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Moviecam viewfinder and aspect ratio


Eugene Lehnert

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I shot some 35mm film for the first time recently on the Super America Moviecam and I just got the footage back from the lab. I was shooting using the 4:3 aspect ratio in the viewfinder but to my dismay the cropping on video is not what I expected. My shots look correct if I look at the footage using an underscan monitor though. I did not take into account tv safe areas.

 

Is there more space on the neg? Can I do another transfer and scan in a larger area? There is plenty of room in the viewfinder but I do not know how much of what I see in the viewfinder ends up on the neg. I'm quite new at this.

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The problem is not with the neg or viewfinder, it's tv monitors.

 

You can retransfer your footage and ask the colorist to zoom out a bit, with the idea that this additional area will be 'lost' when viewing it on a reluar tv screen.

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The problem is not with the neg or viewfinder, it's tv monitors.

 

You can retransfer your footage and ask the colorist to zoom out a bit, with the idea that this additional area will be 'lost' when viewing it on a reluar tv screen.

 

The only problem being that not all TVs overscan by the same amount, so you run the risk of leaving a visible border around your picture.

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The only problem being that not all TVs overscan by the same amount, so you run the risk of leaving a visible border around your picture.

 

Also, a lot of distributors, when asking for a 4x3 full-frame version, don't want black borders in any of the TV transmitted area (basically, the whole signal). They may accept it for title sequences, which is why you see some old 1.37 Academy movies with a windowbox for the credits to keep them from being trimmed, but the rest of the transfer is full-frame.

 

In other words, you HAVE to compose 4x3 with overscan in mind for 4x3 TV broadcasting.

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Well this was a good learning experience. Which is why I did this in the first place. I just didn't even think about it. But the 1.85 markings were well outside of the left and rights sides of the 4:3 area so the footage can be re-transferred to get better croping.

 

If you are shooting for HD's 16*9 and television's 4:3 how do you typically go about it?

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