Your Introduction To Letterboxing/Widescreen Presentations

[cinemaphile]

I managed Suncoast for 10 years and made it my own personal crusade (and that of all my employees as well) to convert/educate every customer to appreciate and understand widescreen. I had a whole presentation ready if I needed it, with visual aids, side by side comparisons, the whole works. It was pretty funny.

The best ones were not just showing scenes where things on the sides were cut off, but places where the panning was painfully obvious and jarring. Sony movies were the worst.

Thia was the days before widescreen televisions, so the argument was always about the damn black bars, and convincing people you were getting more, not less. DVD helped when it came along in 1997, but for years before that I was pushing it for laserdiscs and the occasional VHS that would get released with both options.