Achieving this sort of blur

[Ryan Dunn]

Impactist has a blog post on how they executed their title sequence, and had this to say about the blur effect…

“Several concepts were explored with the final look being a photographic reinterpretation of imagery. We used unique and novel lensing techniques to recapture live action series footage and additional US Supreme Court location photography. Custom intermediate lenses crafted of polycarbonate and acrylic were created and combined with fast aperture primes to reinterpret and reframe sequences to be further manipulated via compositing and editing.”

So it looks to me like they might have photographed the photographs, and used analog lens techniques to achieve that creamy, wonderful blur effect.

So my answer (without being flippant) is that they seem to have done it for real. Now, the recipe for recreating that in AE is another story, but I would imagine you could find organic stock footage or video, to get from white to black in interesting ways, and then use those as masks and time ramps on adjustment layers to drive nice blurs like lens/camera blur, or Frischluft’s Lenscare (if those still work with CC?).

Okay that’s all I’ve got!

…ryan

[Michael Luckhardt]

Haha, you’re not being flippant at all. Thank you so much for your well written response.

Ah! So it was done analogue, which is how they achieved such beautiful “Creamy blurs” as you so eloquently put it.

I love the idea of using stock footage as luma mattes to drive the blurs. I’ll give it a go and report back if I get something nice.

Thank you again.

[Chris Jeffries]

The technique is freelensing or lenswhacking I believe. There’s now a effect in Sapphire that can get you close:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y6ZLnizWQOI

Good luck!

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

[Ryan Dunn]

I didn’t know that term for the intermediate lens trickery, but it seemed tilt-shifty to me, and looks kind of like that, with a bit more chaos involved.

Very cool.

…ryan

[Michael Luckhardt]

Update! So the company I’m freelancing at actually had a license for Sapphire and I was able to install the Freelens plugin. It gave me exactly what I was looking for in terms of control @Chris Jeffries. So thank you for the Suggestion.

@Ryan Dunn, Before I got my hands on the plugin, I was trying something with the Lense Blur effect on an adjustment layer, which was using a precomped solid with a ramp in it as a luma matte. This was working OK, but Sapphire Freelens just gives way more control.