Overview
For my final project, I decided to recreate the dolly zoom shot used by Alfred Hitchcock in the movie Vertigo in addition to making fake miniatures using the tilt shifting focus technique.
The Vertigo Shot
The Vertigo shot is a special camera technique that involves changing the depth of an image while preserving the size of an object. The way I shot created this affect was taking a picture of an object up close, then moving further from the object while simultaneously zooming in on it. This changes the depth and the field of view in a unique way that creates Hitchcock's famous dolly zoom effect. Here are a couple examples of dolly zoom pictures that I took.
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Fake Miniatures
In this project, I was able to turn a regular image into a picture that looks like it is made out of fake miniatures by using a simple blurring technique call Tilt Shifting. Essentially, we choose a point on the picture and blur around a horizontal section of it, focusing on a small section of the picture. The result is a cool effect that makes the picture look like it is made with miniature because it simulates the illusion that the lens is really close to the subject. I did this using a simple horizontal mask and a Gaussian blurring effect. Here are a couple examples of images taken off of the internet and images I took myself.
Pictures from the Internet
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Tilt Shift Result
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Tilt Shift Result
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Tilt Shift Result
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Tilt Shift Result
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Tilt Shift Result
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Tilt Shift Result
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Some of the pictures that I tilt shifted didn't turn out to look like fake miniatures because they were too up close or weren't framed well. Take the Flower picture for example, the framing and the closeness of the original picture prevents it from looking like a fake miniature.
Conclusion
Both parts of the project were fun to work on as they were simple effects with incredible results. I especially liked making the Vertigo shots because the idea of it is basic but the result is very riveting and almost disturbing. All in all, this class was fun to take and I learned a lot from it. Thanks Taesung and thanks Efros!!!