What aspect ratio is this?

[David Delaney]

I love the look of this video, the song - not so much - but it does look great. What aspect ratio is this, because it is really wide. How would something like this be achieved on a digital level?

Split screen music video for Kid Cudi. | Motionographer | Motion graphics, design, animation, filmmaking and visual effects

[Ray Bell]

Its 16x9.. I downloaded the footage, brought it into AE and overlaid a 16x9 solid over it and
the overlay fit perfect...

From the footage it was done with two setups... a wide lens setup and a standard lens setup...

Then the footage put on a 16x9 timeline and the two different footage scaled for the
over/under (split screen) look you see...

The balloons at the start were done by flipping the footage on the bottom...

[David Delaney]

I was thinking that each half (top and bottom) was done with 1:85:1 and put on top of each other to give that nice panoramic view - no?

[Bill Engeler]

I think you are asking if they used anamorphic lenses to get the wide look. 2 comments on that:

1. Anamorphic lenses don't usually give you a wider field-of-view than normal lenses, they just reduce grain because they allow you to use the whole film frame and not just a thin strip in the middle. This isn't really relevant to music videos, since grain isn't such an issue. Anamorphic format - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2. The shots aren't really that wide. I think they just used a pretty short focal-length lens. Cropping the top and bottom gives the panoramic effect.

Having said that, look at the scene where the person moves through the room on a bicycle. The speed distortion is what you would find with an anamorphic lens. But I think a less than perfect short lens might do that as well.

[David Delaney]

Thanks Bill,
I would have thought there might be more barrelling and distortion with a short lens?

[Bruce Foreman]

That video effect is fairly easily done in many video editing software packages that have more than one video track. Each video segment was probably done in 16:9 but with the vertical crop in mind and the LCD may have even been masked so only half the height was visible to aid in composing within those limits.

Then it's a simple matter of "compositing" with each video track showing it's image in proper vertical positioning. The software I use, Pinnacle Studio 12 Plus or Ultimate, has a main video track and a second or overlay track. On each of those tracks the "add video effect" allows me to crop and position the cropped image where I want it. The main video track would have the top image and the overlay track the bottom with it's audio muted.

If you didn't have access to wide lenses or an auxiliary wide converter you would have to manage shooting distance to insure proper subject size and adequate horizontal "scope".

Hope this helps.

[Tom Hardwick]

Originally Posted by Bill Engeler

Anamorphic lenses don't usually give you a wider field-of-view than normal lenses, they just reduce grain because they allow you to use the whole film frame and not just a thin strip in the middle.

A small correction Bill. An anamorphic lens is a wide-angle converter but in one plane only (it's usually, but not always, the horizontal plane). It's constructed using cylindrical elements rather than spherical or aspherical elements, and using a 2x anamorphic is the same as fitting a 0.5x wide-angle converter.

They don't reduce the grain at all - in fact because they lose a bit of light then can in fact increase the grain in gain-up mode. What a 1.33x anamorphic lens will do is utilise the whole of the 4:3 chip area to give you full resolution 16:9.

tom.