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Widescreen is a very complex subject. It all started when television became popular in the 1950s and Hollywood needed to bring moviegoers back to the cinemas. They made their films look different than the television screen. The first ultra widescreen film was This Is Cinerama in 1952 with a huge screen curved at an angle of 165 degrees. How The West Was Won, released in 1962, was the first feature film in Cinerama with a maximum Aspect Ratio of 2.59:1. which is three times as wide as it is high, but how would this look on a regular television set? |
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On the left is a frame from |
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| In 1958 MGM released Ben Hur which was filmed in yet another large screen format called "MGM Camera 65" with a maximum aspect ratio of 2.94:1. Wider then Cinerama, but with the same problem, the width will not fit on a television screen. |
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On the left is a frame from Ben
Hur, as was projected |
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| The most popular of the large screen formats
was CinemaScope which has an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. It used an anamorphic lens to
condense the width of the image during filming, then expanded the image when projected on
to a screen two and a half times the size of the conventional screen. In 1961 the
anamorphic process was perfected by Panavision which took over from CinemaScope. By the
1970s Panavision became the standard widescreen format still used in cinemas today. Again
not as wide as "Camera 65", but still wider then the
television set. The advent of television posed a problem - how to get a Widescreen film to video tape. Pan & Scan is a method used by the film companies, when transferring film to video tape, to be screened on television and viewed on VHS tape. The film is transferred in such a way that it fills the 1.33:1 frame vertically, but due to the original Panavision ratio of 2.35:1 there is no way the image will fit horizontally. So the operator maintains that the "centre of interest" is kept in the television frame, that is, if the action were on the left as in Tomorrow Never Dies, the camera is panned during transfer to keep the main action on the TV screen. |
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On the left is a DVD frame from Tomorrow Never Dies 1997, filmed in Panavision 2.35:1 as it was shown in the Cinema. |
On the right is the Pan & Scan version from Tomorrow Never Dies, as would be seen on Analogue Television and VHS tape. |
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Another process used for transferring CinemaScope and Panavision films to tape is letterbox. This is an alternative that has long been available on laser discs. The film is transferred in such a way that the entire Panavision picture fills the width of the television screen, leaving black bars top and bottom. This enables the consumer to view a film shown in its original aspect ratio, as intended by the director. Unfortunately only 57% of the television frame is used, resulting in a loss of 43% of the vertical resolution. |
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On the left is a frame from Tomorrow Never Dies, filmed in Panavision 2.35:1 and transferred to video tape in letterbox with black bars top and bottom. |
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On the left is a DVD frame from The Spy Who Loved Me 1977, filmed in Panavision 2.35:1 as it was shown in the Cinema. |
On the right is the Pan&Scan version, as would be seen on |
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After the introduction of the anamorphic systems such as CinemaScope in the 1950s, the standard academy screen in the cinemas widened. This was achieved by simply masking the top and bottom of the conventional 35mm film during projection to produce an aspect ratio of 1.85:1and 1.66:1. A film shot in these ratios and transferred to video in the letterbox format, would translate well to television. |
On the right is a DVD frame from Get Shorty 1995, filmed in matted widescreen 1.85:1 and transferred to video tape in letterbox. |
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So to summarise, the early history of film gave us the academy ratio of 1.33:1or 4:3, see Aspect Ratio. When television began in the 1940s it adopted the same ratio of 4:3. Movies transformed to the television screen without any problem. In the 1950s, when Hollywood introduced Anamorphic widescreen movies with a ratio 2.35:1, these did not translate well to television, with up to 43% of the original image being lost to the viewer at home when a CinemaScope film was shown, due to the Pan & Scan method used. In the 1990s, with the introduction of widescreen television, projection television, digital television and DVD, the home viewer has the ability to view widescreen movies without any loss of the action. With the introduction in Australia of Digital Television in 2001, the viewer will be able to watch widescreen movies televised from the commercial channels with a more enhanced picture and sound quality than previously available. This is why the 16:9 widescreen and projection television systems, along with the anamorphic DVD movies are the best options. In fact the 4:3 televisions will not be around in the next millennium. See 16:9 Enhanced for more information.
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Click Here to see just how much of the movie you are missing on Analogue 4X3 Television and VHS. |
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The Movie Frames on this
page are for demonstration purposes only |
