Something About an Aspect Ratio...

The Cavity:
For what it's worth, we're doing the same thing with our current project. To help avoid the debacle that Jungleguy/Machead referred to, you'll need some scotch tape, scissors, a ruler, and a thin piece of plastic. Oh, and a calculator if you're not good at math.

Cut the piece of plastic so it will completely cover the LCD panel on your camera. Use the marker to place dots on the piece of plastic where the corners of the LCD panel are. Next, do the math and figure out where the top and bottom boundries are going to be for your 16:9 letterbox. Using the ruler, draw the top and bottom boundry lines on the piece of plastic. Line up the dots on the LCD panel and tape the piece of plastic down. Frame accordingly.

Since you don't know (and you call yourself a filmmaker!) your trusty Digi-8 will shoot in 16:9 format while reducing the picture quality making it appear more grainy and less dynamic.

Perfect.

for what it's worth, the Back to the Future films were shot 4:3 and then had the 16:9 crop done for the cinema, as have many other films.

and this is a good read.

Quote:

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Originally posted by jungleguy:
who was that wierdo who stalked this board a while back. Von Strasberg or something, does antone remember

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Wasn't it Ralph Snart? And then he did change his name a couple of times before finally disappearing. A very weird and slightly disturbing character...

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ November 07, 2003 10:28 AM: Message edited by: Justin M. ]</font>

miker, thanks. Good article.

By the way, you'd be suprised how many films are shot in the open-matte format.

Everything from Stanley Kubrick's work to the Troma movies are shot using this process.

I shoot in fake 2.35:1 all the time and it's pretty easy. Having a camcorder with a flip-out screen helps no end. Why? Well, then you can follow:-

<u>Gwailofilms' Easy 2.35:1 on a Cheap Camcorder Method... Type... Thing... Erm...</u>
You will need-
</font><ul type="square">[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">A camcorder with analogue in</font>[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">A widescreen copy of Die Hard, Con Air or any other 2.35:1 movie with a big explosion in it</font>[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">A VCR & connecting leads</font>[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Masking tape</font>[*]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Stock for your camera</font>[/list]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">1) Hook your camera's inputs up to the VCR and copy an explosion or other bright section of your chosen movie (a bright section makes the bars stand out better, obviously) to your camcorder tape.

2) When you've finished recording, find the explosion on your camcorder tape and pause it.

3) Get your masking tape and lightly tape over the bars on the camera's screen. Pop a new tape in the camera (remembering to label your widescreen reference tape) and go shoot your movie.

4) When you capture your masterpiece for editing, capture the explosion from the widescreen reference tape first and export the brightest frame from it to your chosen image editing package (I use Paint Shop Pro).

5) Fill in the gap between the bars with pure white (white works better than blue or green, which can sometimes give a slight blue or green cast to the whole picture) and, while you're at it, make sure the bars themselves are pure black, then save the new frame.

6) Back in your editing software, edit your movie, then import the new frame and overlay it using either a white alpha matte or a difference matte.

Your matte may need deinterlacing to stop it jittering and you may also find you need to do a bit of vertical adjustment just to make sure the very tops of heads don't disappear, but it's all worth it.

For an example, right-click and "Save Target as..." this. All of the "widescreen bits" were acheived using the above method.

Pausing the tape is dicey. Sometimes the image will shift left or right, up or down when in the pause mode. Otherwise sounds like a good idea to playback an already made film that has the borders on it.

You should wait until you video is completely edited and then make a version with the borders. This allows you to keep a borderless version along with the new version with borders.