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S35 2.35 centric or common top


Hamid Khozouie

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Just depends. If you are shooting 4-perf Super-35, you're going to have so much excess vertical information that you have some flexibility in post in reframing for the 4x3 pan & scan and 16x9 full-frame video masters, so I don't think it matters too much whether you center crop or use common top. The advantage to center crop is when you zoom, your image won't drift vertically, causing you to tilt the camera to compensate. Lens flares are also optically centered.

 

However, if you are using 3-perf Super-35, I'm a believer in common top (or really, "near" common top with 2.40 slightly shifted below the top of the negative.) This allows your 16x9 full-frame home video version to use most of the 16x9 negative area without having to zoom in to reset the headroom, unlike center crop.

 

But all of this has to do with making the non-letterboxed video masters; if your main concern is just the blow-up to scope and the letterboxed version, probably center crop makes more sense.

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Keep in mind though that if you use common top in 3 perf you have a higher likelihood to be a victim of gate flare...light boucing off the inside of the gate and hitting the film, resulting in small vertical flares entering the top of frame. It happened to me more than a few times on my last feature and you don't know it's happening until you see dailies.

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Keep in mind though that if you use common top in 3 perf you have a higher likelihood to be a victim of gate flare...light boucing off the inside of the gate and hitting the film, resulting in small vertical flares entering the top of frame. It happened to me more than a few times on my last feature and you don't know it's happening until you see dailies.

 

That (and hairs) is the reason why I like the slightly-lowered from top 2.40 frame in 3-perf, what Panavision is calling their "Fincher groundglass" (I guess he used it on "Panic Room".)

 

All of my 16x9 HD movies that were framed for cropping to scope (four of them) using center cropping (since that's what the F900 gives you in the Marker Menu) sort of what has led me to this notion that it would make the pan & scan versions easier if the 2.40 frame was lifted higher than the center-crop position -- then the 16x9 unletterboxed version could be just the full-frame of HD (assuming you kept it clear). Instead, I had to zoom in slightly on many of the 16x9 full-frame HD versions to reduce the excess headroom. It would be nice if the Sony cameras allowed you to raise the position of the "Vista 2" framelines as desired.

 

Of course, gate flare is not an issue with HD.

 

Another advantage to common top is that the sound man won't be complaining as much about having to keep the mic out of the top of TV Safe. That's what is great about anamorphic for boom ops, having no headroom difference between the theatrical and TV versions.

 

Anamorphic uses almost the whole Full Aperture vertically so why isn't gate flare a problem there? Is it that you're too distracted by all the lens flares to notice the gate flare? :huh:

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Regarding gate flare with anamorphic, I wondered that too but I suspect it may have to do with the optics of the anamorphic lens, though it doesn't make sense why that would be.

 

I like that there is a little bit of voodoo and magic to shooting.

 

(voodoo and magic = things I don't understand, can also refer to happy accidents)

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