Vertical Type Blur in SPR
 

I was watching Saving Private Ryan the other night on TNT, and I noticed that at two times during the movie, once at the end of the D-Day battle and again at the end of the final battle, you see this vertical type smear or blur look. Anyone know how that was achieved? Was it done with the camera or in post?

Little green men in tights did it overnight, because that's what they're paid to do in Hollywood.

These men in tights, one day their tights will all belong to me! So I can be the pretty one on the ship....



yeah.....

Well lazy me, I figured it out on my own. I'm ashamed of myself cause the effect was stupendously easy.

Edit: Sorry for the lack of description. In Premiere/After Effects, it's a simple Screen/Linear Dodge overlay, with the top clip desaturated, with the Levels/Brightness and Contrast (or how ever hundred ways you can go about doing this) adjusted to make it extreme blacks and whites. Apply a blur that can be set to vertical, or a directional blur (of course different blurs get different results, Fast Blur seems to get the most extreme results), and the rest speaks for itself.

There's probably several other ways of doing this, but this is how I slumped into making it work 20 min before I went to sleep. If anyone has any other suggestions or methods, please share or discuss.

Do tell. [Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters.]

Thanks.










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Yeah, it still doesn't quite achieve the effect though. In SPR, the bluring seems to be alluminating from the bottom. You see the same effect in a recent commercial for Socom I think, or one of those games where you are watching a firefight taking place with a Humvee.

Plus, in SPR the details are not blurred. Just the light.

On DV you'd have to do it in post...the photographic technique involves throwing the shutter on your camera out of sync with the pull down claws, so that the film is still being dragged down into position as the shutter opens, but since the film is moving for only a fraction of the exposure time, only the brightest areas of the images will streak, the rest being burned out by the rest of the (now static) exposure.

J

Ah thanks a bunch for the explaination.

hey James,

could you give an example, a still of the film and a still of how you've managed to do it. I may sound novice but I can't picture myself what you are talking about. So it would prob be easy to see a picture or two

Many thanks Dimitri