Step By Step 8: Masking Effect

This effect is just a useful effect to have in your arsenal, when news reporters catch pedestrians or children in the background they need consent forms otherwise there face is not allowed to be shown. How do you get around it? with masking.

So for this to work i first imported my footage, i selected who's face to blur out & selected the blur i will be using to achieve the best result. I will then drag the blur over to the clip, this will leave me with a bunch of different options for me to tweak & change to get the best look for the mask im after. So once my settings were the way i wanted which you can see in the image below, i started creating the mask itself.

Now obviously because i am masking over a face the ellipse tool is the best for  the job, If you draw over & modify it to the shape of the characters head you will then be able to choose the amount of blur you want surrounding his/her face.

Once you have selected all of your options for the mask you then need it to track whoever is in the background of your shot as you don't want any slip ups. so there is an option to start tracking which will take around 3 to 5 minutes. Once that has rendered you will have something like this , the video clip is located at the bottom.