Comments on: Aspect (Ratios) of Love

By: milo

milo — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 13:24:41 +0000

Michael,
I stand corrected!
The point I was trying to get across was that really wide (ie, 2.35:1) widescreen films shot in non-anamorphic Super 35 are still projected using an anamorphic print.
70mm is, to my knowledge, the only commercial projection format capable of showing 2.35:1 wide-screen films non-anamorphically.

By: Michael Brooke

Michael Brooke — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 11:01:39 +0000

in practice, only anamorphic 35mm prints are used to project in widescreen

Sorry, but that’s completely untrue. 35mm prints only need an anamorphic lens if the aspect ratio is really wide (2.35:1, for instance).

By contrast, normal widescreen films - 1.85:1 and 1.66:1 - are distributed with the widescreen image letterboxed into the 4:3-shaped frame (or simply as an open-matte 4:3 image), and the projectionist merely has to zoom and mask the image appropriately.

By: milo

milo — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:39:50 +0000

Eddie,
Hmmm sounds like an odd problem! Perhaps you digibox or DVD player is set to widescreen but isn’t scaling the picture to fit your 4:3 TV? What cable do you use to connect your device to the telly?

By: Eddie Kent

Eddie Kent — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:32:02 +0000

This is all Greek to me, but does anything said above explain why I can’t read anything at the extreme left and right of my television screen? For instance, who is NE NDA? (OK I’ve worked it out, but it could have been someone obscure and I could have wanted to know.)

By: milo

milo — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 16:29:20 +0000

Hunter Hale - thanks for the post! I have clarified my post slightly in response to your comments!

Spartacus was shot in Technirama, which does use 35mm film…. but the film is run through the camera horizontally, so the area exposed for each frame can be much bigger than standard 35mm. So when my original post said Spartacus was shot in “anamorphic 35mm” I wasn’t quite doing it justice!

Technirama is still an anamorphic process however, but when the image has been ‘unsqueezed’ it can be used to produce non-anamorphic 70mm prints. For this reason, 35mm Technivision can be known as Super Technirama 70.

Finally, one side point I should have raised in my original post - while there is more than one way to film in widescreen, in practice, only anamorphic 35mm prints are used to project in widescreen (unless you are in a theatre with a 70mm projector, that is).

By: Hunter Hale

Hunter Hale — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:42:23 +0000

Interesting comments, but I think that if you check you will find that SPARTACUS was shot on 70mm. After roadshow engagements it was released in anamorphic 35mm.

By: Michael Brooke

Michael Brooke — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:02:53 +0000

Part of the problem is that most cinemas can’t show 4:3 properly any more (and when they do, the films are projected rather sheepishly into the middle of an area more comfortable with widescreen), so few of us have really experienced how effective a format it can be.

In London, the Barbican and Riverside Studios cinema are practically alone in having a screen that’s 4:3-shaped to begin with, and those venues are far and away the best places to see older films.

Because most of my work involves watching 4:3 films, I eschewed a plasma or LCD telly in favour of an old Toshiba 43″ rear-projection model. Not only was this vastly cheaper, but it also produces a massive 4:3 image that’s utterly transformed my home experience of silent films in particular.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:54:39 +0000

I’ve been a big fan of widescreen since i first encountered it, even if it meant squinting it a mere ribbon of colour & movement on my 14″ portable telly while enjoying Branagh’s Hamlet or The Thin Red Line.

A colleague once complained to me that The Girl with the Pearl Earring should’ve been filmed in 4:3 as it much better suited Vermeer’s painting style. I scoffed. 4:3 is rubbish I said! Widescreen is much truer to our natural field of vision I claimed.

And all was well until I (finally) saw The Third Man recently (sorry!) in it’s squareish glory. And I saw that 4:3 could be used just as wonderfully as widescreen. In fact it was better suited to, say, gothic looming than my best friend widescreen. Since then, I’ve been enjoying classics (Of Mice and Men [1939] springs to mind with some excellent 4:3 scenes) in their natural state, resisting the urge to cycle through the modes on my telly so they’d take up more room.

As for your question Milo - whatever the director intended please.