Most of what you see here is from a presentation I did many years ago. Most of these films are all classic, widescreen epics, but they’re the best examples of how badly they have been translated to TV. New, widescreen 16x9 TV’s have helped somewhat, but new issues are emerging. More on that later.
Before television, most movies were shot on 35mm in a 4x3 aspect ratio:
Zooming in to only part of the picture in order to fill the screen became known as “Pan and Scan” which implies that whoever is supervising the transfer from film to videotape is actually panning left or right to follow the principal action. In reality, very few “pan and scan” versions actually do that, they simply crop the image on the left and right.
In the 1950’s, when audiences stayed home to watch TV instead of going out to the movies, Hollywood fought back with immersive, widescreen formats to lure audiences back into the theater.
There are two choices. You either have to letterbox the image to show the entire frame as it was seen in theaters and meant to be seen, or you zoom in and only show part of the image. The latter, unfortunately, became the de facto standard.
This was all well and good, but when it came time to broadcast these movies on TV, some pretty dreadful decisions were made. Movies like “Casablanca” or “Gone With The Wind” which were shot in a 1.33 aspect ratio translated quite well to TV:
But what about a widescreen epic like “2001: A Space Odyssey”?
Here are some examples of the difference between what was seen in theaters and what was broadcast on television. On the left is the 1:33 version of “Star Wars” that was broadcast on TV. On the right is the 2.35 version that was seen in theaters:
Here’s some more examples from the film “Dragonheart”:
The vast majority of Hollywood films that aren’t 2.35 are shot in an aspect ratio of 1.85 (the green box below). When transferred to 1.33 videotape, areas of the image on the left and right are typically just cropped off:
...and some great ones from “The Music Man”:
Another more disturbing issue is the fact that many of the 1.85 films are shot full 1.33 frame, the top and bottom of the frame is just masked when projected in theaters. What’s disturbing about this, you ask? Well, there were many a sloppy transfer to 1.33 videotape. Instead of letterboxing the image so that you saw what the director intended you to see, you got the full 1.33 frame. This sometimes included boom mikes in the top of the frame, cables and such in the bottom of the frame, and a few hilarious examples.
In this scene from “A Fish Called Wanda”, John Cleese is supposed to be naked, to the shock of the family that just walked in the door. In the full frame 1.33 transfer, you can see that he’s really wearing jeans. Oops!!
In this opening scene from “The Shining”, what was shown in theaters is on the left. In the full frame 1.33 transfer, you can see the shadow of the helicopter that’s shooting this scene. I was mortified that one of my heroes, Stanley Kubrick, actually allowed this to happen.
In fairness, some directors shoot their films for both 1.85 theatrical masking and 1.33 television broadcast, so they compose their shots in anticipation of both, but the vast majority of 1.85 films were not shot this way, and the sloppy transfers (above) are two good examples.
Now that we have widescreen 16x9 HDTV’s, you’d think this practice would be curtailed, but it’s only opened another can of worms. See my blog entries for continued violations.
One quick footnote: 16x9 TV’s are actually an aspect ratio of 1.78. A purist would argue that a 1.85 movie should be ever so slightly letterboxed on a 1.78 display to preserve the original aspect ratio. I have, in fact, seen this on occasion and I will post a blog entry the next time I see it. For now, I’m content viewing a 1.85 film on a 1.78 display. I think being that much of a purist would just be too much to ask!
More to come....
Theater graphics and widescreen examples courtesy of The American Widescreen Museum, another site dedicated to the preservation of visual content, and chockablock with information for film buffs. (www.widescreenmuseum.com)
