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JL Snyder Cut Aspect Ratio Question

woundedmakers

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Hey everyone, sorry in advance for the noob question...

The Snyder Cut of Justice League trailer was released today, and it appears to be in 4:3 Fullscreen. Snyder has previously mentioned this was an intentional creative decision. So my question is: When the film is inevitably made available to purchase on physical media, I would like to fanedit the entire Snyder DC Saga. So, is it possible to convert/crop Snyder's JL aspect ratio BACK to the standard Widescreen format that the previous canon DC films (MoS,BvS,SS,WW) are in? More specifically, I'll be using FCPX on a Mac. Until then, I'd like to do a test run with the current trailer for fun. Any help/tips are appreciated. Thanks!
 

macmilln

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I personally think 4:3 is a bizarre "creative decision", too.
woundedmakers said:
When the film is inevitably made available to purchase on physical media

Considering it's a streaming-exclusive title (I think), this doesn't seem like an inevitability to me. Maybe it's likely, and maybe I'm mistaken, I don't really know. But...
woundedmakers said:
Is it possible to convert/crop Snyder's JL aspect ratio

Yes. It would be really easy to do automatically, either with a script or as a feature in countless file conversion softwares. Though this probably wouldn't work for the entirety of the film, as the framing of each shot is different so there's a good chance the same exact crop wouldn't work everywhere. Meaning you'd have to manually crop the footage (pan-and-scan!), shot-by-shot. An extremely tedious process, but one FCPX can certainly handle (as long as you can!)

Depending on how much of the theatrical release will be present in the Snyder cut, you may be able to use that as a "base", and then drop in + crop the 4:3 Snyder cut footage a la carte. But this may be pointless if your edit will have a Snyder-cut majority.

Contrary to my name (and DigModiFicaTion's belief), I don't use a mac so I can't give you technical tips for FCPX, but cropping seems like pretty straightforward stuff.

And, regardless of how I feel about the DCEU; this movie, and this cut specifically... I wish you the best luck!
 

woundedmakers

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Considering it's a streaming-exclusive title (I think), this doesn't seem like an inevitability to me. Maybe it's likely, and maybe I'm mistaken, I don't really know. But...

Yea, I'd imagine it will be released on physical media long after it has hit streaming. Stranger Things and Cobra Kai are the first examples that come to mind as Streaming-exclusives that eventually found their way to Bluray. With an IP as big as Justice League, I have to think Warner Bros/AT&T/HBO will want to squeeze every penny they can out of it, even if it takes awhile. At least that's what I'm hoping haha!

And Thank You for your reply! If I were to tediously crop it, would I have to also zoom in, to get rid of the vertical black bars in 4:3? Would that diminish the quality/resolution, especially when cut together with the widescreen sources of the other DCEU films? Thanks again for your time. :)
 

macmilln

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woundedmakers said:
If I were to tediously crop it, would I have to also zoom in, to get rid of the vertical black bars in 4:3?

If you were just testing out with the trailer on YouTube, yeah (it’s bad quality anyways). A proper physical release will definitely not have black bars actually IN the file, the file would just be 4:3 natively. Meaning you wouldn’t have to “zoom in”, just chopping off the top and bottom. Thus no loss in quality would occur.
 

TM2YC

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I believe JL was shot with a mixture of traditional 70mm and 35mm film but not 4:3 IMAX 70mm like some parts of BvS...

ZZ238CCB9D.jpg


Snyder is on record as saying JL was originally intended to be released in a 1.85:1 AR (similar to your standard widescreen TV ratio). As seen in this shot from the 3rd trailer for it's theatrical release:

50257857231_8011fa9bcc_c.jpg


A shot from the HBO trailer looks like this showing more of the top and bottom:

50257857271_df55b30e6d_c.jpg


I'm almost sure Snyder didn't shoot JL with animorphic lenses (which stretch the picture) so all the filmstock (70 and 35) would be natively 4:3, requiring it to be matted to 1.85:1.

For example... 'Dawn of the dead' had a recent bonus completely open-matte release which looked like this and showed off areas of the frame never intended to be seen, including the edges of the negative:

WamaxXE.jpg


But was originally released and matted down to 1.85:1 (or something similar) like this:

AqRIK88.jpg


If you look closely at the corners of a lot of shots in the new HBO JL trailer you can see what looks like the edge of the negative:

50257224188_1e73cf696b_c.jpg


Assuming this isn't some kind of "Instagram" effect applied to the shots, I reckon this trailer is showing the full frame area. A work in progress state, before the film is cropped down. If this gets an IMAX release that's the whole 4:3 image you could see projected but I suspect the HBO stream and any future blu-ray release will be in 1.78:1, as intended.

^ This is all partly conjecture on my part.

Personally I'd love to see a massive budget colour blockbuster released in 4:3... we haven't seen that since the days of 1939's 'Gone with the Wind' :D .
 

woundedmakers

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Awesome, thank you both for the info. The "art" of aspect ratios both interest and confuse me haha. As someone who still watches a ton of B-horror movies on VHS, 4:3 is something I'm used to (and prefer for that era/genre), but for this particular project it would obviously make sense to match the other sources. Hopefully I won't have to wait too long for a physical release. Thanks again, gents!
 

The Danger Zone

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I want Zack Snyder's Justice League to be shown in IMAX. The whole four-hour adventure.
 

woundedmakers

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Motleys Fanedits said:
I want Zack Snyder's Justice League to be shown in IMAX. The whole four-hour adventure.

I second that! I think it will have a limited release in theaters eventually. Apparently it will be released as 4 "episodes" and then packaged as a film afterwards.
 

skyled

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The always accurate Wikipedia says:
ReleaseZack Snyder's Justice League is set to be released around early to mid-2021 on HBO Max.[sup][49][/sup][sup][104][/sup] It will be initially released in four separate one hour episodes, followed by a version which edits all four parts together into one film. Snyder also confirmed that DC and WB are currently working on other distribution plans for the cut in international markets where HBO Max is not available.[sup][105][/sup] The cut will be released in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio.[sup][106][/sup]
 

addiesin

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skyled said:
1.66:1 aspect ratio.

Interesting, that's 5:3 (wider than 4:3) or 15:9 (less wide than 16:9), so widescreen TV's will have black bars on the sides and crt TV's will have black bars on top and bottom. Weird.
 

ChainsawAsh

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Pop in your Blu-Ray of Dr. No, From Russia with Love, or Goldfinger, and you'll see exactly what 1.66:1 looks like on a 16:9 TV.
 

Captain Khajiit

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1.66:1 is a well-established AR.  In fact, it's one of my favorites.  It's often a good compromise when it comes to dealing with material that's been presented in a variety of aspect ratios (or where the intended AR is disputed).
 

Gieferg

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A proper physical release will definitely not have black bars actually IN the file. Meaning you wouldn’t have to “zoom in”, just chopping off the top and bottom. Thus no loss in quality would occur.
Incorrect.

It certainly will as all 4:3 movies or TV shows released on blu-ray have. Zooming is necessary and yes, it means quality loss.
 

asterixsmeagol

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I think the Blu-ray specs allow for different aspect ratios so the file could be 1920x1080 (16:9) with bars, 1440x1080 (4:3) without bars, or maybe even 1485x1080 (1.375:1). The last one might end up as 1488x1080, though since 1488 is divisible by 16 and for some reason I'm thinking that might be a requirement?
 

Gieferg

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Every Blu-ray with 4:3 content that I'm familar with (yeah, there were only few) was 1920x1080 with black bars on the sides. That of course doesn't mean that must be the case here, but I'm 98% sure it will be.

But even if it would be 1440x1080 or so, zooming is still necessary to create 1920x1080 widescreen version from that source. Because of that, it would be a better idea to create 1080p widescreen from 4K version, not from standard Blu-ray.
 

CriticalHitRate

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Would you be sourcing from both the Whedon and Snyder cuts? If so, the bigger challenge to me would be matching the color schemes.
 

Gieferg

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Not that big of a challenge actually.
 
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