LegoMatrix - Making of Scene 11

The 11th scene we shot, and also the 11th scene in our film.

We spent ages trying to get the depth of field in this shot with Lego and our camera. The original movie has the gun in stark focus and the agent and building blurry behind it. We wanted to duplicate this contrast, and tried all manner of weird and wacky techniques to get it.

We tried using a plastic bag to soften everything behind the gun, but this was abysmal. Next was using sticky tape for a similar effect, but it was too harsh. We even tried using a Lego salt and pepper shaker set that is a giant head. With the over-sized head we figured we could move it much further away from the camera and appear the right size, thereby being outside the focal range and really blurry. It was funny, but not that good.

In the end we just stuck with the macro on the camera and accepted what it gave us. Not as blurry as we'd like, but not that bad all things considered.

A quick note about the background: When Steve first looked at it he tried to remove the agent from the image with extensive clone brushing and blurring. After some time he sheepishly realised that the background was essentially just a blurry rectangle with some darker green across the right and bottom edges (you can see it up there in that header image on the left.) He quickly free-handed it and made a great copy of it in about a minute. In the end we never bothered with it and just reused our existing building printout.

The 11th scene we shot, and also the 11th scene in our film. We spent ages trying to get the depth of field in this shot with Lego and our camera. The original movie has the gun in stark focus and the agent and building blurry behind it. We wanted to duplicate this contrast, and tried all manner of weird and wacky techniques to get it. We tried using a plastic bag to soften everything behind the gun, but this was abysmal. Next was using sticky tape for a similar effect, but it was too harsh. We even tried using a Lego salt and pepper shaker set that is a giant head. With the over-sized head we figured we could move it much further away from the camera and appear the right size, thereby being outside the focal range and really blurry. It was funny, but not that good. In the end we just stuck with the macro on the camera and accepted what it gave us. Not as blurry as we'd like, but not that bad all things considered. A quick note about the background: When Steve first looked at it he tried to remove the agent from the image with extensive clone brushing and blurring. After some time he sheepishly realised that the background was essentially just a blurry rectangle with some darker green across the right and bottom edges (you can see it up there in that header image on the left.) He quickly free-handed it and made a great copy of it in about a minute. In the end we never bothered with it and just reused our existing building printout.
	Here you can see the sticky tape rig we built, and how it fit together. The tape was mounted between the gun and the agent's face, in an effort to make just his face and the background blurry and keep the gun in sharp focus. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this didn't work at all.
	And here we have the salt and pepper shaker head balanced on a Foxtel remote control off in the distance. As you can see, it's not really awful, and somewhat amusing. Unfortunately it was just too silly, and quite obvious unless you're squinting. Don't ask if the head was for the salt or the pepper, we've no idea. He could have used a shave, though.