Blog

Miniature Atlanta Airport

This two-shot masterpiece is the result of boredom while sitting at a Chili's Too overlooking the runway while waiting for your flight. Took the thing on my iPhone, as I didn't have my 7D on me, which obviously results in auto-exposure flicker and adjustments that I could do without. Then I took the footage in to After Effects and applied the camera blur using a gradient as a depth map to create the tilt-shift effect. This effect has probably (no, definitely) been overdone, but I still think it's fun, so I just wanted to take a chance to figure out how to do it. Also learned how to do the scribbly sort of text and apply 3D shadows in real environments just for fun. Did you catch the vroom? I have no idea why I put that in there. If anybody watches this video and wants to figure out how to do any of these things also, you could check out these things that I used: Tilt-shift: http://www.cleverbits.com/tiltshift.php Scribbly text: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln_rtwYd9eU (I had no idea there was a scribble effect in After Effects. Made it much easier than I thought it was going to be) 3D shadows: http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/3d_shadows/ Song: "Swing Tree" by Discovery (the real version is quite a bit longer) http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/swing-tree/id319345775?i=319345888

This is a video that I made a couple weeks ago from footage that I shot while eating at the Chili's Too at the Atlanta airport before boarding a flight. I had been up to this spot before and knew that it was the perfect perspective from which to get this kind of tilt-shift effect, so I was excited when we got sat at the exact same table this time. Didn't have my 7D on me, so I just busted out the ol' iPhone, rested it against the glass and let'er roll. Then I took that footage into After Effects, applied a lens blur with a depth matte, and voilà, miniature planes! Miniature baggage carts! I also decided to apply some sketchy-looking (as in drawn-on, not dangerous) text just for fun and because it was something that I wanted to learn how to do. Then I applied 3D shadows to the text to make it feel like it's in the space. It really makes no sense... it's meant to look like it's drawn-on over the image, and yet, also a part of the image. Oh well, I like it.

Overall, the whole tilt-shift thing has been really overdone, but I do think that it's a cool effect that can be used effectively. I'm excited to have learned how to create this effect in post, and hopefully I can use it more extensively in a piece sometime.