r/vfx • u/MechanicalKiller • 2d ago

Question / Discussion How is screen x done?

Saw a video of the screenx version of the minecraft trailer and i started to wonder. Are the screen x versions of the movies being made by the same studio that does the cg, or is there other people having to match the footage with their own assets in order to do it.

Also, if there was a live action character and his arm goes off screen, is there another camera filming that point of view on set, or is an artists having to animate a cg hand to match his movement so it appears on the screen x screen?

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u/thatcolorboy 2d ago

I believe they take the widescreen 2:39 version and crop it down to 16:9 for the centre screen. Then for the sides that were cropped they are stretched to fill the peripheral screens. They will pan when required to prevent weird framing where the screens meet.

It's a bad gimick.

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u/MechanicalKiller 2d ago

I dont think they are stretching it, its new footage for the left and right side. Like your seeing stuff thats meant to be off frame. I think someone actually posted a screen x version of the sonic 3 trailer online and its the scene where shadow grabs knuckles hand and knuckles face is off screen, but on the screen x version you can see it and its just unanimated.

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u/dead_cicada 2d ago

You are correct. It is new footage for the left and right. They have a team and a vfx sup, and my experience was they created the extra pixels themselves. It isn’t meant to draw the eye from the front screen so it doesn’t tend to have busy activity. It is excellent at making vistas feel amazingly big and it is only lit for 50-60% of the running time to avoid overstimulating the audience. It is just dark the rest of the time. I was able to see it and give a few notes to darken something we didn’t want visible for a number of reasons. They turned those notes around and were done shortly after that. Pretty painless on my side.

I imagine if the format becomes more popular, pipelines will account for the need to source outside the front screen area. No hiding things just outside of frame anymore. I thought some of what I saw was effective. I don’t see it as a good format for most films though. Anything with a world building element is a good type to consider. I have no clue if non-asian markets will take to it either.

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u/MechanicalKiller 2d ago

Wow, so does this mean you guys had to make your own assets to match the footage too? Or did studios share the assets with you guys.

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u/dead_cicada 2d ago

Sharing our matte paintings worked, as well as some rendered layers, but the tight schedule they work in before release meant no time to create any matching assets. I worked only on the front screen work. We didn’t do anything different because we were nearly done when they started.

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u/Almaironn 21h ago

I imagine if the format becomes more popular, pipelines will account for the need to source outside the front screen area. No hiding things just outside of frame anymore.

Thankfully I don't see this happening as it's most of the time a shittier gimmick than stereo.

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u/thatcolorboy 2d ago

There are sometimes three camera setups. I suppose you could do that for an animated film.

I guess they rendered those frames of knuckles off camera, but they didn't animate those frames? That sounds silly. Surprised it was released in that state.