During a Summer trip, I took various footage with my JVC100 camera and some with my Galexy note 5. Now, I am thinking of using the footage in one movie project. The cell phone footage obviously has a different quality and sometimes I have held the phone vertically. My project is rather experimental and I don't need a very smooth overall look, yet, I was wondering if there are smooth or sleek ways of combining the footage with different aspect ratios and qualities. I would appreciate examples in experimental movies and technical advice. Thanks a million!
1 Answer
One way to deal with different aspect ratios is to take footage that is not as wide as your output format and duplicate it in another layer. Increase the scale on this other layer and blur the image, then put the original over it. This produces a nice coherent effect where the area outside the original footage is filled with colors that are from the original footage, but are not distracting.
If you're working in FCPX, there's a built-in filter called "Photo Recall" that does this sort of effect. It shrinks the original image, but you can have it fill the frame instead. Other apps probably have a similar filter or make it fair easy to reproduce.
answered Oct 1, 2016 at 3:22
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This is done commonly nowadays, but I find it distracting. The moving areas of the blur attract my attention and mislead me into thinking that the frame extends into that area. When I had to show it to an elderly person, he didn't know that that wasn't part of the video. He said: "but things are moving there". Pillarboxing makes it more watchable. Dec 17, 2017 at 3:54