Quote:
Originally Posted by Takapuna
When shooting cinema films was it the case that the camera viewfinder had corner-markers for both 4:3 and 16:9 (or whatever the widescreen ratio was)? I seem to remember seeing/reading something about this. What sticks in my mind was that the 4:3 markings were higher than the 16:9 ones. i.e. They stood proud of the 16:9 height rather than being just a width marker, if you see what I mean. This is counter-intuitive and most likely a "wrong" memory!
For the short period when the LaserDisc format was the home video format of choice as far as picture quality was concerned, a number of films were presented in 16:9 ratio such that there were black bars above and below the 4:3 screen display. Selection of widescreen zoom on capable 16:9 TVs would fill the screen by applying a linear zoom to both height and width. On 4:3 screens you saw a widescreen picture albeit with borders top and bottom.
The film "Romancing The Stone" appeared as a LaserVision release originally and had the standard 4:3 aspect. When the LaserDisc era arriverd the title was re-released in "widescreen". Eager to see all of the missing detail I compared the two, only to find that the "widescreen" edition had no extra width information; Playng the original 4:3 vesion and adding black tape to the top and bottom of the screen or passing the signal through a device which inserts video black level in place of the first and last few actve lines would have achieved the same effect. This serves to reinforce my (wrong?) memory, although it maybe the case that the so-called "widescreen" version was a trick and originated from the 4:3 version with its height cropped.
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Movies from the start used 35mm film. This is like the prints you used to get from Kodak - rectangular. But what the film makers did was turn it on it's side, then shoot the square image on to that. That's how you got 4.3. Now in Vista Vision, that turned the film on it's side, giving the same rectangle as the old photo. Cinemascope - used the same film turned on it's side, but with a special lens that squashed the image to a 4.3 frame. The projector then changed the lens to widen the image out. Some other formats such as Ultra Panavision, used much wider film, 65 to 70mm and then squashed it too!
Whenever a film is transferred to other formats a great deal of compromises are made in aspect ratio. Needless to say you can not see any movie in the aspect that was meant for the cinema on another format. A very few get close to it, but you can count them on your fingers. Many as you have found are not much better than the 4.3 Pan and scan versions!
Clues to incorrect cropping of the screen are sometimes easy to spot. It's rather like taking photo's yourself. You don't cut in half a person, who should be in frame. Nor do the film makers. Large dance routines, where some of dancers are performing, but only a portion of them can be seen, especially on a long shot (time) of the dance, are clear signs of aspect being wrong. Bit's of running titles missing. This happens more often on 4.3 pictures, since the corners of the screen are removed to make the square.
By the way a modern curved screen TV is only good for showing the modern curved screen films. The older Cinemascope pictures had a much greater curve on the screen. You can see this on some things with straight lines, such as buildings, which on a non curved screen will look weird, as though it has a kink in it!