Dododreams

Let’s just wash away the ickiness of that last movie link with something technologically intriguing.

There’s been a photographic technique that’s been becoming more and more popular over the last couple years, called tilt shift miniaturization. In a nutshell, using special lenses and/or manipulated blurring and color intensification effects results in a photograph which seems as though it was taken of a table-top sized model.

Here’s some examples:

Pretty cool, eh? Remember, those are real scenes, not miniatures.

So here’s the coolest thing. A fellow named Keith Loutit worked with the Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service in New South Wales, Australia, to make an entire movie using this tilt-shift miniaturization technique. This is a real training mission even though it looks like stop-motion animation. It’s amazing!

Wikipedia entry on tilt-shift miniature faking.

Here is Loutit’s site on Vimeo at which he gives a few more details about the film. It’s worth clicking here to watch the movie again in a larger size, and in high-def.