>>3468926That's just the lens itself at that aperture. You have to practice a bit to get the right background lighting setup so you can get it to be like that. The odd thing is that he needed to focus stack it. My lens can do that without needing extra photos for focus stacking. Maybe he just focus stacked for additional bokeh points?
>Would this work with christmas lights in the background using the cutout?Any brighter point of light will work. It can be the light through trees (pic here), xmas light, or any reflections. The sharpness of the bokeh comes from how well the point of light interacts with the other points of light near it. Having a proper amount of spacing between the points of light will result in well defined bokeh.
>human scaleIt can be done, but you need to have just the right distance between the subject and the background. You also need a lens with a very wide aperture. Like a Cannon 50mm f/1.0 ($3k-$5k used). Even then you'll only be able to get a bust shot from shoulders up. If you wanted to get more, you'd need to do a panorama.
>pic is from a 50mm Nikon Nikkor-S Auto f/1.4 