2.35:1 Anamorphic telecine

Ilya Stone · November 7, 2004

Newbie question. I'm going to shoot some 35mm test footage using a Konvas camera with an anamorphic zoom lens. I don't plan on outputing to film. My eventually output will be DVD, but it would be nice to try an HD format (HD DVCPRO, HD D5, etc) and output to blue ray DVD or some similar format when it becomes available.

Here are my questions-

1) Do people typically telecine films shot with anamorphic lenses at 4:3 and then have the material converted to 2.35:1 within their editing program? (ARC or aspect ratio conversion within After Effects or FCP)

OR

2) Do people have the film telecined with an adapter so that the 2.35:1 ratio is already in place?

You see, here is my problem.

I was wanting to use bonolabs to telecine some anamorphic footage in HD. They then would send me a portable hard drive and I'd download it and send it back. Its a pretty great setup. If you haven't seen their website, you should check it out (bonolabs.com). Anyway, the problem is this. They only provide 2 telecine options in HD's typical 16:9 ratio. One has the 4:3 ratio with black bars on each side. The other is straight 16:9.

I couldn't use the first option and then ARC the footage. This would leave me with black bars at top AND the sides......basically a small rectangle of footage.

I can't use the second option, since a 16:9 transfer of 4:3 material crops the source footage at top and bottom.

What do I do? Are there any labs that do anamorphic telecine? If so...can they do telecine in HD?

Basically, the bonolabs setup would be perfect for me if they could do this. I wrote them a few weeks ago, but they never responded to these questions. I guess they couldn't do it or they just didn't take my newbie-with-only-1000ft-of-footage-ass seriously.

Other oddball questions -

I'm a bit hesitant to ask these in the same email, but here goes.

Has anyone sent film to India for telecine? Don't they do many anamorphic films over there. I remember seeing prices for developing and telecine that were ridiculously cheap. This was briefly discussed in some past forums on this website in the 2001 archives. I suppose mailing undeveloped film is not an option since 9/11. Anyone work with Indian telecine labs? I suppose if I can't get bonolabs to respond, what chance do I have with going this route...especially for such a tiny amount of footage.

Last crazy question -

DIY telecine using a film scanner. Possible? Remember, I'm using 35mm, NOT 16mm. Also, I'm doing all of this to work on a project with some computer animation. I wanted to cobble together REALLY short footage shot on green screen to composite with CGI sets. No extended shots with dialoge will be attempted...only brief shots of 5-15 seconds at best. The whole film would be only 20 minutes long with 2/3rds of it being pure CGI. Since this is basically a labor-intensive animated film I'd make, is it possible to scan my own footage? Obviously this would be completely unacceptable for a professional, but for a hobbyist with no set deadlines or plans to release such a film - is this a possible workflow?

I basically am just screwing around to see what I can do. My own personal artistic junk. A fun project which (hopefully) might have some cool results. The equivalent of making oddball electronic music with your buddies in someone's garage. Any advice (other than to sell the Konvas for a dirt-bike) would be most appreciated.

- Ilya

David Mullen ASC · November 7, 2004

Video recording, whether NTSC, PAL, or HD, can only be 4x3 or 16x9. Any other aspect ratios involve letterboxing within those two formats. Any telecine can unsqueeze anamorphic footage to 2.35 : 1 and then do a letterboxed transfer, either to a 4x3 recording or a 16x9 recording.

Since HD is only 16x9 (4x3 requires side-mattes), if you shot 35mm anamorphic, you'd be ordering a 16x9 HD transfer with a 2.35 letterbox. Any HD telecine will be able to do that.

"Northfork" was transferred to home video from a 35mm anamorphic IP to three 24P HD-D5 masters, one being letterboxed to 2.35, one being full-frame 16x9 (cropping the sides of the scope image), and the last being side-matted to 4x3 (panning & scanning the scope image). The DVD was based on a downrez master of the 2.35 letterboxed version -- I've been putting frame grabs from the DVD under the "Eyelight" discussion.

The colorist should be able to tell that it is an anamorphic image, unsqueeze it and then reduce to a letterboxed image. But just in case, you need to tell them on the work order that the image is anamorphic (scope). Shooting a framing chart will make it very obvious that it isn't a spherical image that you want cropped to 2.35, but an actual anamorphic image you want unsqueezed and recorded as a letterboxed frame.

Edited November 7, 2004 by David Mullen