A Q&A with Crush Senior artist David Whiteson on Crush Tools.
Q: Tell me about Crush Tools.
A: It allows the user to visually understand what different aspect ratios look like. Our clients may be shooting their commercial on HD which is a 16x9 format but in reality the T.V stations require all commercials be 4x3 friendly. Most of the time it's hard to visualize what gets cutoff by this 4x3 format. With the "Crush App" we have provided the user with multiple grids and guides to visually represent the most common formats, leaving no question as to what will fall within a safe action area or what will be cutoff.
Q: Why did you decide to create it?
A: HD televisions have been around for many years now and yet Crush still gets asked "What will this commercial look like on my 4x3 television". We (Crush) wanted to make sure our clients understood exactly what they are going to see and that the 16x9 format (HD) can not fit into a 4x3 (SD) unless it is resized smaller, leaving black bars on the top and bottom (Letterboxed), or it needs to be centre cut resulting in the loss of picture left and right.
Q: Who is the audience? Who should find it useful?
A: Directors, cinematographers, producers, editors, designers, anyone who wants to educate or understand how to frame for multiple formats.
Q: Tell me about the creative & technical process of creating it. How log did it take to develop? What were the challenges? What software tools did you use?
A: The creative process was fairly simple, yet it still took over eight months to create. We knew right from the get go what we were trying to convey. What took the longest amount of time was coordinating and programming the app with Apple. There are very strict guide lines to follow. I think we made four versions before the app was finally approved. Ironically something that was approved by Apple the second time we submitted it was then rejected when we submitted the app the third time around. By the time we had the app running and ready to launch two months ago Apple had released the iPad. Unfortunately the iPad does not have a camera so the app would crash if launched using the iPad software, something unacceptable to Apple. So Crush once again had to re-program the app to be usable by iPad users, creating a further delay.
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