Meanwhile VFX Studio a52 and their VFX Supervisor Shahana Khan worked on implementing the selective focus technique for the Henley Regatta sequence. "We were able to achieve a miniaturized look, but also showcase the Winklevoss brothers' unawareness of the world around them," Khan suggests. "They were always trailing Mark Zuckerberg's actions, and losing the race is yet another allegory to being one step behind. Everything around them is literally out of focus."

Not only that, but given the brightly lit, expansive location and the narrow depth of field during the actual race, the regatta seems very Old World, so the twins become fish out of water temporally as well as spatially.

"The first challenge was to create a process that we could use from shot to shot because the entire sequence runs about a minute-and-a-half, but there are 57 shots and each one was affected," Khan continues. "The first thing was to pull reference, some of which came from actual tilt-shift photography, while a lot of it came from sports photography. They shot during an actual Henley Regatta but not the race. It was important to make it feel like an action sequence because it's the only one in the film. It was also important to maintain the aesthetic, so we added a lot of grain to the footage because the Red provides a crisp and clean look.

"We applied an overall focus to each shot so it wouldn't appear jarring and the focus didn't change dramatically from shot to another. To achieve this effect all the subjects were isolated on their own plane. Articulate mattes were cut of each person in the scene. There was also extensive background replacement for many of the shots. We were fortunate to receive a lot of B camera footage shot at the Henley Regatta. This allowed us to accurately incorporate crowd, boat and additional objects. Additional set photography was also provided to create authentic matte paintings of tents and additional architecture, aiding to the chronology of the sequence. Silver clouded sky replacements played an essential role in creating an ominous mood.

"Each shot was tracked in 3D. Using this camera information allowed us to replace the backgrounds via camera projection and also create detailed depth maps. These maps were used to simulate the lens effect. We also created a custom kernel on which the blur was based.Noise displacement textures were also generated to add movement to the still backdrops, creating subtle movements and oscillations."

Khan worked round the clock with both day and night shifts, compiling an edit every day for review: it was very time consuming and meticulous work to isolate every object, implement the backgrounds, relight them and add blur so they didn't appear as still photographs.

"Typically, tilt shift is a technique most commonly used on wide shots or birds eye photography," she explains. "It is most effective in these circumstances, because it simulates a shallow depth of field normally encountered with macro lenses, making a large scene seem much smaller than it really is. This proved challenging in a sequence of 57 shots, the edit accelerates as the race closes in, cutting from a variety of wide, medium and close-up shots.  Initially, we needed to define the lens effect across the diversity of these shots, creating an effective aesthetic that was both true to the idea and achieved the intentional plane of focus, without jarring the viewer."

Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN & VFXWorld.