Tilt Shift

I like to tinker, if you couldn’t tell.  So when I saw the intro to Sherlock I wanted to replicate it.  You can either buy a very expensive lens with fancy knobs or you can replicate it in After Effects.  I am not so apt at After Effects that I want to make masks and blur areas that I select.  If poorly executed it looks kind of stupid.  From the samples that I found that were flawed I can see two major things that will help make it believable.  The first is the angle; you cannot be on level with the subject and expect it to look right.  The second is the lens; you want your lens to be fairly wide.  With these considerations I figured I could not get it right and kind of set the idea aside.  Then I discovered that my Nikon d5100 has a miniaturize feature.  I tested it from a campus parking garage and have linked the video below.  I was pretty pleased with the result of the camera doing the blurring for me.

High Street Miniature test from Nicolette Swift on Vimeo.