To 'Pan & Zoom' or not to 'Pan & Zoom'?

[Hitcher]

I'm slowly getting to grips with Resolve and have started a working on a Theatrical Open Matte + Unrated BluRay but I'm unsure as to whether I should keep the BR scenes at their aspect ratio or pan and zoom them so everything is kept at the same 16:9 ratio.

Thoughts please?

[PDB]

This is a personal preference kind of thing. There can a lot variables and mitigating factors, like how many shots or how long are the shots are, etc. In general, I would keep the unrated footage from the BD's aspect ratio as is.

I had to make that choice with some projects in the past (read Open Matte Fellowship) and went that way to keep the maximum amount of image most of the time. Although some people hate a shifting aspect ratio, the point of Open Mattes is to see more of the image and if you are cropping a 2.39 you are making the choice to have less image.

But like I said if it was one shot that makes up the unrated footage, I might consider a crop...

[Hitcher]

Thanks for the input.

As there's about a dozen affected scenes (either deleted or extended) I think VAR is the best way to go forward. Although it will mean removing some OM parts to avoid changing AR during a shot which would be unacceptable IMO.