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Share your knowledge about Film Gate / Format Mask


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Hi i would like to properly know about a film gate/format mask.

What is a "Film Gate"?

What all sizes film gate are available what are all its Names?

 

People who know kindly share your knowledge so that i can also know without any doubts :D

Thanks in advance

Cheers!!!

 

The film gate holds the film for exposure, the gate can be 2,3,or 4 perf for 35mm. A 4 perf could be silent (AKA Super 35) or Academy.

Sometimes masks were put in gates.

 

If you look on the Arri website they list the masks & ground glasses available.

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The gate is the rectangular hole cut into a metal plate that the film moves behind where the image gets exposed while the film is held momentarily still in the gate as the shutter opens and closes. It is also called the camera aperture.

 

Mattes or masks can be added to some camera gates (and all 35mm projector gates) to crop the gate further, they look like little metal slides with a rectangle cut out of them.

 

The most common 35mm aperture or gate is 4-perf 35mm Full Aperture, the maximum size area you can fit within 4-perf 35mm. It has also been called the Edison Aperture, Silent Aperture, and Super-35 aperture. It is 4x3, i.e. 1.33 : 1 in shape.

 

The next most common would be the 4-perf 35mm Academy Aperture, which doesn't expose the left edge of the film in order to leave room for an optical soundtrack, and it also crops a little off of the top and the bottom to maintain a near 4x3 shape (Academy is 1.37 : 1).

 

But often a projector might have a Full Aperture gate and then use an Academy mask or matte for Academy movies, or a 1.66 or 1.85 mask or matte for widescreen "flat" movies, or an Anamorphic / Scope matte for 2.39 movies using anamorphic "scope" projection.

 

Most cameras would have a Full Aperture gate these days and you'd just compose for other cropped formats within that using markings in a groundglass in the viewfinder. Also, many 35mm cameras these days are 3-perf instead of 4-perf, or even a few are 2-perf.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie_projector#Shutter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_disc_shutter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_(image)

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