My brother put me onto a great Vimeo link to a guy called Keith Loutit, who uses a tilt shift lense; time lapses and fiddling with the brightness; contrast and colour to make what look like miniture objecs and people.

A link to his Vimeo page is here: http://vimeo.com/keithloutit

The result is amazing, and something to be highly praised. Even though these lenses have been around for years, his creativity really shines through.

I too looked at getting a tilt-shift lense, or even a contraption that might help me with the effect, but seemed very pricy, so with my limited knowledge of visual effects, I gave it a go faking it.

So after a lot of masking and gradient mattes and different kind of blurs, I got the result shown below.

It is mostly terrible, but a good first attempt. Things i have noted for the future when trying to 'fake' this effect:

• make sure I lock the camera down (boat scenes), and even if it is on a tripod, take it out of the wind - cos it shows through!
• Do not be careless with the masking (boat and tram scenes)
• Make sure the camera is actually in focus!!

My favourite by far is the Cherry Blossoms, so i might relook at doing that in the future just for the experience.

Anyway, you can see my result below, enjoy.