I was wondering how many use post processes tools to add blur to their transitions in post. I'm reviewing my footage and I'm wondering if I should just be shooting wide open, and then deal with blurring the footage in post for transitions. Does this work or does it look fake? Any recommended tools.

We used to do this with magic bullet in post but it looks totally fake, your better off just doing without. All it does is blur the edges and when you actually look at shallow dof footage this is nothing like what it actually does.

Greg,

If you mean doing something equivalent to rolling focus to completely obscure everything, while leading into a transition, then you can do this by just adding blur to the last second or two of a shot in post. I've done it, but not for awhile, and sparingly at that.

Hi Greg

I personally wouldn't go to all the trouble of creating DOF but if you are intent on doing so try using FX Home's Visual Studio ....there is a tutorial at :

FXhome.com :: Tutorial :: Artificial depth-of-field (http://fxhome.com/support/tutorials/view/8/Artificial+depth-of-field)

It involves masking the background and then putting just the background out of focus ..I have never tried it with a bride and groom but have a look anyway!!

Chris

I use FCP 7 and have added blur in the background. It takes a ton of rendering time and makes it slower to work on the timeline, even with a fast computer. You can send it to Color and add tracking too. The background has to be clean or you will end up keyframing each individual frame manually.