Cropping

[Dave Bickford]

I notice a lot of places that digitize film offer to scan the whole width of the film to include the sprocket holes rather than zooming in and cropping the frame. I’ve always wondered why a customer would want their film scanned this way. Perhaps for more control during editing and postproduction?

[Joerg Polzfusz]

Hi!

Some people like to see the perforation holes (as a proof that it’s really film and in order to fill the remaining part of their 16:9 TVs).
Another aspect is that you can use the perforation holes and the line between the frames as a reference for stabilization.
Not to mention that the cameras record an image that is wider and taller than the projected image (that’s according to the Super8 standard). And some cameras record an even wider image (without Superduper8 aka Max8 modification). So when using the additional width and a a minor reduction of the height, you can zoom in and frame for 16:9.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Essentially the same question I keep asking my customers, as 10 out of 10 will ALWAYS ask me to leave borders on all sides like this.




The reply I received would be "It's just the way I like" so simply scan all films like this as my default settings and stopped asking.

[Joerg Polzfusz]

There are even some commercials that show the perforation holes.

[Orestes Roumeliotis]

I notice a lot of places that digitize film offer to scan the whole width of the film to include the sprocket holes rather than zooming in and cropping the frame. I’ve always wondered why a customer would want their film scanned this way. Perhaps for more control during editing and postproduction?

It's nostalgic. The other thing is that if you see the perforations, and the entire frame you can validate that the camera is working correctly and that the gate is clean. The typical nonsense is what you see in the picture above. There was obviously a hair or something in the gate which has now shown up on the image above, so you can see a problem already to begin with.


Further to the point, if you have the full frame you can choose what you want to crop yourself in post. There is nothing worse in a lab deciding what you want from a video and then cropping the digital conversion in a way that compromises the content. When you have the entire frame you can make those decisions yourself.

But then that's always the case, you can find transferred content from the 1970s from Super 8 which has left the sprocket hole in it, and then even Tarantino did that in Once Upon A time in Hollywood where he shot some of the movie on 8 and 16mm. In the case of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood it was for the very reason, to remove some of the glaze from the movie and to make the cuts, often in the "off set production" look less professional, and to me that was an effective tool.