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Making Videos Widescreen To Make Them Look More Cinematic-- Help

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j.benziger
Posts: 689 - Karma: 8,026

Widescreen Test from PBnJ Media on Vimeo.

So here is a little test I created once I learned how to make videos widescreen. But that is not my question. MY Question is Is there a way on your camera to make it easier so that you wont mess up the wide screen. For example all of the shots were in frame above in a regular project but once I made it wide screen some of the shots are out of frame just a little. I was wondering is there anyway that you can make your camera show close to this crop when shooting so I can effectively use widescreen to better enhance my editing.
Camera Setup Panasonic GH2 1080p 30p aspect ratio 16:9
pw to video is skiing

Any help whats so ever would be appreciated. (the test video is a test video so dont critique i was just trying to show how some of my shots are out of frame)

Jan 10 2014 12:11AM
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jkauffman22
Posts: 2592 - Karma: 1,150
To get crop lines on my gh3 I purchased a cheap screen protector and put that on my camera LCD screen then took a picture. I then imported the picture to photoshop and overplayed the crop lines I use in post and used a thin permanent marker to draw them on. I'd make sure you have a ruler to get them straight.
Jan 10 2014 12:44AM
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plorr
Posts: 3131 - Karma: 522
I just stick a couple strips of gaff tape on my lcd if I know I'm gonna be cropping to 2.35
Jan 10 2014 1:20AM
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gravel
Posts: 5524 - Karma: 42,378
Looks like you're going for a Cinemascopic ratio, which is 2.35:1 length:width ratio. It's nice for me because I have I preset setting for crop marks on my T3i with Magic Lantern, but I don't think that there's anything like that on the GH2. I'd say do the math assuming the width of your GH2 screen is the 2.35 part of the ratio, then find the height of the screen relative to that width. Then put some tape or something on the screen to mark off where the crop would be. You'll shoot in 16x9 anyway.

For editing, I use Adobe Premiere. What I do is just create a sequence with settings identical to my clips from my camera, but change the dimensions of the video from 1280:720 to 1280:545, which is cinemascopic. Then, when I drag my clips to the timeline, they're automatically cropped, but I can also use keyframing to move the clips up and down to make sure what I want in the shot is shown.
Jan 10 2014 10:31AM
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j.benziger
Posts: 689 - Karma: 8,026
Thanks for the feedback everybody! I never took into consideration of actually putting gaff tape or masking tape onto my lcd it makes sense. Thanks

Jan 11 2014 1:03PM
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Laurent.
Posts: 10056 - Karma: 25,311
Reminds me back in the day when I played an FPS that was so hard core that it considered targeting reticle's as being redundant. Being me, I just sourced an incredibly thin piece of near perfect see through plastic, printed a reticle on that, cut to size and taped it to my screen. From that moment on I was dominating as a colonist in bygone times over indigenous tribes people.
Jan 11 2014 3:00PM
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