No one would have believed in the last years of the twenty-first century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences marginally greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of the series of tubes as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable, or more importantly, trivial. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Gizmodo, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of the interwebz, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects cynical and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely blogged their plans against us.

Kaiser-Machead's LEGO WALL-E

I love the music, anybody know who it is?

pdditty

@jibbly: Not really - You can get a really similar effect with a Lensbaby and a decent vantage point, or post-process with photoshop (look up tilt-shift photoshop) in order to achieve the same effect.

Eilonwynn

amazing.

adamator

@mullingitover:

You are right, in the boat video you can see how the upper part of the boat is blured, this only makes sense if it was blured with a non depth-conscious process, since all the boat is at the same distance. But it looks cool.

lolec

@mrafternoon: With nice lenses that cost $$$.

jibbly

nice music...

kazemizuhi

Reminds me of the little ice skating figurines you can get at christmas that skate in a circle.

DarkHavoc99

I get the feeling this was shot with a plain vanilla camera, then the DoF was artifically added in AfterEffects. Kinda like people have been doing with stills and photoshop for a long time now.

mullingitover

so how do i do it??

mrafternoon

Really really awsome. The boats look like some sort of electric football game.

Darascon

Oh - and the videos are awesome too. :)

shorty63136

Can I just say one thing?

CANON EOS 5D mk2 MOVIE MODE!!!

MrThunderfield

Lilliputian is my FAVORITE word! :)

^5 John for word usage

shorty63136

Ants!! Everywhere!!

waveman216

@TheMurderer: great. Way to go.

...you killed the comedy.

DeusExMach

@DeusExMach: It's listed on the source site.

TheMurderer

@pdditty: No problem. I actually found the credits on Vimeo where the vid was posted. It's a pretty cool site... I've got some stuff posted on there too:

[www.vimeo.com]

johnnyabnormal

"What... is This?! A beach for ANTS?! It is going to need to be at least... *pause*... Three times this size!!!"

DeusExMach

They look like they're in a real life Robot Chicken. Incredible.

TheMurderer

@johnnyabnormal: Thanks man!

pdditty

@johnnyabnormal: Your knowledge of obscure Europop is at the same time impressive and worrying...

DeusExMach

@pdditty: Same group did the other song too.

johnnyabnormal

@pdditty: "I feel Fine" by Sonido Lasser Drakar.

johnnyabnormal

Clip #1: "Dammit! They got into our potato salad!"

Clip #2: "Where's the drain plug?"

This gives me SOOO many ideas! Isn't it funny how our minds adjust to the concept that shallow depth of field equals itty bitty?

And @Kaiser-Machead's LEGO WALL-E:

He he... I recognize that bit of prologue... ;)

MyPetFly

@DeusExMach: Hey, it's a million times better than the music for the new "Night Rider". Holy crap, I saw the first episode out of curiosity and it was so bad I almost tore my hair out.

johnnyabnormal

@johnnyabnormal: I was going to make a thinly-veiled reference to Hasselhoff vehicles from the 80's in regards to the second song. I was even going to throw in a "Knight Boat" comment, complete with a "There's always a river" quote, based on the subtle bass-line of the song, assuming the similarities were coincidental. Then I read the title of the song at the end of the clip:

"'82 Pontiac Firebird." Which was an actual Hasselhoff Vehicle from the 80's.

DeusExMach

This is absolute genius, in reality we all are being controlled by bigger people up there...
This is undeniable evidence.

CHO

@DeusExMach: Being a composer, I do have a absurd knowledge of very obscure styles of music....BUT! I only followed the Vimeo link for those music credits. However, I did buy the album off iTunes just now. :)

johnnyabnormal

Lilliputians inhabit the island of Lilliput! I heard that locals there are only six inches tall and meet some tall dude named Gulliver.

pdditty

I loved that!

awemaker

@johnnyabnormal: They turned Kitt into the Gadget-mobile. "Now, he's a mustang! Now, he's a mustang with really shitty-looking plastic body-mods like a high school kid would put on his Civic! Now, he's an F150! Whoa!" What's next? "Now, he's the A-Team van! 'I pity the fool, Michael'".

...of course, that last transformation would arguably make the show more watchable.

DeusExMach

Brilliant, there has to be a use for this sort of thing!

Pwnieboy

@waveman216: Hehe, that works great with your avatar.

Toshie

This looks like Pikmin.

takashimiike 7

Tilt/Shift lenses do not make for a shallow DOF. They make for an altered DOF. Meaning, the plane of critical focus isn't parallel to the film/sensor plane. This lets you get everything on a table top in focus while anything physically above or below the table top is out of focus. Or so that two people standing adjacent but diagonally away from the photographer can remain in good focus while using a wide aperture to attain a desirable amount of focus blur in the background.

T/S doesn't make a wide aperture wider - just changes how that focusing plane is angled in relation to the light-sensitive medium.

Tommasta

love it. Reminds me of the 'creature view' in bad horror flicks. Y'know when the creature is stalking his/her prey and they show that almost out of focus shot with the token heavy breathing? yeah that one.

kahri

I really liked those videos. After a while it's hard to imagine those are real people and real boats. Very neat.

GTgeek

@MrThunderfield:
Same thing I was thinking.

buyrihn

@DeusExMach: What is with all the Zoolander quotes today AND yesterday???

I was just talking about that bit yesterday with a friend, and someone else was just quoting the movie earlier today in a comment. I give you +10 points, sir.

KarinLovesYou

This must be the same technique they used in the Superman:The Movie, while he was saving San Francisco from the earthquake!

RiceBandit

why couldn;t you just do this with a low f wide angle lens, blending many shots into a time-lapse video?

MrBlahBlah

There are black people in Australia right? Nary one in sight!

Anyway... I LOL'd at that orange tugboat doing donuts/fishtails... and that ferry boat operator got some skillz.

Gawd

@pdditty:

+ Watch video

Gawd

Is that on Final Cut?

vgart

They are fantastic. I love fake tilt shift stuff.
Wish I'd thought of it... :(

Well done to him anyway....

RedEye

Tilt-Shift Photography is neat, but it wasn't invented for the purpose of making people look like Lilliputians (although they do!)

The lenses tilt and shift to let someone take a picture of a tall building from the ground and still have it show vertical edges, so they're also called architectural lenses. They are very expensive.

It looks good (and is cool) but these are probably created by skewing and blurring the images digitally to achieve a similar effect.

stwf

T/S lens + 5D Mk II + HD Video mode = FTW

cerebrus

Watch for upcoming television commercials using this effect.

EricAlder