Aspect Ratios - The Director's Vision

[Dubstar]

Originally Posted by scweb13

There's really no need to threaten people because you don't like black bars. Just don't watch anything unless its 1.78:1 (maybe 1.85:1 depending on your display and settings) or you zoom it. Simple enough.

or watch it on HBO-HD, where they don't give a toss of OAR.

[Mike2060]

Originally Posted by Drew664

Full screen versions of the LOTR movies.

Guilty!

(I had a small TV at the time)

Me too . But I had a somewhat decent reason. My TV was a 19" CRT, and I was planning to get the OAR EE a few months later.

[UFAlien]

Well I just rented the Region 1 DVD release of one of my favorite Korean horror films, Gawi (a.k.a. Nightmare). It's released by Media Blasters and... it kinda sucks.

The biggest problem for me (and here is where the post gets relevant) is that the video is distorted. Gawi was shot (with the exception of the few shot-on-video segments) at 1.85:1.

But what Media Blasters has chosen to done here perplexes and annoys me... they've taken the full 1.85:1 image and vertically STRETCHED it to fill the screen. As a result, angles don't match up, everything is unnaturally skinny, anyone who tilts their head has the size of said appendage warp and change, and it continually distracted me from the film. They made an error, however, even in this. The image has been stretched even further, all the way to 1.74:1, which simply worsens the above problems.

It's not quite so overt that anyone can look at it quickly and say "yep, that's messed up", but this is the third time I've seen the DVD, and each time I've had a sneaking suspicion something was wrong. So this time I decided to prove it:

Here we have a screenshot as it appears on the DVD:




And here, unstretched to the proper 1.85:1 shape:




Eun-ju's (the girl on the left) face looks... well, a lot more like a normal face. And Hye-jin (the girl on the right) now has a human neck instead of some sort of stretchy shoulder-tentacle.

_____________________


Perhaps more telling is the scene where Hye-jin looks through a peephole.

On the DVD at 1.74:1, the peephole is noticeably oval-shaped:




Back at 1.85:1, it's a circle as it should be:




I can't verify whether this has happened on Media Blaster's releases in other regions, but it's rather annoying. It's a shame when you consider the DVD has a very nice DTS 5.1 surround sound track. And it's aggravating when you consider they're charging you $27 for this messed-up release.

[KubrickFan]

The difference between 1.85:1 and 1.74:1 isn't that big, is it? And using 1.74:1 should give black bars on the sides. It's odd, though. Why didn't they just leave it alone?

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by UFAlien

But what Tartan has chosen to done here perplexes and annoys me...

You could ask the Palisades Tartan insider about it and about why it happened and whether the Blu-ray versions will be corrected. It might have been an error instead of done on purpose.

We could also have a thread listing all titles from all studios that have distorted aspect ratios.

[UFAlien]

Originally Posted by 4K2K

You could ask the Palisades Tartan insider about it and about why it happened and whether the Blu-ray versions will be corrected. It might have been an error instead of done on purpose.

We could also have a thread listing all titles from all studios that have distorted aspect ratios.

Huh, I might try that first one, and the thread sounds like a good idea.

[Deciazulado]

Actually... if you followed strict NTSC timings 16:9 encoded 480 x 720 = 1.82 ..

[UFAlien]

Firstly, that's the resolution at which anamorphic content is stored. It is "stretched" horizontally to a ratio of 16:9, or about 1.78:1.

Secondly, where do you get 1.82 from? 720/480 = 1.5...

[UFAlien]

Sorry to double post, but I just realized I made an error in my post... Gawi/Nightmare was released by Media Blasters under their "Tokyo Shock" line, NOT by Tartan for their "Asia Extreme" line.

Luckily, I seem to have been able to edit my post in the Tartan insider thread before anyone (especially the guy who works for Tartan!) realized

[steve1971]

Personally I love the black bars on some of the movies I watch. It is how the director of the film intended it plus you get to see the whole picture. I have no time for films that have been cropped or cut as they call it.

[Johnny Vinyl]

I have a question regarding the OP. Has anyone seen or heard from MidnightSailor at all lately? He used to be here all the time and now he's disappeared.

A shame really, because this was (and still is) a very informative thread!

John

[naturephoto1]

Originally Posted by John72953

I have a question regarding the OP. Has anyone seen or heard from MidnightSailor at all lately? He used to be here all the time and now he's disappeared.

A shame really, because this was (and still is) a very informative thread!

John

His last activity on site is listed at 1:06 AM on July 4.

Rich

[Johnny Vinyl]

Originally Posted by naturephoto1

His last activity on site is listed at 1:06 AM on July 4.

Rich

Seems a lot longer than that! I guess I missed whatever post he made.

John

PS~ I'm learning all of the time! I never knew where to look for the info you posted.

[ZoetMB]

I know this is an old thread, but I just found it. I think the OP did a really great job attempting to teach people about aspect ratios. I am surprised that there are those who still don't understand it and in spite of spending lots of $$$ on high-rez displays and Blu-ray players, want to see LESS than what the director intended.

A few notes:
1. The Director's Guild actually wanted the HDTV standard AR to be 2:1, not 16:9, which was pushed by SMPTE. Part of the reason 2:1 wasn't adopted was because at the time, sets were still CRTs and it was very hard making a wide screen CRT without distortion. But 2:1 would have been a better compromise. 1.85 would have fit with small black bars at the side and 2.35-2.39 would have fit with smaller black bars at the top and bottom.

2. Cinerama, especially 3-strip Cinerama, didn't really have an aspect ratio, because it was projected on a deeply curved screen and the 3-strips overlapped slightly. Therefore, the print dimensions and the actual resulting dimension on the screen varied widely. That's why you see so many different ARs published for Cinerama.

3. The main purpose of Ultra Panavision (2.75:1) was for single-strip Cinerama. There were only two films in this format NOT made for Cinerama IIRC: Mutiny on the Bounty and The Fall of the Roman Empire.

4. In most cases (Baraka being an exception), DVD and Blu-Ray editions of films are taken from 35mm negatives or prints, not 65mm because the 65mm negatives and the 70mm prints have been allowed to deteriorate so badly. It's really a shame: 70mm Todd-AO or 70mm Dolby 6-track baby boom either with or without split surrounds in the best theatres was really a treat and nothing today comes close.

5. Note that the dimensional standards for negatives and the standards for projected images are not the same, the standards changed over time and just because the standard changed, doesn't mean that the camera manufacturers went back and changed all their gates to match. Also, (strangely enough) SMPTE standards do not define aspect ratios -- they define width and height which may result in a particular aspect ratio.

The SMPTE RP-40 test film for projectionists is actually 1.842:1 for spherical projection (.825 x .448)

6. Many European films were shot in a spherical aspect ratio of 1.66 or 1.75 instead of 1.85. Some Disney productions were also shot for 1.75.

7. Only the best movie theatres project films properly. Many chains (although fewer now do this) projected everything at 2:1, cropping the height for 1.85 films and the width for anamorphic films. Anamorphic films should be shown wider than spherical, but they're frequently not. Spherical is frequently "blown up", which is a disaster because spherical films actually use far less negative area than Panavision, although many anamorphic films are shot in 2-perf high formats (normal for 35mm is 4-perf), which results in grain the size of golfballs when converted to a 2.39:1 print.

8. One of the problems in theatrical digital projection is that "anamorphic" uses fewer pixels than the "spherical". It should have been the opposite.

9. For those who think directors should be shooting in 16:9, that probably will happen over time, especially as movies (unfortunately) switch to digital origination, however, even when shooting in 35mm, they do "protect" for 16:9. In the print, this means protecting for increased height. A 1.85 print is .825 x .448 and to protect for 16:9, they mark the groundglass for .825 x .464 (an additional 3.6% of height). However, this means that DVDs will show very slightly more than what the director intended for theatrical distribution, assuming the studio masters the DVD for that height.

10. There actually aren't that many 2.39 anamorphic films made anymore. Although Panavision is the format I personally prefer to see, not only for the AR, but because it uses more of the negative area and therefore has less grain, cinematographers don't like it because it limits lens choices.

In 2008, there were about 185 films made in 2.39 formats including the U.S., UK, Canada, and joint US-other country productions, but I bet the average person hasn't heard of more than 30 of these.

10. On a 50" (diagonal) screen, 1.85 loses .48" on each side of the screen (top and bottom). 2.39 loses 3.14" on each side of the screen. (By loses I mean the size of the black bars.)

[garyrc]

What a great post, ZoetMB!

I especially agree with the following:

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

70mm Todd-AO or 70mm Dolby 6-track baby boom either with or without split surrounds in the best theatres was really a treat and nothing today comes close.

I would add that some of the straight magnetic 6 track 70 mm before Dolby sounded warmer and and a bit better. This was particularly true for the first two 70 mm Todd-A0 feature length productions, Oklahoma! and Around the World in 80 Days. We were told (by newspaper articles) that these two were presented in double system in the 70 mm theater in San Francisco, and a very few other cities, i.e., the 6 channels of sound were on a separate strip of synchronized full coat magnetic film, with all tracks wider than they would have been if they had been on the side of the picture film. I assume that the sound strip moved at the same high speed as the picture film, which was 30 frames per second for those two films only (and the short "The Miracle of Todd-AO"). The blow up of one frame of 80 Days in Arthur Knight's The Liveliest Art shows film with sprockets, but no soundtracks, so this frame may have been taken from a double system print. Most of the 70 mm venues got six stripes on the picture film, which was still excelent, and proved itself in such films as Porgy and Bess, and, of course, Ben-Hur, and many others.

All of the sound in the above mentioned films, in their 70 mm runs, was better than anything I have heard since, including in studios. A few later 70 mm films had somewhat harsher soundtracks, but they were exceptions.

The disk versions of these movies have sound that absolutely sucks by comparison.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by UFAlien

But what Media Blasters has chosen to done here perplexes and annoys me... they've taken the full 1.85:1 image and vertically STRETCHED it to fill the screen. As a result, angles don't match up, everything is unnaturally skinny, anyone who tilts their head has the size of said appendage warp and change, and it continually distracted me from the film.

Paramount did the opposite with their BD of The Truman Show, taking the 1.66 OAR and stretching it to fill 1.78, so everything looks slightly squashed. Everyone looks a tad fatter, and circular objects (such as the moon) aren't quite round anymore. It's really distracting when you realize what's happened, while others may not realize it.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

1. The Director's Guild actually wanted the HDTV standard AR to be 2:1, not 16:9, which was pushed by SMPTE. Part of the reason 2:1 wasn't adopted was because at the time, sets were still CRTs and it was very hard making a wide screen CRT without distortion. But 2:1 would have been a better compromise. 1.85 would have fit with small black bars at the side and 2.35-2.39 would have fit with smaller black bars at the top and bottom.

The entire Guild or just some who were louder in their opinions than others?

I also strongly dislike what Victor Storaro did, retconning the OARs of his 2.35 films and cropping them to that 2:1 ratio.

Personally, I think the 1.78 is a good idea since it's pretty much exactly the midpoint between 1.33 and 2.35, so the pillar/letterboxing of films in that ratio isn't too severe. 1.85 AR films properly letterboxed is pretty much unnoticeable, on my display it looks like the black border surrounding my screen is slightly thicker on the top and bottom than ususal (my XBR supports 1:1 pixel mapping).

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

The entire Guild or just some who were louder in their opinions than others?

I believe it was the official Guild position. I went back to search my documentation on this, but I couldn't find it by leafing through the old journals.

Personally, I think the 1.78 is a good idea since it's pretty much exactly the midpoint between 1.33 and 2.35, so the pillar/letterboxing of films in that ratio isn't too severe. 1.85 AR films properly letterboxed is pretty much unnoticeable, on my display it looks like the black border surrounding my screen is slightly thicker on the top and bottom than ususal (my XBR supports 1:1 pixel mapping).

That's how it came to be. A SMPTE engineer drew a set of intersecting rectangles. This is in one of the issues of the SMPTE journal, but again, I couldn't find it when I just went back through the Journals to take a quick look.

However, since there hasn't been a motion picture shot in 1.33 since 1954 and TV production is quickly moving to 16:9, one can make the case that basing the HDTV AR on 1.33 (which, by the way, for movies, was actually 1.37 once they started putting the optical soundtrack on the film - it was just "called" 1.33 because that's what it was called in the silent era) was a mistake - that either HDTV should have been 1.85 or a compromise between 1.85 and 2.35 (like 2.0), but because of the limits of CRT manufacturing, this wasn't done.

In any case, it's all moot now - we won't see a format change for another 50 years and by then, broadcast and traditional cable/satellite television might not exist anyway.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by ZoetMB

However, since there hasn't been a motion picture shot in 1.33 since 1954

Well I wouldn't say that, there's been a few films, most recently The Good German...

and TV production is quickly moving to 16:9, one can make the case that basing the HDTV AR on 1.33 (which, by the way, for movies, was actually 1.37 once they started putting the optical soundtrack on the film - it was just "called" 1.33 because that's what it was called in the silent era) was a mistake - that either HDTV should have been 1.85 or a compromise between 1.85 and 2.35 (like 2.0), but because of the limits of CRT manufacturing, this wasn't done.

Production may have moved (TV wise) to 16x9 now, but there's still 60+ years of programming and there are still dozens of TV shows currently in production in 4x3, commercials, local news, etc. People's home videos, and of course 50+ years of motion picture filmmaking. Other than films and Cartoon Network's Star Wars: The Clone Wars, there's much less 2.35 programming compared to what's been produced in 1.33/1.37.

[ZoetMB]

Originally Posted by garyrc

What a great post, ZoetMB!


I would add that some of the straight magnetic 6 track 70 mm before Dolby sounded warmer and and a bit better. This was particularly true for the first two 70 mm Todd-A0 feature length productions, Oklahoma! and Around the World in 80 Days. We were told (by newspaper articles) that these two were presented in double system in the 70 mm theater in San Francisco, and a very few other cities, i.e., the 6 channels of sound were on a separate strip of synchronized full coat magnetic film, with all tracks wider than they would have been if they had been on the side of the picture film. I assume that the sound strip moved at the same high speed as the picture film, which was 30 frames per second for those two films only (and the short "The Miracle of Todd-AO"). The blow up of one frame of 80 Days in Arthur Knight's The Liveliest Art shows film with sprockets, but no soundtracks, so this frame may have been taken from a double system print. Most of the 70 mm venues got six stripes on the picture film, which was still excelent, and proved itself in such films as Porgy and Bess, and, of course, Ben-Hur, and many others.

I could be wrong about this, but my notes show that Oklahoma and Around The World in Eighty Days only played at 30fps double system in their premiere runs at the Rivoli in New York.

Oklahoma opened 10/13/55 at the Rivoli, 11/17/55 at Egyptian in LA, 12/24/55 at the United Artists (LA), 12/26/55 at the McVickers (Chicago) and 2/16/56 at the Coronet in San Francisco. It played on 26 other screens in 70mm, probably ending at the Syosset in Long Island, NY sometime in 1957.

The reason why Dolby went to the "baby boom" format (beginning with 1977's Star Wars) was because film mixers were no longer making screen channels 2 and 4 discrete. They were taking the four channel mix and sending a straight mix of Left and Center to the Left-Center channel and a mix of Right and Center and sending it to the Right-Center channel. Also, theatres had generally gotten a lot smaller, so five screen channels didn't seem necessary anymore. So Dolby got the idea to use channels 2 and 4 only for low frequency effects and it worked quite well.

But I must say that the two best sonic experiences of the 1960s for me was seeing West Side Story in 70mm Todd-AO discrete 6-track magnetic at the Rivoli in New York and How The West Was Won at the Loews Cinerama in New York. The sound in both those films in those presentation formats was absolutely unbelievable to me at the time (I wonder if the experience could be exactly replicated if I would still feel that way.) The only thing that has come close was the original 70mm run of Close Encounters at the Ziegfeld in New York (where they added 8 Cerwin-Vega "Baby Earthquake" subs and 21 Bose 901 Surrounds) and the original 70mm run of Apocalypse Now at the same theatre, which opened 8/15/79 and was the first film to use "split surrounds" throughout. (There had been an experiment on some scenes in Superman.)

Having said that, the problem with mag sound was that it was too easy to damage the mag stripes on the prints and because it was necessary to have a very tight wind around the sound head on the projector, the mag heads wore out very quickly. If you went to the beginning of a run in a theatre that was maintained, it was magnificent, but if you got a bad print or worn-out heads, it was "only okay". Today, most films only play for a few weeks, but back then, films like Star Wars and Close Encounters might play for many months, sometimes a year or more.