I get really upset about people showing movies or running video with the wrong screen shape.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been warned that this forum should stay a \u201cmath-free\u201d zone, so I won\u2019t mention ASPECT RATIOS and use numbers, but we shouldn\u2019t need them.\u00a0 While I rant about this\u2013and expect me to go on about it\u2013let me interrupt with an aside that\u2019s particularly telling.<\/p>\n
I went to a screening of The Quiet Man <\/em>(1952) a few years ago.\u00a0 Maureen O\u2019Hara was in attendance before and after the film, but she went out to dinner during the showing itself.\u00a0 She said she\u2019d seen the movie enough and didn\u2019t need to see it one more time.\u00a0 I was dismayed to see the picture start with the grand Republic Pictures logo, an eagle over a globe… this time only to say A Republic… (without the Picture.)<\/p>\n You see, the projectionist had decided not to do his homework on this film, and he ran it in widescreen format.\u00a0 If he\u2019d bothered to check, he would have known that in 1954 the industry switched from conventional \u201cAcademy-sized\u201d format (almost square, like most tube-TVs), to widescreen (much like your newer flat-screen TVs).\u00a0 The problem is that if you run an older film in widescreen format, you cut off the top and bottom of the image, which is what was done with The Quiet Man<\/em>…<\/p>\n ALL THE WAY THROUGH…<\/p>\n I found this highly annoying, since it ruined much of the movie\u2019s great photographic composition.\u00a0 I plotted my revenge against this idiot projectionist until it dawned on me that I might have a much more powerful ally.\u00a0 Ms. O\u2019Hara did a nice Q&A session with the audience, and I saw that this is a woman who takes no guff.\u00a0 From anyone.\u00a0 Ever.\u00a0 She\u2019s very nice about it, but whenever someone said something stupid or wrong, she corrected the error.<\/p>\n I wanted the projectionist to be in big trouble for screwing this up (after all, they\u2019d taken my money for the show), so I figured the best thing I could do was to tell Maureen O\u2019Hara about it.\u00a0 I waited until the Q&A was over and went to the reception.\u00a0 Gingerly, I approached her and introduced myself.\u00a0 (Forgive the numbers here… but I am reproducing what I told her…)<\/p>\n \u201cAre you aware that they ran that entire picture at 1.85?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n Her eyes flashed.\u00a0 \u201cWhat?\u00a0 That\u2019s not a widescreen picture!\u201d<\/p>\n I was happy that she knew exactly what I meant without explanation.\u00a0 She went on…<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about the scene when Duke is dragging me across the glen?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n \u201cYou were off the bottom of the screen during the entire shot,\u201d I answered.<\/p>\n \u201cI ruptured a disc on that scene!\u00a0 I\u2019m going to speak to them about this!\u201d<\/p>\n I reported this story to a friend of mine who\u2019s in \u201cthe industry,\u201d and he was amazed.\u00a0 This fellow had met O\u2019Hara as well.\u00a0 He had only one question:\u00a0 \u201cWhat did she do with the bodies?\u201d<\/p>\n The projectionist had decided that they had a wide screen, and he had to fill it.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard the quote from people before: \u201cI paid <\/em>for a wide screen, and I\u2019m going to fill it up.\u201d<\/p>\n And you can do that, but you\u2019ll have to stretch, crop, and malign the image so much that any artistic intent of the original filmmakers is completely lost. \u00a0In this case, the projectionist cropped the image. \u00a0This annoys me in the extreme.<\/p>\n The problem is that there are several different screen sizes, and they literally do not fit with each other.\u00a0 The rectangles are different shapes.\u00a0 That\u2019s why they call the newer formats \u201cwidescreen.\u201d<\/p>\n These are the notable ones:<\/p>\n 1) Movies 1894-1954 are generally in what\u2019s called \u201cAcademy format,\u201d which is a narrow rectangle slightly wider than it is high.\u00a0 (Yes, film geeks, I\u2019m aware that silent aperture is different, and I project them properly, but that gets a little technical, so don\u2019t bug me.)<\/p>\n 2) Movies 1954- adopted a widescreen format that is wider.\u00a0 In America, this is a bit wider than in Europe, so there a European widescreen and an American one.<\/p>\n 3) Cinemascope\/Panavision (1953-) uses a special photographic process to squeeze a widescreen image into the older Academy format and that yields an even wider screen. (Yes, I know that\u2019s not quite <\/em>accurate, film geeks… lay off!).<\/p>\n 4) Finally in the 2000s, TV got into the act, adopting another <\/em>screen size that is between the size of American widescreen and European widescreen.<\/p>\n The upshot of this is that we have to mix and match screen sizes all the time.\u00a0 If you run a widescreen movie on a narrow Academy screen (like old TVs), then it doesn\u2019t fit, so you either have to crop off the sides (ick) or \u201cletterbox\u201d it, where we see black bars at the top and bottom of the screen.<\/p>\n These black bars aren\u2019t there because we\u2019re masking off part of your narrow screen, but rather because the narrow screen isn\u2019t wide enough to accommodate the picture.\u00a0 See what I mean here:<\/p>\n