Making a film – the basics PART 2

A slightly technical bit to consider

Before you even think about shooting your film, you have to decide how you are going to show it to your audience. Usually, if it is for home viewing, it will be shown on your TV, so you need to know about the aspect ratio.

Is your TV widescreen or one of the older square models? Aspect ratio refers to the size of the viewing area on your TV or screen, the amount of visible action on film. This will typically be 4:3 or 16:9. If you ever wondered what those figures meant as you tried to fix your telly for a widescreen movie, here it is.

TV and film are always shown in landscape format. 4:3 is the old standard ratio, in which TV productions were shot and broadcast. The problem is that all films for cinema were shot more or less on widescreen. This is referred to as 16:9.

The difference between the two is that you have a larger viewing area with 16:9, hence the term widescreen. The figures 4:3 and 16:9 are the proportions of both the recorded footage and your viewing medium, as a ratio of width to height.

If you try fitting a widescreen image to a 4:3 film, you will have to squash the image, or lose information from either side. And if you try to put a 4:3 image in a 16:9 frame, you either get a stretched image or you will see a black band on either side, and so will the viewer – when cut with landscape, these will jar. This can often be seen on old TV programmes rebroadcast today.

So, as part of your planning, find out what your viewing medium will be, and shoot accordingly. Websites like YouTube and Vimeo will display in either format.

Aspect ratio is not pixel resolution, which relates to the quality of the image. As 4:3 is generally being phased out, in future I will only be discussing with regard to 16:9 format, so the resolution you choose will either be 1080i (high definition) or standard widescreen (720 x 576). Look in your camera manual to find out how to set your shooting aspect ratio to what you want for video.