Featured Image Credit: u/SufficientSecret7164/ Reddit
A new video has shot to the front page of Reddit and amazed people with a simple videography trick called tilt shift.
This way of filming involves taking a video subject and filming it from a high-up perspective but with a really shallow depth of field, and it has one very obvious result - it makes realistic things look like toys.
Something about the focal length and frame rate just makes things look slightly unreal, and that video shooting up in popularity this week is a perfect example.
Advert
It shows purpose-built cars competing in a demolition derby event, lining up to crash into each other to see which one can be the last one standing.
It's an uproarious affair, and you can tell it's a fun one, but filmed from a drone and with tilt-shift editing the video takes on a completely surprising look and feel. The title is spot on when it says that it makes the cars "look like toys".
The comments section below the video, meanwhile, is full of people agreeing and expressing their shock at how effective the effect really is.
The top comment in the thread has over 2.6 thousand upvotes of its own, and the author said simply: "I promise you that I really thought they were [toys]".
Another popular response said: "I thought they were hotwheels until I saw a human. Still think it’s hotwheels."
In fact, there are a surprising number of people in the comments who just cannot accept that the footage is of real cars (even with one part of the video clearly showing an event organiser walking around flagging them into position).
One observer went into a little more detail on how they thought the video trick worked so well: "It looks like a dream. Like the way things look in focus up close but all the detail is gone in the background. At least it’s how my dreams look sometimes."
That's a personal approach, but the difference in focus detail is certainly a key part of the equation.
If you're taken with this style of video, meanwhile, the good news is that there are countless hours of other footage out there for you to search out.
A quick search on YouTube offers up countless more detailed explanations of how the technique actually works on a technical level, but also loads of examples of it in use.
One great case study comes from the official channel for the Coachella music festival, which made a tilt shift compilation video a few years ago to commemorate that year's series of shows.
It's a great example of how tilt shift can look, and is a pretty mesmerising watch.
