Widescreen -v- Letterbox

[GulPlum <hp@plum.cream.org>]

A few posts in one...

Steve <bboy> wrote:

> I start with an apology, I haven't been following all of this 
thread,
> but I thought I might have something that was usefull.

<snip>

It's a pity you didn't read one or two of the earlier messages, 
Steve, because that web site (mine!) :-) has been quoted at least 
four times in the thread so far. :-) Incidentally, Steve, your 
renamed subject title is misleading, as "Widescreen" usually 
means "letterbox"; I think you meant to say "full screen -v- 
letterbox". :-)

Monika Huebner wrote:

> SF/X are
> created digitally, in the very format needed for the movie. So any
> shot that contains a special effect will be cut at the sides for
> full screen format. For ID4 that was about 40% of the movie, and
> PS contains quite a lot of SF/X, too, which are forcibly cut at the
> sides in the full screen version. It would be way too expensive to
> create the SF/X in both 4:3 and 2.38:1 aspect ratio. 

As it happens, in the case of PS/SS, all digital SFX were generated 
for the whole Super 35 frame, and thus the above comments don't 
really apply. I deliberately included some SFX-heavy shots in the 
selection i made (Fluffy, Quidditch) to show that this was the case.

illyana delorean wrote:

> I really need to watch the movie again, because I didn't 
> notice any panning and scanning going on - maybe because it is 
> up-and-down and not side-to-side, as I am used to (I really hate 
> that!). Plus, I was totally not expecting any, so I guess my brain 
> didn't register it as being panned and scanned.

Panning (rapidly moving the captured area across the screen to catch 
something on opposite ends of the widescreen picture), as opposed to 
scanning (selecting which part of the frame to capture as a 
continuous shot) is fairly rare and always has been. Apart from being 
(slightly) more expensive, even pan & scan enthusiasts admit the 
rhythm of the original shot is ruined, and thus studios tend to avoid 
panning as much as possible. 

One of the most famous examples of what's lost when a full widescreen 
picture (filmed as such) is cropped to a "full screen" TV picture is 
in 2001: A Space Oddysey when the two astronauts are talking in the 
pod: their faces are either side of the screen, with the blinking eye 
of Hal in the middle. I saw one (bad) panned & scanned version of 
that film once in which the captured area zoomed from one face to the 
other. It was enough to give me motion sickness. The usual way that 
scene is done in panned & scanned versions is to leave the scan in 
the middle of the frame, showing Hal in the middle and nothing but 
the astonauts' lips and nosetips either side. Whilst still bad, it is 
much less offensive than the panned version.

In any case, Columbus seems to prefer vertical pans (I mean as part 
of the artistic side of film-making) and thus the perpetual up-and-
down motion of the camera when scanning the negative for what goes 
into the widescreen version is much less noticeable than it otherwise 
would have been.

> To make this less-OT: Does anyone want to venture a guess regarding 
> which format Cuaron will choose to film POA? Do you think he will
> use Super 35 and continue what Columbus started, or will he go his 
> own way? I have seen "Y Tu Mama Tambien," but, truthfully, I was 
> not paying too much attention to the cinematography, so I don't 
> know too much about Cuaron's style!

I suspect that Super 35 was imposed on Columbus by the studio. They 
would have been mindful of the fact that the film's target audience 
(children) watching it at home wouldn't be impressed by explanations 
that the widescreen picture with huge black areas on their TV screen 
is the way to watch it. Warners would probably have insisted on a 
reasonable fullscreen edition and the obvious solution is Super 35.

Cuaron has used both Super 35 and anamorphic processes in the past, 
so he seems at ease with both. For the reasons stated above, he'll 
probably continue wih Super 35 and we'll have this whole discussion 
over again when PoA comes out on DVD. :-)