In terms of video frame sizes we are all very familiar with the Widescreen aspect and for the past 18 years most cameras have natively captured video in this form.
This has been all well and good while we’ve consumed video on our TV’s and screens in a horizontal aspect, but fast forward to now – people are watching content more and more in squarer aspects.
As a production company, filming and delivering to the newer frame sizes can be challenging and especially when brands only wish to “Film once – deliver in multiple frame sizes”. You can film in 4K wide, and then try and get a vertical HD window out of that footage but there are compromises.
Well, cue in Open Gate. Open Gate is the future of filming and it enables a much better platform to deliver in various frame sizes.
Open Gate is a much squarer aspect at 3:2, whereas Widescreen is 16:9. You just need to refer to the image at the head of this article to understand exactly how Open Gate compares.
This exciting new frame size is super versatile, in that once shot, it can easily be repurposed in post production to be carved up into multiple popular video frame sizes (Wide, Square and Vertical), without real compromise.
What’s more, Open Gate is on the newest of Camera sensors, so the resolution has also increased. For the past 9 years most of the production industry has been filming in 4K, Open Gate is predominantly in 6K, or even up to 12K.
Filming in 4K was generally 3840 x 2160 pixels but when we jump to Open Gate in 6K – we increase up to 6048 x 4032 pixels. An enormous jump in image quality but this paired with the Open Gate aspect enables us as film makers to genuinely deliver in the ‘Film once, multiple sizes’ client wish.
As many of our clients and partners know, we shoot on Blackmagic Design cameras and the exciting news is; Open Gate is available on the new Pyxis camera and also latest generation of Blackmagic Cinema camera. So while Open Gate is at this stage only reserved for Digital Cinema camera’s, we’ve got you covered because we are exclusively Blackmagic.
The term Open Gate? It refers to film cameras and the film gate that used to cover film stock. “Open gate” meaning that there’s nothing covering the frame and the whole frame is captured as the film stock passed through the camera.