Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
alot of people try to help sell the cinematic or film look in their video by giving it a
wider aspect ratio. namely, the 2.35:1 aspect ratio which is commonly used in feature films.
and although doing this often does help, many people go wrong and don't properly compose
for it. you see, most modern hd capable cameras record at an aspect ratio of 16:9. because
of this thinner aspect ratio, we need to crop, or throw black bars over the video. Often
the shot is composed for 16:9, not 2.35:1, causing part of the subject to be cut out
of frame. Now Vince over at Pradox Bully Productions has a tutorial which will help fix this issue.
If you watch that video now, you can really get alot of it there as this is really just
an elaboration of that tutorial. Before we get started, make sure your camera capable
of taking pictures and you have the ability to edit pictures right off the memory card.
If your camera doesn't have any of these features, just use Vince's tutorial as it will basically
do the same thing as this one. Get your camera and snap a picture. It doesn't matter what
its of, because we will be editing it shortly. next, bring your footage to the computer either
by using a usb cable or card reader built into the computer and navigate to the directory
of the picture on your memory card. In most cases in can be found in the DCIM folder on
the root of the card. next open it in a photo editor and look at the photo's properties.
You are looking for is the picture's width in pixels, which is the largest value and
won't change when we are cropping it. Now you may find that the picture's aspect ratio
may be more like 4:3 instead of 16:9 like video, but it shouldn't matter too much. Next,
go to the aspect ratio calculator link found in the description and scroll down to the
option with the hight, width, and aspect ratio boxes. enter the width of the picture in the
aproperiate box while leaving the hight blank. now set the aspect ratio to 2.35 and hit calculate.
there will now be a number in the hight box. this number is the hight of the frame at 2.35:1.
Copy the value into your photo editor. create one box that fills the entire frame, and another
on top with the new hight value and a width that matches the picture. Noe make sure both
of these boxes are high contrast with each other. For me, i used chroma blue and chroma
green. Now save the changes and unplug your camera or memory card. When you turn your
camera on and view the photo, you will now see that the picture has now changed into
our new edited footage. now you can use this as a reference when you apply tape over the
sections of the screen that will be croped out in post. Remeber to use tape that won't
leave residue if you decide to take it off later. once you are done, carefully use a
razer blade to cut excess tape off from around the edges of the screen. Now, you can frame
each shot perfectly every time.