How to change aspect ratio on 16mm film?

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leaftors

Well-known member
Without using anamorphic lenses? I'll either use a bolex or arri st (limited in 2nd year film school.)

Is it possible? What about cropping in camera?
 
We always shot 1.33:1, framing for widescreen and added the letter box in post, now that was transferring to SD video. With 1.33:1 film transferred to 16X9 HD Video, you may want to talk to your transfer house and ask them how to do it. I would personally hate to have to do the aspect ratio change on the fly during the transfer. Just off the top of my head, I would think that doing a full frame transfer, to an compressed file format might get you enough to play around with in post to scale up and crop the image to the aspect ratio you want. I would think that you would have to scale up some what, to get the width you need, then crop top and bottom. Talk to your transfer house about that, for sure.


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Here is 1.33:1 16mm I shot (A longtime ago) transferred to Betacam SP, full frame and then cropped in post. The camera I used at the time, a Cinema Products GSMO, had widescreen markings on the ground glass which really help with framing. BTW, the quality if this video is sh*t. The only copy I had of the video, by the time the interwebs came around was a VHS dub, from a Betacam SP traffic copy (Sent to the TV stations) that was made from a protection copy off of the edit master, so 3 generations from the film transfer footage.

 
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How did you frame your shots though? Did you eyeball it? It's for a doc and I'm planning to do gorilla style (shoulder mounted) running shots and it'd be really difficult to eyeball.
 
If I recall, the Arri ST has lines in the viewfinder for 1.85. In the Bolex H16 you can swing out the ground glass/beamsplitter and mask it using gaff tape. It will be just an estimate, but if it looks good to your eye then it will probably be good. Note that this won't mask your film if you do it right, it will only mask the viewfinder.
 
Shoot with a modified gate... you'll get different aspect ratios as seen when people use either S16mm or the more rare but not as wide Ultra16mm. I've used super quite a bit... i've never used Ultra, although I've been tempted to test it.

The short answer is by choosing between normal 16mm 1.33:1 or by modifying the gate and getting the right optics and getting 1.66:1, which isn't terribly far from 16x9's 1.77:1 aspect ratio.
 
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leaftors said:
How did you frame your shots though? Did you eyeball it? It's for a doc and I'm planning to do gorilla style (shoulder mounted) running shots and it'd be really difficult to eyeball.
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Yes, just by eyeball, using the widescreen markings on the ground glass. The Bolex and the Arri ST both have interchangeable ground glass that are (Were, at least) available with with over scan, full frame, TV safe and widescreen markings, but finding them, and changing them for the specific cameras your school has might not be possible. You might want to check out what markings are on the ground glass that you have.
 
Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
Shoot with a modified gate... you'll get different aspect ratios as seen when people use either S16mm or the more rare but not as wide Ultra16mm. I've used super quite a bit... i've never used Ultra, although I've been tempted to test it.

The short answer is by choosing between normal 16mm 1.33:1 or by modifying the gate and getting the right optics and getting 1.66:1, which isn't terribly far from 16x9's 1.77:1 aspect ratio.
Click to expand...

Well, those mods aren't really cheap, and I don't know if the OP's film school would spring for that. If they will... problem solved.
 
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