Shooting footage in public can add authenticity to a shot. Sometimes however, it may become necessary to blur people’s faces. This will prevent legal issues as well as maintain the privacy of people.
Today, I am going to show you a super quick and simple blur effect in Premiere Pro that will achieve this effect quickly freeing up the editor’s time for more important tasks. We will be utilizing Premiere Pro’s built in tracker for this.
How to Blur a Face in Premiere Pro CC (2017):
- Open up the Effects Go to Video Effects -> Blur & Sharpen -> Camera Blur and drag that onto your footage.
- Go up to the Effect Controls panel for the piece of footage that the camera blur was added onto.
- Go down the list of effects until you find Camera Blur and click on the oval looking shape beneath it.
- Drag the oval that has appeared on the footage to the subject’s face and modify the oval to cover their entire face.
- Go back to the Effect Controls panel of the camera blurred footage, find the Camera Blur again and look underneath for something that says Mask (1). Look for Mask Path under that and click on the wrench icon.
- Select Position, Scale & Rotation if it is not already selected.
- Go down to Mask Feather and increase that to around 50.
- In the Timeline panel go back to where the footage starts and drag the blurred circle into the desired position.
- Go back to the Mask Path section and click on the Play button. It will attempt to track the subjects face and automatically move the blurred circle.
Note: If you have any trouble with the tracking due to a more complex piece of footage or low resolution, you may have to manually keyframe the camera blur. This can be done in After Effects but is beyond the scope of this lesson.
After it is done processing you should now have a piece of footage with a blurred face that tracks to the subject! This approach is really quick and is perfect if you need to blur a face but don’t want to spend all day doing it.
