To letterbox or not?

My suggestion would be to shoot all your scenes slightly wider. Then in post you can decide to add letterbox, or remove it and blow up your picture accordingly. If you're shooting in HD you can go 20% without any issues. If you're shooting 4k then it is even more true.
 
starcentral said:
My suggestion would be to shoot all your scenes slightly wider. Then in post you can decide to add letterbox, or remove it and blow up your picture accordingly.
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I'm not sure that you're saying this, but if you're saying to wait until post to choose your aspect ratio, then I disagree.

Your aspect ratio will influence all of your composition decisions, as well as the overall feel of the picture (and vice-versa and hand-in-hand). That's not something you can hold off until post to decide without tons of compromises and probable reshoots.
 
You don't need to agree, but many professionally produced motion picture films are reframed in post to accomplish a slew of effects from motion stabilization, reframing/cropping, zooms, and even fake anamorphic, etc.. As I said this is even more true with the advent of crisp HD or 4k footage, but people don't tend to think about doing this because it seems abnormal to them.

For example ever see a film with what looks like the greatest steadicam work on this planet? Sweeping right past people without hitting them? Or maybe you've seen the greatest car chase in history - wow that car came close to the camera! Woweee! Well what no one will tell you is it was blown up 25% or even more in post to A.) decrease the apparent depth of field, or B.) bring a more intimate experience to the viewer.

Anyway the poster asked for options and I stated one. He can decide if it truly means "tons of compromises during production" which I would tend to disagree with. You can do something as simple as shoot on a FF camera instead of s35 or APC to decrease focal length, or just move back, or use a wider lens. etc... Just turn your guides on in your VF or put tape on it and frame for anamorphic. Later you can add bars or blow up the frame just to the point where the matte is removed.
 
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starcentral said:
My suggestion would be to shoot all your scenes slightly wider. Then in post you can decide to add letterbox, or remove it and blow up your picture accordingly. If you're shooting in HD you can go 20% without any issues. If you're shooting 4k then it is even more true.
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I would never ever recommend anyone shooting with a DSLR to blow their footage up even the slightest. It's just a bad and unnecessary idea just to postpone the decision to post of whether to letterbox or not.
 
It might be wrong to postpone a decision I agree, but it is not wrong to blow up anything. Sorry you don't agree with that, or a countless number of productions which have.
 
starcentral said:
It might be wrong to postpone a decision I agree, but it is not wrong to blow up anything. Sorry you don't agree with that, or a countless number of productions which have.
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How is blowing up fragile DSLR footage just to postpone a decision not a bad idea? The way you spin it is just silly since I made it clear I was speaking of DSLR footage and not the footage of "a countless number of productions" (granted though I bet a countless number of amature dslr 'productions' have blown up footage).
When you're that insecure about your work that you'd sacrifice the quality of your footage over something as silly as letterboxing, that's when you know you're in the wrong profession.
 
As I already said postponing a decision is never a good idea. But you can also reach a decision "not to have a decision" as well. We don't always have the answers we need when we need them. That is part of real life and dealing with the different situations we run into from project to project. It's also why we're all here to learn and share experiences and possibilities.

"Real life" will not always deal you a perfect set of cards, so had the circumstance of the thread poster been different and instead it was the paying producer who gave the requirement that the final delivery format be available in two aspect ratios would you have been any more accepting to the solution I presented?

As for shooting on DSLR the poster never mentioned the camera but if it is DSLR you could easily record to something external to improve compression.
 
@starcentral thanks for pointing out that we don't always have 35mm / red cameras to shoot our projects. A lot of us i'm sure are just trying to get better with what we have (DSLR for example) to tell stories.

at the end of the day, if its a good story, im not going to care about artifacts from blowing up DSLR footage to a bigger format.i've seen horrible production yet great stories that kept me captivated. If i submit something that gets accepted to show a bigger audience, i'll be happy with that exposure more than i am upset with my blown up image.

technical < content IMHO
 
starcentral said:
As for shooting on DSLR the poster never mentioned the camera but if it is DSLR you could easily record to something external to improve compression.
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That's my bad, I confused the OP with another user asking questions in the thread. What you mentioned about two delivery formats is a good point, and in that case yes I would agree that's a valid enough reason for scaling - But not when we're talking about letterboxing as an artistic choice.


colfaxrev said:
at the end of the day, if its a good story, im not going to care about artifacts from blowing up DSLR footage to a bigger format.i've seen horrible production yet great stories that kept me captivated. If i submit something that gets accepted to show a bigger audience, i'll be happy with that exposure more than i am upset with my blown up image.
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We're not talking about blowing up footage to a bigger format for the purpose of showing it - We're talking about blowing footage up just in order to have the leeway needed to letterbox your footage in post without the risk of ruining the framing. Imagine you do that - Scale your footage up by 20%, only to letterbox, and then you export in original resolution, and THEN that footage will yet again be up-scaled for the theater or whatever; Now isn't that just silly having killed off quality by scaling the footage that first time?
 
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This has sparked some interesting debate. starcentrasl is getting a bit of a hard time though - he/she is only trying to help! For the record I plan to shoot this on the C300, but I do plan to make a decision on aspect ratio prior to shooting. In fact, I'm pretty certain I will shoot it in 16:9 now. I appreciate the posts nonetheless - I always prefer my threads to be a discussion of the topic as opposed to solely finding a solution to my problem.

+1 to Gary's last post
 
starcentral said:
You don't need to agree, but many professionally produced motion picture films are reframed in post to accomplish a slew of effects from motion stabilization, reframing/cropping, zooms, and even fake anamorphic, etc.. As I said this is even more true with the advent of crisp HD or 4k footage, but people don't tend to think about doing this because it seems abnormal to them.
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That's something different from what I was saying. That's not choosing the aspect ratio after you've shot. That's done for effect or for correction.

(Of course, ideally, even those things should be planned before you shoot.)

What I'm talking about is shooting first and choosing the aspect ratio -- for the whole project -- later. That's courting disaster. I gather from your posts that you agree.
 
Tolin I do agree with you believe me. I'm also playing devils advocate. I like to believe there is more than one way to do something and I think being closed minded is probably worse than not being able to make a decision :D

I've done a lot of reframing, post zooms, etc.. on different projects and feel it is one last chance at adding some polish to a completed production which I think many amateur or indie films lack. Also I'm shooting with the Sony F3 which only does 60p at 1280x720 to internal cards and have had to blow it up 150% to match 1920x1080 footage. A recent project of mine using some of these techniques screened at two film festivals here in Toronto and it held up fine on the big screen.

Tolin said:
Imagine you do that - Scale your footage up by 20%, only to letterbox, and then you export in original resolution, and THEN that footage will yet again be up-scaled for the theater or whatever; Now isn't that just silly having killed off quality by scaling the footage that first time?
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You would not scale it up and then add a letterbox. You would basically shoot 16:9 but frame for anamorphic. Later in post you can add the bars, chop the top & bottom off, or as I'm suggesting blow up the footage to be 16:9 again full frame. See below diagram I assembled:

anamorphic-1.jpg


As Jim pointed out, this same technique was done in the 4:3 days of film so it's not uncommon or unheard of. There are some films out there where mattes were not added when printed so you can see the lights and boom mics in the top or bottom of the frame! All this started (or at least one of the reasons) when cinema became threatened by the advent of the television becoming popular with growing presence in the homes of many families. They decided to make it widescreen and call it the "cinema experience". hahaha it was really just 4:3 cropped, many many many films were shot without anamorphic lenses and just "faked". Ah back in the day...
 
Starcentral, I misinterpreted what you were saying big time, I'm sorry.
I for some reason thought that you were saying one could shoot wide 16:9 and then blow it up to frame both 16:9 in post as well as anamorphic -Which obviously is ridiculous since both the 16:9 and the anamorphic version would be scaled. The thing I was "bringing to the table" here was my view on post-letterboxing and the way that it often affects framing - So I sort of had that subject of framing still stuck in my head when you were speaking of something different entirely.
 
I really love shooting 2:40:1, and have done 3 features this year in that format (2 on a hacked GH2 and 1 on the C300), all shot 16:9 and cropped in post. If that's a choice that you're making though, it's really important to frame for it during production. Shooting safe and giving yourself options is totally viable (I use a lot of slow, subtle zooms added in post when there isn't time to lay tracks), but much of the joy and creative outlet I get from cinematography is in framing, and I decided a long time ago that without those things film-making is just a really unstable, shitty way to make a living. Shoot the aspect ratio that moves you to make bold, creative decisions. Go all the way or go home.
 
Stefan, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I'll admit that there were times in editing I wish I had shot this, or shot that, or done this or that, maybe framed something differently... some people here would say "ah no don't fix it in post, that's bad planning, bla bla bla" but I'd like those people to show their projects for a minute to see how they turned out? Post-production is the last chance for polish so those slow zoom with bezier curves, or slightly reframed 10% blown up clip can really increase your finished production value and make it look more "expensive".. and if you plan to do it in post then it is indeed "planned."
 
starcentral said:
some people here would say "ah no don't fix it in post, that's bad planning, bla bla bla" but I'd like those people to show their projects for a minute to see how they turned out?
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Obviously, you can't plan for everything, and there are plenty of films that have blow ups and all kinds of crazy stuff done to footage in post to make it work...but I think what most people mean, even if it doesn't come across correctly, is that you should plan well enough in advance that having to do that is limited to just a handful of material, not the whole damn movie.
 
I think letter boxing is a matter of taste. It makes video look more cinematic when on YouTube. I used to letter box my videos, however I have now decided I would rather keep everything I shot, instead of cropping the hell out of the shot
 
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