Aspect Ratio Research

Out of personal taste, I was interested in filming with an extremely wide aspect ratio. I took my time to research the credentials for different films types.

 

  

Our past two films have filmed with a standard ratio (see screenshot of 'ELIJAH') and looked like generic YouTube video, so I looked into what our other options were.

Simply searching 'aspect ratio' gave me this chart of basic film/video. We are usually in the yellow area, shooting at a ratio of 16:9 - this is for standard to high definition films.

Going to extreme lengths and looking at 4.00:1 ratio would be unrealistic to our budget. This film type is very uncommon, and we would need to have a particularly high definition camera.

The purple section (Ultra-Panavision 70) would also be unrealistic as it is commonly used for extremely long shots of landscapes.

This is where I feel the the Anamorphic widescreen would be effective. It would still be very dramatic, but not got the added screen ratio for the sake of having it. Here is an example of Anamorphic widescreen in practice: 

One concern that was bought up when considering this editing technique was the attention to framing. We will need to crop the top and bottom of our film to achieve this cinematography effect. Whoever is behind the camera at the time will need to consider this so nothing important is cut out in post-production.