2 Steps for Shooting Miniatures in the Air

If you want to raise your drone piloting game with no special requirements for the tilt-shift effects, this article will be helpful. Have fun!

We are going to share some useful tips in this article for your shooting and post-processing.

Shooting

Composition: it’s an important influential factor for your shooting. You can shoot the subject from an aerial perspective, keeping the drone at an angle of 15 to 75 degree over the object at certain distance.

Color: Shoot colorful objects on sunny days and avoid backlight. In this way, you can create more splendid images and achieve better miniature effects during the post blur process.

Scene: For still vast stretches of objects such as buildings or containers, you should decide which part to be blurred before shooting. For moving objects such as crowds, cars and ships, you can achieve an interesting sense of Lilliput or toy world through post-processing.

Post-processing

There are a wide range of blur methods and plug-ins, from which you can choose as you like. In this article, we will introduce the following methods: adjust the color, stability, mask and matting in AE; render the photos into TIFF, and import them into the PR for editing, background music adding and transitions.

Blur: import the photos into the AE, and drag them into the timeline after new composition. Copy them and add the blur effects. The Camera Lens Blur is recommended for more natural blur effects.

The following photos show the difference between Fast Blur and Camera Lens Blur.

Enter the Effects Control and tune the Blur Radius and Shape (in Iris Properties)

You can also try to tune other parameters.

Mask:

In one case, you can add a strap mask in the middle of the footage to keep the middle part clear and rest part blur. As is shown below, cover the subject with the mask, change the overlaying method into Subtract and tune the Mask Feather to make the footage look more natural. (Click the picture below for more setting details)

To achieve a blur effect closer to the shallow depth of field, you can add another layer of blur. Augment the blur radius at the top and bottom and add another layer of blur, then enlarge the mask range and properly increase the blur value.

In the other case, it is more complex because you have to set the mask path and sketch the buildings. As the buildings’ location vary with the moving shots, we need to set the mask path. Normally the camera moves slowly, the subject’s location doesn’t change a lot, so you don’t have to set the mask path for every footage. You can set the mask path every half second.

I used two masks here, the Mask Feather for the upper mask is 0 in order to highlight the buildings from the background. As the roof and trees are separate, so no transition is needed for the clear part and blur part. However, the Mask Feather for the lower mask is increased to make the transition from the buildings to the background trees more natural because the buildings are visually close to the trees.

Is it worthwhile to sketch the subject and add the mask? You can see the difference in the two pictures below. The first one is created by normal mask while the second one like miniatures is created by adding the mask based on the buildings’ sketch.

Color Correction: I usually tune the basic color correction parameters in AE, such as Curves, Hue/Saturation and Levels.

There are many color correction plug-ins and it is quite a personal thing. Yet I think high saturation and high contrast can create better effects.

Suggestions:

In a word, you only need two steps to make miniatures: blur and mask.

It doesn’t take long to make a single picture. But if you want to make a complete short film, you will need to collect enough materials and repeat the steps. In particular, for moving shots, you have to constantly set the mask path with patience. When I finished this short film, though not perfect, I felt a sense of accomplishment. It was a special gift for myself even though I missed some good scenes for various reasons.

The post 2 Steps for Shooting Miniatures in the Air appeared first on Drone Inner.