How Was This Second Life Machinima Effect Created?

I came across this mesmerizing SL machinima test recently, with a woman in shadows moving in an out of focus, but despite several attempts, haven't been able to reach Spoo Snook, its creator, to understand how he did it. Any ideas?

Clearly Mr. Snook is using a Second Life viewer with dynamic lighting enabled, such as KirstenLee's viewers, but beyond that I'm not sure how he's achieving the final result. Focus effect rendered in post-production? Whatever the method, a technique with great utility to convey mood, memory, or the beginning of a dream.

Comments

[Botgirl Questi]

Could have shot foreground and background separately, effected each layer individually and then composited with a chroma key.

[Toxic Menges]

certainly looks like more than one layer was used there .. nice effect :)

[Vaughan Vendetta]

Botgirl nailed it. You can see green spots bleeding through the avatar's hair in certain clips.

Pretty good idea, though.

~V.

[DilSpi]

oh, i love this focus work :)
for a still i snap a deep-map, the snapshot self and mix both in gimp.
As a studio work for the movie i would think about taking the two separate sets. The first with the background itself (in this set it could also be a photo), a second with the women in front of a blue/green background. Both would be mixed in a video-editing-software.

Ciao
Dil

[Dusty Jamberoo]

The cinematographic term is "rack focus" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rack_focus

[Torley]

I'd love a live, natural way to do this in Second Life. There are so many cinematic optics, even subtle ones, which attract attention by means of their absence — something feels off, disturbing. (Currently reading Walter Murch's insights on film editing.)

Sometimes I'm a bokehholic.

Outworld, I helped design NewBlueFX's rack focus plugin. Now, if I could see faux tilt-shift + machinima... *drool*

[Carla Broek]

more than one layer and post production, definitely;) nice work....would like to see focus embedded in SL viewers