Should Directors film at 16:9
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HEADRAT said:
Because you would be able see ALL of the set on the "David Letterman show"........including the Fire Exits.
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2.35:1 has always been about, that's why I can't get who dreamed up the 16:9 malarky that just ruins both films and TV.SGCWill said:
I personally don't have a problem with black bars AS LONG AS THE FILM IS IN PROPORTION. I am absolutely sick of watching everything in fat land where everyone has big fat heads and cars have oval wheels. Who up there in the standards industry decided "yeah that works..."?
HEADRAT said:
I think it was because of most people thinking of the digital resolutions, perhaps they predicted most TV's would be capable of displaying it without resizing/AR correction, but we fell short in the end, so TV manufacturers went to 16:9 instead, just to save face.
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Rebelius said:
I prefer neither, usually most DVD's nowadays can display video in more than one way. Either that works, or I get VLC media player to sort it out for me
Jonny69 said:
Examples of some channels/DVDs that don't display properly?
In 2003 or so I would have agreed with you as there wasn't a lot of 16:9 stuff but almost everything nowadays is 16:9 including, at long last, F1. The only two channels I can think of that don't display entirely properly are the two music channels on freeview (TMF/The Hits).
All our DVDs/other sources display perfectly fine on our 16:9 TV, be it 16:9 filling the screen, 4:3 with black borders on either side of the picture or 2.35:1 with black borders above and below the picture.
greenlizard0 said:I prefer neither, usually most DVD's nowadays can display video in more than one way. Either that works, or I get VLC media player to sort it out for me
You can't 'sort it out' without either distorting the image, loosing some of the content or black bars. Of the three I go black bars as I always prefer watching the movie as the director intended.
greenlizard0 said:I prefer neither, usually most DVD's nowadays can display video in more than one way. Either that works, or I get VLC media player to sort it out for me
it's not possible to display a widescreen film (however wide) on a 4:3 TV without either losing some of the image or distorting it. it just can't happen.
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Partly for convenicence and party for self-indulgence, I'll be using a recently near-completed shot from a film I'm currently working on.
The film was shot in 4:3 on a standard, consumer quality PAL miniDV cam. This gave us an effective resolution of 720 x 576. I knew that when we shot this, I would later be cropping it to be widescreen, for cinematic effect and for proper fitting to widescreen TVs when I give the DVD to my family and friends. The aspect ratio I decided to crop to was 16:9. This gave me an effective final resolution of 720 x 405. Anything greater, such as 2:35:1 would simply be unjustifiable given the amount of data I had to start off with.
Because I knew that I was going to crop it later on, I framed all my shots to have important action horizontally more than vertically. On occasion important stuff happens that exceeds the 405 vertical pixels I have - in these cases, a digital camera tilt is just the job.
Here is a frame, and a video of the finished shot, in its original 4:3 aspect ratio.
...and here is the cropped version, in 16:9. Video here.
I'm not sure you're quite right there - If we "stretch" a 4:3 directly to 16:9, we get this:
Which looks a little odd.
..and if we take a 16:9 source and put it back into 4:3 without bars, we get this:
Hmm. Are you sure you didn't mean "crop", like I have done in my video? You can't stretch 4:3 into 16:9 and have everything stay in its proper aspect ratio. You could zoom, as stated, but the correct solution is to crop. If 4:3 film makers keep 16:9 in mind when recording their footage and applying their post effects, this shouldn't be a problem.
The film was shot in 4:3 on a standard, consumer quality PAL miniDV cam. This gave us an effective resolution of 720 x 576. I knew that when we shot this, I would later be cropping it to be widescreen, for cinematic effect and for proper fitting to widescreen TVs when I give the DVD to my family and friends. The aspect ratio I decided to crop to was 16:9. This gave me an effective final resolution of 720 x 405. Anything greater, such as 2:35:1 would simply be unjustifiable given the amount of data I had to start off with.
Because I knew that I was going to crop it later on, I framed all my shots to have important action horizontally more than vertically. On occasion important stuff happens that exceeds the 405 vertical pixels I have - in these cases, a digital camera tilt is just the job.
Here is a frame, and a video of the finished shot, in its original 4:3 aspect ratio.
...and here is the cropped version, in 16:9. Video here.
SGCWill said:
I'm not sure you're quite right there - If we "stretch" a 4:3 directly to 16:9, we get this:
Which looks a little odd.
..and if we take a 16:9 source and put it back into 4:3 without bars, we get this:
Hmm. Are you sure you didn't mean "crop", like I have done in my video? You can't stretch 4:3 into 16:9 and have everything stay in its proper aspect ratio. You could zoom, as stated, but the correct solution is to crop. If 4:3 film makers keep 16:9 in mind when recording their footage and applying their post effects, this shouldn't be a problem.
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Very odd. Using a widescreen telly for years now with none of the issues you suffer.
Mind you, we use digital and most of the time the box automatically gets the correct aspect ratio for it and movies are displayed in their correct AR by the DVD player, black bars if required.
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Why don't you buy a 2.39:1 TV? 
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Hate said:
Having bought my first widescreen tele a couple of months ago, I can safely say I could never go back to 4:3. It just looks all wrong.
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This is what most of my TV looks like on my 16:9 set (minus the black bars)MasterMike said:I'm not sure you're quite right there - If we "stretch" a 4:3 directly to 16:9, we get this:
Which looks a little odd.
Many of my 2.35:1 DVDs look similar as the black bars it puts on are too thick.
For the poster who asked which channels, all terrestrial are ok unless I watch them on analogue, ok on digital, but most of the others are out of proportion. QVC is the classic one because they extended their width but appear to broadcast the black bars so I see a letterbox and all their products are distorted. Just as well I don't want to buy anything off them or I'd need oval fingers for their expensive cheap rings.
It's not just my set that does this, it's everybody I know with a widescreen, where I have seen in shops and a mate who is an area manager for a well known hifi chain and his kit is top end stuff.
