Question about WS 1080p presentations of older movies.

[mfan1986]

Hi,

If a classic movie from the 1980's is released in widescreen, but was initially filmed in open matte and intended for the video market with a small theatrical release, does it not only get cropped, but also zoomed in?

I've been watching a lot of movies that were cropped from open matte, and I think the reason why it feels like I'm watching them for the first time, is because they are zoomed in to compensate for the cropping, therefore everything actually looks bigger and more close up.

[WBMakeVMarsMovieNOW]

Originally Posted by mfan1986

Hi,

If a classic movie from the 1980's is released in widescreen, but was initially filmed in open matte and intended for the video market with a small theatrical release, does it not only get cropped, but also zoomed in?

I've been watching a lot of movies that were cropped from open matte, and I think the reason why it feels like I'm watching them for the first time, is because they are zoomed in to compensate for the cropping, therefore everything actually looks bigger and more close up.

nothing gets zoomed in by presenting open matte as widescreen, all that happens it parts of top and bottom of image are removed

although I guess on a widescreen TV if you view the old open matte format then it only takes up a tiny width on the TV but then if you viewed a widescreen version of that with the top and bottom cropped off then it can stretch across the whole screen so it would show that whole middle portion larger since it would not be able to cover most of your screen, but nothing is what I'd call zoomed in

if you go to an old box TV then the open matte one and widescreen one would both go all the way across the TV and the middle part would be the same size on the TV in either case, on the modern TV though the middle part retained for widescreen would look larger than it would in open matter though, but it's not any sort of zooming in, just it fits the size the screen so can take up more of it

i think they feel zoomed in because your screen is way bigger now and the formats have way more resolution now so you can see so many more details that it feels like you are looking at them for the first time perhaps since you can make out so much more simply because the res is so much higher than NTSC/VHS/or even DVD

[mfan1986]

I see what you mean, so it's a combination of higher res and the middle part taking up more space, that makes it look zoomed in.

[bigshot]

A lot of movies were aired on TV open matte because that fit the aspect of TV sets, but that wasn't the way they were intended to be seen or the way they were cropped in theaters. You're seeing the theatrical presentation on blu-ray, not the TV presentation.

[mfan1986]

Is it fair to say that even independent action movies that were made during the VHS boom (1986-1991) were filmed both to work in an open matte ratio for TV/VHS, but also in a cropped 1.85:1 ratio for potential limited theatrical screenings?

[DR Herbert West]

Originally Posted by mfan1986

Is it fair to say that even independent action movies that were made during the VHS boom (1986-1991) were filmed both to work in an open matte ratio for TV/VHS, but also in a cropped 1.85:1 ratio for potential limited theatrical screenings?

That would be the case for most of them.

[oddbox83]

Originally Posted by mfan1986

I've been watching a lot of movies that were cropped from open matte, and I think the reason why it feels like I'm watching them for the first time, is because they are zoomed in to compensate for the cropping, therefore everything actually looks bigger and more close up.

More likely because you are seeing them as they were intended aesthetically for the first time as opposed to being "bigger".

All that dead space on open matte can often have a distancing effect, especially as we used to watch on smaller screens.

Many open matte films were slightly zoomed in to compensate. True widescreen presentations normally have more at the sides than the open matte for this reason, and technical reasons as well.