jayembee
Senior HTF Member
Some people have strange ideas when they apparently don't have the full story. Back in the day, in a Usenet newsgroup discussion about widescreen, there was one guy who was up in arms over the widescreen version of Blade Runner. He specifically complained about some shots of Deckard flying about LA in his aircar, and how in many of the shots, the top of the image cut off the top of Deckard's forehead.
I looked at my copy of the Criterion LD, and saw that, yes, Deckard's head was lopped off half-way up his forehead. I then put in my fullscreen Betamax copy to look at the same scene, and sure enough, his forehead was still cut off, but it was cut off by the top of the screen, not because of any black bar. He, like most people probably would, figured that if this happened at the top of the screen, that it was intentional, but if it was done by a black bar, then it must be cutting something off that wasn't meant to be cut off.
In another instance, in a different forum, I was remarking about a scene in 2010 where Arthur C. Clarke made a cameo appearance (aside from the one as part of a faux Time magazine cover) in a scene where he's feeding pigeons while Roy Scheider is talking with James McEachin. Someone responded saying that he checked that scene and couldn't spot Clarke. It turned out that this guy's copy was fullscreen, so Clarke -- being off to the side -- was cropped out.
I tended to use these two instances as examples of why widescreen was a plus rather than a minus (at least in terms of 'scope films).
I looked at my copy of the Criterion LD, and saw that, yes, Deckard's head was lopped off half-way up his forehead. I then put in my fullscreen Betamax copy to look at the same scene, and sure enough, his forehead was still cut off, but it was cut off by the top of the screen, not because of any black bar. He, like most people probably would, figured that if this happened at the top of the screen, that it was intentional, but if it was done by a black bar, then it must be cutting something off that wasn't meant to be cut off.
In another instance, in a different forum, I was remarking about a scene in 2010 where Arthur C. Clarke made a cameo appearance (aside from the one as part of a faux Time magazine cover) in a scene where he's feeding pigeons while Roy Scheider is talking with James McEachin. Someone responded saying that he checked that scene and couldn't spot Clarke. It turned out that this guy's copy was fullscreen, so Clarke -- being off to the side -- was cropped out.
I tended to use these two instances as examples of why widescreen was a plus rather than a minus (at least in terms of 'scope films).