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Aside question: Can anyone elaborate a little bit on the camera, lenses, and graphical effects used to produce the blur/focus effect in this video?

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I don't know how they did it, but it could have been easily done with a DSLR with video capabilities and a decent fast lens. Note that the camera was mostly static, except for example when doing minute panning movements (not too smooth, so probably they didn't have the right type tripod head) towards the right and shifting focus so as to put the viewer's attention on the different icons.

I didn't spot any panning at all - just how abruptly focus had changed. However, there were quite a few jumps where panning would have been more appropriate (imo). One trick to getting smooth pans with a cheap tripod is to use a rubber band around the handle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj6fMcJ18aA

Ah, thanks. So most if not all the smarts were in the camera, not in the post-shooting graphic polish?

Simulated Depth of Field on flat surfaces like this can easily be made in post production using After Effects for example. Here is an old tutorial I found http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/2d_depth_of_field/

You could probably add even more flair by using a 3d camera in AE with DOF enabled, I've done this before and it can look really slick if used well.

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