The "the price of freedom" Movie Project

I always used to watch Letterbox, maybe you heard me wrong. I now have a 16x9 TV, but went Widescreen even in the VHS days, buying Widescreen versions of a lot of my favorite movies like the Alien Trilogy, ect.
 
Is tv and movies shot in both widescreen and normal square simultanously?

Since, for example. Smallville is widescreen, and yet in some of the bloopers or backstage specials you see identical clips that are square.

Beckman said:
AFAIK, making non-anamorphic content into anamorphic doesn't work. No matter how you cut it, you are dealing with the same resolution.

Yes but if you do cut it so its the same size as how widescreen appears on a square screen you can make it the same resolution as the FMV's, even though it actually isn't. So that it will look the same as how square videos look on a widescreen but the FMV's will display correctly.
 
It depends on the format and editing process when it comes to how stuff is shot. Many shows (Babylon 5) is shot in 4x3 and them matted to widescreen, so in the widescreen version you actually see less of the picture (but most of the time it's intended that way). Some shows (Stargate SG-1) are 'hard-matted', meaning it's matted, and THEN the editing, SFX, ect are done. So when you see the 4X3 version of that content it's cropped and your seeing more on the Widescreen version.
 
What does Matted exactly mean?

Come to think of it I know of a TV show that was probably matted to widescreen. I recently watched the first episode of Fraiser which premiered in 1993 and that was widescreen 16:9. That was way before TV shows started being shot in widescreeen, so they must of matted it right?

If so, would it be possible for AD to use this matting to make his gameplay videos widescreen perhaps?
 
Queeg said:
What does Matted exactly mean?

Come to think of it I know of a TV show that was probably matted to widescreen. I recently watched the first episode of Fraiser which premiered in 1993 and that was widescreen 16:9. That was way before TV shows started being shot in widescreeen, so they must of matted it right?

If so, would it be possible for AD to use this matting to make his gameplay videos widescreen perhaps?


Matted basically just means chopping off the top and bottom of the picture. I could do it but I wouldnt like the results. It's similar to cropping. On some productions the widescreen effect is acheived by physicaly blocking part of the camera. (the film negative thus has the black bars in it... matted) In some cases the film is shot full-frame (4:3 but with widescreen in mind. They never intend for you to see the top and bottom but it is there in the negative and cropped (or matted) later. In some rare cases, widescreen versions are of the matted after-the-fact variety and actualy result in cutting off the top and bottom of the intended picture. A number of mid 60's movies are like that because they were - due to the slump in theater-going - intended for viewing on television.

To make full use of the available film, an anamorphic lens is used during recording; this lens effectively squeezes the picture horizontally so that (in the case of the common 2x anamorphosis lens) a frame twice as wide fills the available film area (Figure 2). Since a larger film area is being used to project the same picture, quality is increased. (The film frame itself is also very slightly larger.) The distortion introduced in the picture must be corrected when the film is played back, so another lens is used during projection that unsqueezes the picture to its correct proportions. It should be noted that the picture is not vertically manipulated in any way—the normal anamorphic process instead uses a horizontally-oriented element to squeeze the width only.

Other widescreen film formats (commonly 1.85:1 and 1.66:1) are simply cropped in vertical size to produce the widescreen effect, a technique known as masking or matting. This can occur either during filming, where the framing is masked in the gate, or in the lab, which can optically create a matte onto the prints.
 
Queeg said:
I see so when its matted its not actually widescreen its just made to look cinematic?


No, not at all. Matting is a process. Over-simplified its a process of adding Mats to the picture, either during filming or after). The term "widescreen" is a little ambiguous and when it comes to a films aspect ratio it is only really relevant when you actually know the intentions of the film makers. (how did they intend for the public to see this film?)

Matting and anamorphic lenses both create widescreen films. The negatives *are* widescreen. Once you start matting afterwards with a full frame, un distorted piture, it all depends on whether the director and cinematographer shot the footage with a widescreen aspect ratio in mind.

This isn't quite the same as what happens when stuff gets put on home video.
 
hmmm, a bit too complicated for me. I'm going off topic here so i'll just let you get on with it. Thanks for explaining though, at least now I have some idea of what matting is.
 
Personaly I have been hoping someone would do this. I was hoping for a sequal to the film until I realized that there are already 3 sequals to it. Now, if we could only get them properly edited and onto a DVD...

We need 3, 4 and Pro made into movies to put next to our film. Then perhaps when Saga is compleated, that could be made into a WC2 movie...???
 
Hello,

Not that anyone knows me here, but I just wanted to say: thank you for part 1, I loved it and I'm looking forward to part 2 !

Thanks again :)

Jorn
 
Ok... I was wondering... how about going TOTALLY ambitious and well...
Have few more people join up in the project... do some OWN CGI work
I usually hang out at...
"http://www.thescifiworld.net/"
And some of the CGIs the make there are absolutely astounding. I've been trying do my own WC 4 movie project with fan made CGIs but no luck yet.

My point is... if the guys who did STAR WRECK can come up with effects almost as good as the STAR TREK series... why cant it be done for WING COMMANDER !?

I basically want to show WING COMMANDER as a movie to my friends n well... my wife but the ingame footage always turns them off.

Sooo yeah... anyway... think about it.
 
Hi, I just stumbled on this site when I got this crazy idea to be able to watch the WCIV movie in some sort of edited form. I was even thinking about making one myself, but for that I will have to find a lot of courage and patience. But behold someone else has already taken this project to their heart.

I have read this entire thread with great interest. So how is the movie coming along? I realize AD must be getting tired of the constant new people invading this thread for a quick update. But this has definitely moved up my list of the most awaited release of a fan project.

So what's the current situation? Still editing... fine-tuning??? I just hope the project isn't dead, because that would be a crying shame after all the work that has been done.
 
The project is certainly not dead. However, AD is still cutting/editing the pieces together to make each scene work, as well as converting them to different formats which is no doubt time-consuming. Other than that he is also testing with a few different features of the movie which he will try to insert it into the final product, such features are the sound and (in-game) audio, which could be changed to a much better quality of today. Other features maybe followed fine-tune the finished movie itself (hopefully)...
 
AD, I hope you're not giving up. Been looking foward to this for a long time.
If your not too busy for an update? Please?
 
I'll apologize for lack of progress (I'll save you the usual excuses) but there *has* been progress. I don't have a lot to show right now and have admittedly been pretty busy with other projects. I haven't given up on it but find it pretty hard to sit down and hammer out the details. Most of the framework is there. But some sections need tweaking. Maybe I'm too much of a perfectionist to the point where I'm not having enough fun anymore... I don't know. Maybe I just need a kick in the pants.
 
Have you tried using this tool to help with video

i see your working on a project i am not sure if you have tried using these tools or not.they are combined community codec package this package will give you pratcially evry code you need to read old and new video. i hope i have helped you. go here to get it. http://www.cccp-project.net/ if i have not helped im sorry just offering some tools. i wish you luck and hope it works for you. i am new at this post so i hope to post more but for now im just sropping in and was reading your post cause i like the game too.
 
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