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Smallgantics is a digital post production technique to simulate miniature cinematography on full scale filmed sequences, created and developed by Jim Clark inspired by tilt-shift photography by Olivo Barbieri.
[edit] Technique
The Smallgantics process begins with artists hand creating as many as eight planes of z-buffering over live-action footage, on a frame by frame basis, resulting in an animated black and white matte (filmmaking) sequence. These mattes are then blended together with varying degrees of blur to seamlessly blend together and create the effect of shallow depth of field. A more sophisticated use of the technique allows the animator/compositor to rack, or change, focus within the image as the footage over time.
With Olivo Barbieri's method, which tricks the eye into seeing a real landscape as miniature through what appears to be macro depth of field, certain objects in the frame can betray the illusion. For example: a telephone pole extending vertically from the bottom to the top of frame using tilt-shift photography, would start in soft focus at the bottom, enter into sharp focus in the middle, and return to soft focus on the top. In actuality, since the telephone pole is within a single plane in 3D space, the amount of focus should remain constant from top to bottom.
[edit] History
The Smallgantics technique was first used in a public production on a series of helicopter sequences for music video "Harrowdown Hill" featuring Thom Yorke.
[edit] Smallgantics Examples
