The Reason We Still Have Black Bars on Our Screens

Dare

While I was working, the flat films with no bars were most common with comedies that had few or no special effects. (John Hughes comedies that I've seen the prints first hand come to mind, like Uncle Buck and She's Having a Baby.) Very often, when they were transferred to video, the entire frame was transferred, so you actually saw more on video than you saw theatrically. Of course, that had its drawbacks, like miles of room above the actors' heads, or microphones and set lights visibly intruding on the top on the frame, or panties visible on the bottom edge when the character was supposed to be completely nude. Those films were intended by the cinematographer to be cropped down in theaters, and seeing them uncropped goes against the filmmakers' original intention.

One interesting film that was released while I was working was Back to the Future Part II. On that print, all of the regular footage was in uncropped 1.33:1, but the special effects shots had hard mattes at 1.85:1. It was funny to see the aspect ratio constantly changing while looking at the film in the gate, but you couldn't tell anything weird was happening on the screen because everything was cropped down to 1.85:1 by the projector.

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kamspy

Uncle Buck rules.

RIP John Candy

kamspy

delete

Joe_news

I wish they made plasma screens in OAR. Sadly all the content on my sexy new Pioneer has to be stretched, just a little, but stretched none the less since the TV is 16:9.

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kamspy

Why does it have to by stretched? What size is it?

Only 16x10 sets have to stretch all ARs to fit.

Dare

Bump, for e_a_g_l_e_p_i

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Jed

Here are some links I found that will explain this.

Movies on dvd and how they fit your tv screen:
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/spec...eat_emptor.htm
The website where this came from:
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/index.htm

What the different aspect ratios are:
http://www.widescreen.org/aspect_ratios.shtml
What is widescreen:
http://www.widescreen.org/widescreen.shtml
What is matted widescreen:
http://www.widescreen.org/widescreen_matte.shtml
Academy aspect ratio:
http://www.widescreen.org/widescreen_academy.shtml
And some info on tv resolutions:
http://www.widescreen.org/widescreen_tvres.shtml
The website where this info came from:
http://www.widescreen.org/index.shtml

I hope these links work.

electrictroy

No. That's why it's called "pan and scan" because the video director moves the camera left-and-right to capture the most-important part of the picture. He doesn't just scan the center.

I got into a debate with a 50-something guy, and he absolutely could not understand: "I want the movie to fill my whole television screen." "But you are losing the left and right edge of the movie..." "I don't care!" I was stunned. How can someone not care that they are losing half the movie's image???

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1080PsF

Some HD programs are a pan & scan version and some are just a center cut extraction. When they do that the show was shot in 16:9 but it is 4:3 safe, so you are just losing some extra stuff on the sides, nothing important.

The pan & scan is done by a colorist not a video director and they are not doing anything with a camera, it is done electronically.

PFC5

Thanks for the actual correct info on this.

Where have you been? We have missed your profession insight here and i hope you are now back to providing your knowledge more often.

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electrictroy

I didn't realize some video companies were so "lazy" as to do center-cut extraction. Every movie I'd ever seen moved left and right to follow the action. As example "How the West Was Won", when showing two people talking, panned left and then panned right to show the people talking.

A center cut would have shown neither person.

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1080PsF

First off it's not the video company's call to do the center cut or pan & scan it is the studios call, it's about money not about being lazy. Second if you read my post it said that it would be shot 16:9 but 4:3 safe so nothing would really be lost in the center cut.

electrictroy

"How the West Was Won" was not filmed to be 4:3 safe.

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Lee Stewart

Troy:

You are using a very obsure film format to try to prove your point - 3 Strip Cinerama. This movie was the only commerial "hollywood" movie ever made in this format.

electrictroy

Jeez you're being really anal-retentive. Fine. Replace "How the West Was Won" with "Ben Hur". A centercut transfer would not work for these movies either. Picky, picky. I was just going by what Steven Spielberg had said. He described the process of pan-and-scan as "redirecting the movie" so in effect a colorist is acting like a director, deciding how each scene will be framed.

All I wanted to do was answer the guy's question ("Just one question for the first pic of your example: for square TV's don't they center the picture?"), not get into a debate. about trivalities.