Realigning misaligned anamorphic footage

[elubes]

So I'm about to edit my friend's thesis he directed a while ago and still hasn't finished.

He shot on RED with 2x anamorphic PL glass. Anyway, I saw the footage, and it's a shame the DP didn't align the anamorphic correctly in any of the shots. It's consistently skewed throughout all reels. I think they were monitoring a squeezed image with no desqueezed monitor and couldn't tell.

I looked in the forums, but couldn't find anything about how to correct this. My intuition is that it's a lost cause to correctly align the image back in post. Is this true? Or is there some crude plug-in or work about? The only thing I can think of is rotating the image, and punching in to maintain the picture and aspect ratio.

I honestly think it's almost unwatchable because the story and acting are pretty good, but people just look like they're in a mirror circus funhouse.

Thanks!

[Hans Punk]

Depends how extreme the mis-alignment is but it sounds like a fix worth trying is a skew or slant distortion effect in Nuke or After Effects. Use that to counter the skew effect caused in mis-alignment. This will still result in having to punch into the image to hide the edges (but much less extreme), and will be a decent solution to salvage the footage.

[elkanah77]

I've had to realign plenty og shots caused by handheld camera and adapter on a tourist-promo I did a couple of years ago. Due to heavy vibration on the ferry I had to abandon tripods and pick up the rig by hand. Had no stabilizer of any kind.

I the pulled the footage into after effects and used the pin-corner effects to drag/squeeze the corners of the footage to sort-of realign what was mis-aligned. Worked quite well.

 

Check out the footage from the ferry on this:

 

https://vimeo.com/71725984

[christrad]

+1.

I had the same problem and use the same solution (pin corner on AE). Not easy but works pretty well.

[ken]

I've had to realign plenty og shots caused by handheld camera and adapter on a tourist-promo I did a couple of years ago. Due to heavy vibration on the ferry I had to abandon tripods and pick up the rig by hand. Had no stabilizer of any kind.

I the pulled the footage into after effects and used the pin-corner effects to drag/squeeze the corners of the footage to sort-of realign what was mis-aligned. Worked quite well.

 

Check out the footage from the ferry on this:

 

https://vimeo.com/71725984

​IMO, anamorphic alignment and level are different things.   Alignment is must.  Using flare to set it with grid on LCD is the best way to do when mounting anamorphic lens.  If alignment is correct, no other distortion issue.  

[dhessel]

I have fixed this before in AE using a slightly different and probably more correct way. Bring in the footage and put it in a comp and un-squeeze as you normally would by scaling, pixel aspect ratio, etc... Apply a transform effect to the footage and adjust the rotate parameter until the un-squeeze is correct. This method rotates the image prior to the un-squeeze skewing the footage. Rotate the layer opposite of the effect rotation by an equal magnitude to re-level it. Punch in to hide the skewed edges. 

However the resulting footage will have slanted bokeh and flares unless you don't counter rotate the footage back to its original orientation. This would most likely cause all of the shots to be off level but may be useful for shallow dof/flare filled shots...

[richg101]

can you leave it as it is?  if the Dp didn;t notice, it might be that the viewer won't either.

 

 

[elkanah77]

​IMO, anamorphic alignment and level are different things.   Alignment is must.  Using flare to set it with grid on LCD is the best way to do when mounting anamorphic lens.  If alignment is correct, no other distortion issue.  

​Yes, I agree. To clarify...in my case the adapter WAS aligned, I'm very careful about this. It was more of a small rotation inside the adapter as my Kowas glass are a little flimsy. As I was handhelding the rig there was little things "happening" with many of those shots thus the "repair" with the Corner Pin effect in After effects. As my short had little or no flares and mostly very deep focus I got away with it all and the short is used by my countrys leading tourist guide. If you can't see it, you can't see it. ;-)

[griplimited]

 

I think this is an example of it. My wife can't tell the difference, but something doesn't look right in facial features, not that I know how she looks like in person. And also how the candle sconce on the walls are. As Rich said, might be fine the way it is with a handful of people who will point it out.

edit: not sure if the video shows. it's the music video for " Love Me Harder " by Ariana Grande

[elubes]

Thanks everyone for the replies. Will give it a shot when I get all the footage.

not sure I can leave it as is, Rich, the director didn't really mind how skewed it is, but to me, it's pretty off. almost like 15-20 deg skewed.

griplimited - yeah I see the elongated face on that ariana video. attached a screenshot. it's pretty slight, to me it looks like it wasn't desqueezed all the way...unless that was an aesthetic choice to make her look svelte?

ariana.tiff