There are three main ways to make a widescreen picture:
Way 1: Shoot in a camera that exposes film in the actual widescreen format.
Examples: 70mm/SuperPanavision, Technirama (which is anamorphic VistaVision), UltraPanavision (which is anamorphic SuperPanavision), CinemaScope/Panavision (which is anamorphic 35mm). And also through a hard matte (a rectangular metal plate inserted inside the a regular (non widescreen) camera between the lens and the film).
<- see way 2 for more on that.
The widescreen image exposed in the camera has the same shape as the format and making it into another aspect ratio entails cropping the sides of the image.
Way 2: Shoot in a camera that exposes the film in a standard (non widescreen) format while composing on the groundglass for widescreen in the center of the image.
Examples: Most 1.66/1.75/1.85 standard widescreen and Super 35 films and VistaVision. The image exposed in the camera usually covers the full standard camera aperture area (usually 1.33 or 1.37, for VistaVision it's 1.50) and the widescreen image is created after the fact by matting down the squarish camera exposure, either in the lab (or these days can be the digital transfer), and creating a widescreen print (for example transfering from a Super 35 negative to an anamorphic or 70mm print), or in
the actual projection at the movie theater by inserting a metal plate with a smaller rectangular hole cut in it between the film and the projector lens, and selecting the appropiate lens to fill the widescreen at the theater with this reduced height image. A standard widescreem (1.66-1.85) film shot with a hard matte (see above) will have the black bars in the image making it widescreen. A film shot without it, won't have them, and if you took out the projector plaque out of the way you'd see image exposed spilling above and below on the curtains and walls surrounding the movie screen . If you examined the print of most 1.85 movies you'd see the printed image in the film strip probably covers the full 1.37 area in many of them.
As the cinematographer/director composed for the 1.85 (or 1.66/1.75 etc, or 2.39 for Super 35 films) ratio in the center of the frame, this extra vertical image area should not be be seen and must be cropped out for proper viewing.
When transfering these movies to home video/broadcasts, in order to fill the 4:3 or 16:9 screens, and
not cut the
sides of the
intended image they can do a transfer showing this extraneous vertical area as part of the image
And now I'll repeat:
As the cinematographer/director composed for the 1.85 (or 1.66/1.75 etc, or 2.39 for Super 35 films) ratio in the center of the frame, this extra vertical image area should not be be seen and must be cropped out for proper viewing
Way 3 (you could consider this a new digital way): You could digitally recompose and re-render the original data, creating new vertical backgrounds and repositioning the objects to make a more "pleasing" reformatted image. (Like doing a remixing for a boom box
).
When they create the film they compose it to perfection (all that carefully planning and rendering) for the widescreen ratio. But for the reformatted to fit your screen version, in this case instead of having to decide between amputating off the sides of the intended image OR showing mostly empty extra vertical image area ruining the original composition, they then can try to do a slighly better custom reformat for a screen for where the movie was not intended.
Hope this lets you visualize the different ways widescreen movies can be adapted to "full screen"
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where can i find a list of all 1:85: 1 BR movies?
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