"super size me" 16:9 confusion

[Paul Bravmann]

saw "super size me" the other night. liked the movie well enough, but beyond that, was curious about the tech specs. i assumed that it was shot on mini DV with an anamorphic lens adaptor, but ran across the following from a spurlock interview in "filmmaker" magazine:

"we shot the whole thing with a sony pd-150, because that's scott's [his DP's] camera. we tried the panasonic 24p camera, but it doesn't have an inherent 16-by-9; you had to use an anamorphic lens."

any guesses as to what he means by this? if what i saw was the pd-150's in-camera 16:9 mode blown up to 35mm widescreen, then i would have few qualms about shooting my own doc project in this way. but doesn't the origingal dvx100 (which because of the project's date is probably the camera he's referring to) have a "fake" 16:9 setting as well?

The film didn't look terrific, by any means, but if that's what non-anamorphic 16:9 looks like blown up, then the resolution would be good enough for my non-fiction purposes.

thanks for your thoughts,
phb

[Ignacio Rodriguez]

The DVX100A's non-native 16:9 should be even better because progressive scan results in better spatial resolution than interlaced video.

[George Zabetas]

I read it as well in Filmmaker magazine (I think) and just took it to mean he didn't really know much on the specs.

[Paul Bravmann]

<<<-- Originally posted by George Zabetas : I read it as well in Filmmaker magazine (I think) and just took it to mean he didn't really know much on the specs. -->>>

so do you think the film was actually shot using the pd-150's in-camera 16:9, as mentioned in the article?

if so, then i'm surprised at how okay the resolution looked after the transfer and blow-up. perhaps too coarse for a dramatic feature, but not for the sort of documentary i have in mind.

[George Zabetas]

I beleive he did it on the PD-150 as he said, along with an adaptor or masking. I have seen some threads on this elsewhere. I was referring to the 16x9 mode which would be the same squeeze mode on both.
As to the looks of it (I have not seen it): once a movie gets placed on film and is processed digitally with a higher bandwidth intermediate its a new look. It gets a facial lift.
Those guys have Inferno and 3D tools on 4:2:2 color space etc, playing with newer contrast ratio (film). Its like when they find those old hollywood movies that looked horrible and process them and they sparkle again.

[Ignacio Rodriguez]

> if so, then i'm surprised at how okay the resolution looked
> after the transfer and blow-up. perhaps too coarse for a
> dramatic feature, but not for the sort of documentary i have
> in mind.

If motion blur was applied it might have softened the image so much that the resolution loss became less visible. I love the look of motion blur in FCP when applied subtly.