaby link!

[Jem]

Hi,
I am a real novice on Final Cut Pro (I have it through default at work) and I would like to ask how you move the points on the garbage matt to get the area you require to be in focus? ie how do you place the selection area where you want it? I played around with the number values in the effects panel but it was totally random and I didn't know where the points where going to end up...but the effect you described did work (so, some kind of success!)
So would you mind telling me how I get real time control of the matt 'points'
Great work by the way, I love the tram one!

[Christopher Monnier]

Can you make the song publicly available somehow (download, put it on iTunes, something)? I love it!

[aandnota]

seriously, this is a great song. please make it available! :D

[webdevel]

Ditto to aandnota. I love the technique a lot but I also LOVED that song. It's great. I'd love to get it if possible. Any chance you'd be willing to share it?

[Reid Gershbein]

I'll put the song online for free for streaming and downloading later today. I'll probably put it on MySpace or something and let everyone know where it is.

Thanks!

[Reid Gershbein]

I just put the song up for free so that anyone can download or stream it.

You can get it on my music MySpace page here:

http://www.myspace.com/reidgershbein

Enjoy!
-REid

[Craig]

The thing is, (real and fake) tilt-shift blurring creates the illusion of miniatureness only when the subject is planar enough that the focused area is all equidistant from the camera, making it appear that it low depth-of-field is creating the blurriness of near and far objects. Many of these images have areas that are blurry that wouldn't be if it was a miniature scene, and vice versa. If you're going to do computerized blurring, you may as well selectively blur based on distance for the real effect of depth-of-field rather than approximating the effect of tilting a lens, which is itself only an imperfect approximation of the effect you're actually going for.

[maaaty]

great job -- never would've thought the flip camera could do that. and good choice of subjects, too.

[Reid Gershbein]

To move the matte points in Final Cut, you can click on the "+"
button to the right of the x and y fields in the filter menu.
Then you can click and drag the point around in the preview
window (which is the right window in the "Standard" window
configuration).

I am a complete and total novice at Final Cut, so someone else
might be able to tell you the specific terms of what I am
trying to describe.

[Darth Brooks]

You got a little lazy at the end, but this was a nice piece of work. Inspiring. Keep it up!

[Reid Gershbein]

The last 1/4 of the movie shows the original footage so that you can see what it looked like originally. :)

[ariel wollinger]

gaussian blur is not like camera blur. you should use some camera blur plugin. The result is way more realistic. Usually called camera blur or rack defocus.

[gtron]

well, I'm not so sure a "more realistic" result is either needed or intended... to me I felt like I was watching a live lego set or some sort of kids imaginary world... 'realism' is not always the best option. Nice work and thanks for being open with your tips...
I made a film last year about two guys lost in the wilderness, I'm thinking of revisiting the edit and trying some of this to see if it would isolate them even further

[Reid Gershbein]

You absolutely could use a "defocus" or other blur to get a more realistic effect.
For me, it was really an artistic decision to go with the techniques that I used to and exploring different visuals. Just playing around with trying to get things that I liked
the way they looked, regardless of how "realistic" they looked. In fact, I was pushing
beyond realism to get more interesting effects.

[Ron Koeberer]

Have never seen it done on film. Interesting.

The best example in still photography can be
seen here: http://www.claudioedinger.com

[Ruby Rose]

Reid - Agree with Claudio Enger's work. I've been looking for tilt shift videos and the only other time's I've seen this done is on the radiohead video clip and the short films by keith loutit http://keithloutit.com