Does anyone know how to do the cropping effect found in the samurai jack series (shut up, it'll look cool if i do it). What i'm looking for is when the wide screen bars(as in 16:9) close in on a point of intrest. And also split screen stuff. Anyone have a clue, i know it's hard to figure out what i'm trying to say.

This is all done in post. After Effects is a good program to make it happen. I can't think of a good way to do without it though. Most editing programs can do split screen, I'm not sure about the black cropping though.

-Elliott

I don't know what editing program you're using and i've never seen samurai jack, but I think I understand what you're talking about and I did something like that in Premiere a long time ago. I don't remember exactly how I did it, but I think there's some sort of cropping effect in the video effects and then you can use the magic of transparencies to fix up the look of it. Split screen in Premiere is easy: line up the two clips in different video channels, and then open up the transparency window for the clip in the higher of the two tracks. In the corner of the window you'll see a preview of what your finished clip should look like. If you click on any corner of that little preview thing you'll see that you can drag it across to reveal the clip underneath. You can probably do something similar to this with the "cropping effect" and just use black video on the lower channel. I havn't used premiere in a while (I'm a FCP guy now) and I probably did a terrible job of explaining this so just go to "help" and search for "split screen." Good luck.

Yeah, maybe if you hunt down some stills of what you are trying to accomplish, that'd be a lot better.

It sounds like it can be done in AE, and ill go see if that show is playing on TV...
What station does it come on?

Anyways, if you can get some stills to us, that'd help tons.

This effect is typically used in old western movies. (i believe the split screen thing he's talking about is when a piece of the screen shows the cowboys hand on gun, another piece shows the opponent standing in the distance and another shows a closeup of the main characters eyes. Mildly similar to the comic book editing style used in the hulk. (i think the intro to the old "wild wild west" tv show did this too.

Anyways, to get the 16:9 bars in premiere, you can just make the bars in photoshop and import the file into premiere and put them in the top video track. To make them move in, during th action, you can do the same thing, just use the motion tools on the photoshop files.

Samurai Jack has a wonderful aesthetic. They do a great job of playing with all sorts of simple ideas to make complex and meaningful visuals (As they do with most of Hanna-Barbara's current shows).

I assume you're asking about moments when the aspect ratio changes in the midst of a shot? I believe the show is all done in flash, but you could do the effect in just about any editing program by making a large solid black object and putting it in motion. Hope that helps.

Nota "Dada is not dead" Mono

Oh, i do that using premiere... you just create a black matte and than try to move them around and resize them.... thats what I'd do. There might be an easier way to just crop the picture itself. I love samurai jack and was going to use that effect in my new movie though mine had a more Tarantino feel to it. I like when they have three different boxes to show him doing a sword swipe or a stab.

I figured out how to do it in AE, but thanks alot for the tips, it helped alot.