From DVX100 to the big screen?

[GoodLuck]

I'm doing a short for a film festival and was wondering what the best settings are, so when it's blown up on the screen it looks good.

Lately I've been capturing the footage in 4:3 and editing it 24p standard 4:3.

It would only seem logical to capture it in widescreen and edit it in widescreen format 16:9 but here is the dumb question...do I need to do anything on the camera that improves a 16:9 capture/edit? I have a regular DVX100.

Any other suggestions or advice?

 

[Joshua Provost]

Original DVX can't record 16:9 footage, no SQUEEZE mode. Your current 4:3 process is as good as it gets.

As for theaters, it's a crapshoot due to variances in the projection systems. You'd need to know some real specifics about the projection system that will be used to know how to optimize, but that's not much you can do. Just shoot the best footage you can, and it'll give you the best chance to look good on screen, but be prepared to be disappointed.

I recently was able to see a film of mine digital projected at two different film festvials within a week. Same source DVD was provided to both. The film was way too bright at the first festival (my day-for-night looked like day again), and slightly too dark at the second festival. Neither look much like what I see on my calibrated monitor at home. Same DVD, it sort of proves there is no predicting it.

 

[Gobo]

Joshua is right on. I had a viewing of all of our shorts at a local theater. The films i shot in 4x3 in 24p advanced mode looked absolutley beautiful projected on the screen. I mean absolutely beautiful. A lot of it had to do with the fact that we lit it correctly. On the other hand, one of our films was shot in squeeze mode, 16x9. It looked HORRIBLE. It was too dark in spots and washed out. i had to take each shot of the film and correct it for their projector...it was a pain, and it still didnt look good as the stuff shot in 4x3.

Having said that, the squeeze mode film looks INCREDIBLE on plasmas and bigscreens. And i mean incredible. So i believe it had something to do with their projector, but i have no idea what. For this reason, im torn about how to shoot our feature in May.

If you can, I would do some test footage (light it properly) in both and go test it on their system.