[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.