Last month, I looked at how to handle Open Gate in Production, looking at why you might want to shoot in a format that’s taller than a standard 16:9 frame. This time around, let’s take a look at how to deal with these tall shots in post. It’s not hard, but a few sneaky tricks can go a long way.
First, widescreen
To simplify, I’lll assume you’ll be delivering a 16:9 timeline using 4:3 or 3:2 open gate clips. We’ll tackle widescreen first, then also deliver a 9:16 portrait version. The landscape edit will be the full original version, while the portrait edit may be shorter, with burned-in open captions added.
Note that you don’t have to be targeting exactly 16:9. If you want to deliver 4:3, 2.39:1, 2:1 or anything else that’s not portrait, set a resolution in that aspect ratio first; don’t add black bars later. Each different aspect ratio you plan to deliver comes with compromises of its own, and you’ll want to stay on top of this in the edit.
Why landscape first? The portrait audience might be larger in terms of raw numbers, but most people who actually want to view your content will watch in landscape. In portrait, a “view” might be just a very quick glance before swiping away. Also, the portrait audience is drowning in content, and cares a lot less about the image you’re showing them. They’re viewing on smaller screens, they probably didn’t choose to watch your video, and you have less control over how the final image is seen.
For all these reasons, prioritize the landscape edit.
Fill, not Fit
As you add your open gate clips into that widescreen timeline, make sure your clips are set to Fill the frame rather than Fit the frame. This means there will be no black bars anywhere, and you’ll have extra image spilling over the top and bottom of the frame.
- In Final Cut Pro, this is found under Spatial Conform, where you can choose from Fit, Fill and None.
- In Premiere, this is found in the Properties panel, where you’ll find two buttons marked Fill and Fit.
- In Resolve, the default setting of the Input Scaling Preset in the Image Scaling panel of the Project Settings window is Scale entire image to Fit (i.e. Fit) but you can change this to Scale full frame with crop (i.e. Fill).
After setting Fill, you’ll have a simple center cut on each shot. Now, adjust scale and position manually to find the best framing. If you don’t want to scale, you’ll only have vertical (Y) position to play with. In FCP, when you show the on-screen Transform controls, the Overscan button allows you to see a greyed-out version of the parts of a clip that’s you’re cropping away.
In my last article, I suggested that open gate was a great way to avoid having to move a camera up and down when interviewing several people. Here in a timeline, if you’ve shot several interviews, a great way to achieve consistency is to show your Title Safe and Action Safe lines, then use them to keep head position in the same spot from shot to shot. Depending on the subjects and the context, it may also be necessary to keep eye position consistent.
Positioning your subjects in relation to the top of the frame has worked well for decades, and when 4:3 delivery was more common, a few different techniques were used, including a simple center cut, and common top.
Framing for landscape with a center cut, like IMAX
In terms of cropping, a taller IMAX-style frame typically extends the image above and below a standard widescreen image, but the image still needs to look good when cropped back to a more typical 2.35:1 ratio for wider distribution. It’s a simple strategy: the center part of the image is most important, and the edges aren’t.
For IMAX cinema exhibition, where the goal is to overwhelm the audience’s peripheral vision, a much taller image than a normal frame is used, often 1.43:1. (Here’s a diagram of some shots from Dunkirk.) For home exhibition the tallest aspect you’re likely to see is 16:9 (try Avengers: Endgame on Disney+ for an example) but the regular theatrical version is most likely.
Framing for landscape using the Common Top strategy, like Ronin
Back in the days of VHS, some movies (including the classic Ronin) used a “common top” strategy, shooting a 4:3 image with regular spherical lenses to fill the frame of 35mm film. Instead of just using the center of the frame, the top section of the frame was cropped to a cinema aspect ratio. For VHS delivery, the whole tall frame was delivered, but the actors’ faces were always at the top, with the less important lower parts of their bodies below. Both crops shared a common top line.
Films shot in this way didn’t include anything truly important in the lower part of the frame, and the lower-resolution VHS release actually showed (much) more of the original image.
One issue is that the default aspect ratio cropping guides in some cameras assume a center cut, and can’t be moved. Still, this is nothing that a bit of tape on a monitor can’t fix, right?
Converting from landscape to portrait
Don’t copy and paste your clips into a new timeline. Instead:
- In Final Cut Pro, Duplicate Project As, then choose the new target aspect ratio and check Smart Conform.
- In Premiere, right-click your sequence in the Project panel, then choose Auto Reframe Sequence. Note that this copy won’t be next to your original sequence, but will be a new bin called Auto Reframed Sequences.
- In Resolve, duplicate your timeline, right-click, choose Timeline > Timeline Settings, then set the resolution manually. Select all your clips, then apply Smart Reframe (Studio version only).
Next, in your new timeline:
- In Final Cut Pro, each clip will have been positioned in a single static spot for each clip. Fix the scale and position as you wish.
- In Premiere, each clip will track the subject to create an animated pan and scan. However, this doesn’t always look good. If Auto Reframe hasn’t done a good job, head to Effect Controls, turn the Auto Reframe effect off, choose Fill in the Properties panel, then reframe manually.
- In Resolve, the story is similar; if Smart Reframe hasn’t done a good job, you could switch the Object of Interest in the drop-down in the Inspector, or simply turn the feature off and reframe manually.
The more you have planned for this transition on the shoot, and the more height you have to play with, the easier a time you’ll have.
But where should you place your subject in a portrait frame? Let’s revisit center cut and common top.
Reframing for portrait
The vertical center cut mindset around cropping for landscape is a decent starting point if you need to deliver widescreen and portrait from a single 4:3 open gate shot. If you used the built-in camera guide lines to make a 16:9 center cut close to what you want for a widescreen timeline, a 9:16 center cut will leave a fair amount of headroom in a portrait version. Crop in if you like — you’ll have resolution to spare in portrait — but first, consider the demands of the platform.
While I’d love to ditch that extra headroom and use common top more for social media delivery today, social platforms add their own UI on top of the image, sometimes including a heap of crufty nonsense at the top of the frame. If you frame people’s heads right at the top of the frame, they might look OK on YouTube Shorts, but terrible on TikTok.
A 4:3 shot positioned in a 9:16 frame, with the excess areas visible in FCPEach platform plays by its own rules, and in general, a lot more headroom needs to be left clean. It’s not easy to craft an image that looks great on all vertical platforms at once. Also remember: if you want to add burned-in open captions, they need somewhere to live too. It’s a mess.
Probably worst of all, the portrait aspect ratio makes it difficult to show more than one person at once. This makes storytelling (and interviews, and landscapes) challenging, but you can bend the rules to make things easier.
Use picture-in-picture and split screens to show more than one frame at once
Because some kinds of shots just don’t work in portrait, if you get stuck, I’d recommend trying picture-in-picture and split-screen techniques to show multiple frames at once. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Rather than using a traditional cutaway to show b-roll, why not show the a-roll in part of the frame (say, a square at the bottom) and use the rest of the frame (the top part) to show your b-roll. If you need to hide a jump cut, swap the frames around, and change the framing whenever you want.
- If you need to show two people speaking together, split the frame in two and show one person in each half.
- If a frame simply doesn’t work in portrait, repeat the widescreen frame more than once in the vertical space.
Simple cropping can be done with controls in the Inspector in FCP, Premiere or Resolve, but if you want to get fancier, there are plug-ins which can help. I made a plug-in called PiP Kit for Final Cut Pro which helps with this (and yes, full disclosure, I benefit from sales) but there are other plug-ins out there too, and it’s not too hard to crop and mask manually in any case.
For something a little different, I’ve recently been experimenting with a strategy called Two Squares. In landscape, this means two squares side-by-side, with different content in each. In portrait, with a sneaky plug-in technique, those two squares shift to be placed one above the other. This strategy keeps two landscape and portrait edits as similar as possible, but it’s not a solution for every project.
Conclusion
Reframing an open gate shot for standard widescreen isn’t hard, but it doesn’t have to always be a straight center cut. Reframing an open gate shot for portrait can be easier than reframing a carefully framed widescreen shot, but it doesn’t have to be a center cut either.
Instead, you can as flexible as you wish; you don’t need to frame it perfectly in camera. Increasingly, the final image is created in the edit bay, and there’s no need to stick to a single crop of a single shot for the portrait version of an edit. Multiple shots and custom aspect ratios can be a great solution, and if a shot just doesn’t work in portrait, bend the rules to make it work.
Today, multiple deliverables are common. The more tricks you have up your sleeve when it comes to making clients happy, the better a time you’ll have. Enjoy!