35mm for 16x9 projection

michaelandringa · September 26, 2004

hello out there. my newest project is a dance film made for France. we are shooting 35mm but i have been told that for television in France it needs to be 16 x 9 format. do i shoot anamorphic and have it converted to 16 x 9 in PAL? please let me know what you know. thank you.

mike

Dirk DeJonghe · September 26, 2004

hello out there. my newest project is a dance film made for France. we are shooting 35mm but i have been told that for television in France it needs to be 16 x 9 format. do i shoot anamorphic and have it converted to 16 x 9 in PAL? please let me know what you know. thank you.

mike

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Best to shoot flat format 1.77 (between 1.66 and 1.85). Telecine will do the squeeze to 16/9 anamorphic.

Phil Rhodes · September 26, 2004

Hi,

I don't wish to seem abrupt, but how is it possible to get to be a commercial DP working in 35mm and not know that?

Phil

Laurent Andrieux · September 27, 2004

May be the fellow is not used to 16/9

The only thing I can tell (after agreeing with Dirk (BTW, Dirk, any link with the belgian laboratorie ?)) is that France is not so much into 16/9 yet... I mean, you should make sure the actual TV programmer wants 16/9... because we don't have so many 16/9 screens in homes here yet... If you don't have any sells yet I think doing it 16/9 is good idea anyway... If you know a bit about our channels, it sound like it could interest ARTE more than any other one and they'd be much happier with 16/9...

Dirk (I quited before this 16/9 "revolution"...) do you mean they usually are 16/9 marked ground glasses at rentals nowdays, even 16/9 gates ?

David Mullen ASC · September 28, 2004

There are 1.66 and 1.85 hard mattes you can put into some 35mm cameras, and probably someone makes a 1.75 or 1.78 hard mattes too, although most people wouldn't bother with a hard matte in case they wanted to vertically reframe the image in post.

Or you can shoot in 3-perf Super-35, which naturally has a 16x9 aspect ratio (1.78 : 1).

Yes, rental house can provide groundglass markings for 16x9 (1.78 : 1) framing. Most dramatic TV shows in the US are shot in 3-perf Super-35 with 16x9 groundglass markings with 4x3 centered inside that, sharing the same top & bottom frame lines. But you can shoot in 4-perf 35mm and compose for just transferring the 1.78 : 1 area, whether inside Full Aperture or Academy Aperture.

A 16x9 image can either be transferred to 4x3 video with a letterbox or full-frame 16x9 video.

Anamorphic lenses in order to squeeze a 16x9 image onto a 4x3 CCD and recording format is only done with consumer DV cameras using 1.33X anamorphic lens attachments. There are no 1.33X anamorphic lenses made for 35mm photography. You just compose and transfer the 16x9 image area on the film to 16x9 video, which will look squeezed on a 4x3 monitor unless converted to be displayed as a letterboxed image, which is why some people refer to 16x9 standard def video as "anamorphic".