Aspect Ratios - The Director's Vision

[garyrc]

IMO wide screen (such as 2.39:1) has to be displayed over a greater screen area than lower screen ratios, or else some of the purpose of widescreen is defeated. Usually, part of the goal in using widescreen was to increase impact by increasing area, not to diminish it by providing a letterbox slot to look through.. The only way I'm aware of to achieve the larger area for wide ARs is to use a projector with a zoom lens, zoomed out so that the black bars top and bottom are offscreen (or, alternatively, with an expensive supplementary anamorphic lens for those that are anamorphically encoded...but i gather that there are no BDs that are anamorphic, so we're stuck with the zoom?). An important exception would be for movies that were intended to be displayed in 70 mm, which could be up to 25% higher, as well as being wider, most often in the AR of about 2.2:1. For most 70 mm movies (from 65 mm negatives) that are about 2.2 (I think Robert A. Harris said these end up more like 2.28 on BD), it would be neat to have a thin mask on the top of the home projection screen that withdraws to accommodate the added height of this format. If you really wanted to get fancy, very thin side masks would also withdraw a bit for BDs that are made from large negative movies, so the rank order of image sizes in home theater, from smallest area to largest would be Academy, 1.66, 1.85. 2.35, 2.39 ... then 2.2 with larger area due to an image size that is a little higher, or, both wider than any BD made from 35 mm, and necessarily also higher by up to approximately the 25% higher we used to see in some 70 mm equipped theaters, maintaining an AR of about the 2.28 that is the BD version of 2.2.. The exception to the exceptions would be any of the handful of 70 mm films that had an even greater AR. Ben-Hur would be an example. To really do that one up, you would build a screen that expanded to about 2.75:1, with the 1 being higher than 35 mm formats. Two forum members have done just that, one especially in honor of Ben-Hur's future release on BD.