Aspect Ratio Documentation (4 Viewers)

[haineshisway]

Yes but only the editor supervised the transfer. Feil is "a" cameraman but he was not the DP of this film

Nor was he the only editor - he is one of several.

 

[Vincent_P]

So Mr. Van Sant was making a film for television then? Because you don't "protect" for 1.85 if you're making a motion picture for motion picture projection in a motion picture theater, which is, by the way, what they were doing. If they were making a movie for cable or TV by all means shoot it any way you like - but they weren't.

It's been well documented that Van Sant and Savides shot both of those films for 1.37:1 and they were shown that way in many venues, including most if not all film festival screenings (Van Sant used the same approach with PARANOID PARK, albeit with a different DP). Savides said he protected for widescreen but his images were composed for 1.37:1 (I can't find a link where Savides said this now, but I believe it was in American Cinematographer, I read it around the time ELEPHANT was originally released in 2003).

Click on the "Press Kit" link on this page and go to page 2 where the documentation specifies "In English 1.37, Dolby Digital": http://www.newyorkerfilms.com/Elephant-%282003%29/1/126/

And also check the following documentation re: Van Sant and those particular films of his being composed for 1.37:1, including Varitey's review of ELEPHANT since Variety has been used as documentarion so many times in this thread (and you can do your own research and find many, many more examples of documentation re: the facts surrounding the intended aspect ratios of these particular films of Van Sant, should you be so inclined):

http://blogs.walkerart.org/filmvideo/2008/03/20/paranoid-parks-aspect-ratio/

http://variety.com/2003/film/reviews/elephant-2-1200541588/

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/last-days/1550

Vincent

 

[Brandon Conway]

Yes but only the editor supervised the transfer. Feil is "a" cameraman but he was not the DP of this film

The director (Peter Brook), producer (Lewis Allen), and director of photography (Tom Hollyman), along with editor Gerald Feil, reportedly make statements on the commentary providing their reasoning for the 1.37:1 presentation. Again - not what 99.99% of theaters would have shown it at in 1963-64, but what the filmmakers want home video viewers in 2013 to see. I have no issue with people hating their decision, but I see no reason to doubt it is their decision and not some mistake by Criterion or Feil.

 

[Moe Dickstein]

One other minor point on that though.When was that commentary done? It wasn't this year, for the Blu release. There's also the factor that they wanted a full frame image for what was then SD full frame TVs.Just like Kubrick, and they may have similarly had different views in an HD widescreen TV world. But that's a question we can't answer.

 

[Charles Smith]

Exactly. Wasn't it recorded for the laserdisc?

 

[Brandon Conway]

One other minor point on that though.When was that commentary done? It wasn't this year, for the Blu release. There's also the factor that they wanted a full frame image for what was then SD full frame TVs.Just like Kubrick, and they may have similarly had different views in an HD widescreen TV world. But that's a question we can't answer.

Possible. I'm merely going by the information provided by the disc special features listing and the info Eddie passed on. But even then it may be a factor of Criterion asking "does this AR still apply" and getting a positive response back from Brook & co. We just don't know.

 

[EddieLarkin]

It was done for the laserdisc. Hollyman and Allen had passed by the time the BD went into production, and I guess Brook wasn't involved directly.

The best thing to do is to listen to the commentary which is featured on the BD, DVD and LD. You can then make up your own mind as to how relevant the information is, and whether or not the shape of TVs in the LD era had any influence on their AR decision.

Debating how the filmmakers did or did not feel, now or then, seems a bit pointless when that resource is available to you.

 

[haineshisway]

Brook is eighty-eight. The commentary was done many many years ago when TVs were 4x3 - when Kubrick was also saying he preferred that ratio for his films on home video. Obviously, Kubrick made his films for the cinema and knew how they would be projected and framed them for that projection (all this has been rehashed so many times that it's truly irritating to have to keep doing it), and I'm here to tell you that Peter Brook and his producers were making their film for the cinema - not TV, not home video, not laserdisc. That they stated they preferred Academy at the time of the laserdisc is just what it is. Mr. Feil was neither the principal cameraman or, as far as I can tell, the principal editor - we only know how the film was projected and for me providing both ratios would have been the way to go - in fact, it's baffling how they could present On the Waterfront not in two ratios but THREE (none of them correct, BTW, since the image is zoomed in) but think it's okay to do Lord Of the Flies in a ratio that was never projected in theaters.

 

[Vincent_P]

You keep saying ON THE WATERFRONT is "zoomed in"- what are you basing that on?

Vincent

 

[Robert Harris]

You're using S35 to just mean shot full (silent) aperture, rather than the more modern process of Super35 of shooting full aperture, masking to 2.35:1 and optically converting to anamorphic in the lab.

Precisely. Don't matter what intentions are. Full silent aperture can be the basis of anything.

 

[Robert Harris]

Okay, now the chickens of my lack of technical education come home to roost. FA I kind of get, i.e., full aperture, maybe, but RA I can't imagine what it might stand for. Anyone who has a tablespoon of enlightenment is welcome to toss it in my general direction. And thanks in advance.

Sorry. FA = Full Aperture. RA = Regular Aperture = real estate set aside for optical track, whether exposed for FA or not.

 

[EddieLarkin]

You keep saying ON THE WATERFRONT is "zoomed in"- what are you basing that on?

Vincent

I seem to recall there was some angst over the fact that the open matte version is 1.33:1 instead of 1.37:1, and is thus missing side information. This means that both a 1.66:1 and 1.85:1 crop of the open matte version will be tighter than an original print would have been projected. This was used to explain why the 1.85:1 version looked a little tight.

But...

Both of the widescreen versions in the set have more side information than the 1.33:1 version, and so they cannot be crops of it. Any of the caps online will demonstrate this. I personally thought that the 1.85:1 version looked spot on.

 

[DVDvision]

Brook is eighty-eight. The commentary was done many many years ago when TVs were 4x3 - when Kubrick was also saying he preferred that ratio for his films on home video.

James Cameron also prefered the 4/3 versions for his films over the letterboxed ones, that was for The Abyss, Terminator 2, True Lies & Titanic. Now of course, these versions are gone and just curiosity artefacts. The days of 4/3 TV are gone (can you see me smile?).

This means that these decisions are not valable anymore in a 16/9 world.

 

[Brent Reid]

This is not meant to sound in any way sarcastic, but am I missing something here? Why do so many posters spend so much time banging on about the whys & wherefores of Criterion's framing decisions? Why not just ask Criterion themselves; are they so inaccessible?

Some in particular have taken it upon themselves to post almost interminably about Criterion's ARs & with every new missive I find myself thinking "Why aren't they going straight to the source & reporting back here with their findings?"

Surely that would be far more productive... & conclusive?

 

[Bob Furmanek]

So all of the pro-1.37 comments by the participants were made twenty years ago in the laser disc days?

Perhaps they preferred that over a letter-boxed widescreen image in a 4/3 frame and offered various explanations (documentary approach, etc) in order to justify that position...

 

[TravisR]

The days of 4/3 TV are gone (can you see me smile?).

Based on your thread in the TV section, you hate 4x3 so much that you even think that TV shows that were intended to be seen at 4x3 should be opened up to 16x9.

 

[Brandon Conway]

This is not meant to sound in any way sarcastic, but am I missing something here? Why do so many posters spend so much time banging on about the whys & wherefores of Criterion's framing decisions? Why not just ask Criterion themselves; are they so inaccessible?

Some in particular have taken it upon themselves to post almost interminably about Criterion's ARs & with every new missive I find myself thinking "Why aren't they going straight to the source & reporting back here with their findings?"

Surely that would be far more productive... & conclusive?

Agreed. Speculating on motive, whether the decision at the time of the commentary recording was or was not followed up on, etc., is getting us walking in circles. We all agree that it was 1.75-1.85 theatrically in 1963. What we don't agree on is whether Criterion was likely to just say "screw everybody - 1.37:1 because we say so, neener-neener", or "we checked with the filmmakers and they still want the presentation at 1.37:1".

Bob - you have contacts at Criterion, no? Would you be able to simply ask them "Hey, did you guys re-confirm the 1.37:1 presentation with Brook & Feil for this release, or did you guys just stand pat with what you were told 20 years ago?"

My money is on re-confirmation. It would absolutely stun me if Criterion didn't bother to ask again - all evidence for every prior release suggests they ask this. Look at The Last Emperor - they asked at least twice to make sure they heard what they thought they heard.

 

[Charles Smith]

Based on your thread in the TV section, you hate 4x3 so much that you even think that TV shows that were intended to be seen at 4x3 should be opened up to 16x9.

"opened up" ?

 

[haineshisway]

Agreed. Speculating on motive, whether the decision at the time of the commentary recording was or was not followed up on, etc., is getting us walking in circles. We all agree that it was 1.75-1.85 theatrically in 1963. What we don't agree on is whether Criterion was likely to just say "screw everybody - 1.37:1 because we say so, neener-neener", or "we checked with the filmmakers and they still want the presentation at 1.37:1".

Bob - you have contacts at Criterion, no? Would you be able to simply ask them "Hey, did you guys re-confirm the 1.37:1 presentation with Brook & Feil for this release, or did you guys just stand pat with what you were told 20 years ago?"

My money is on re-confirmation. It would absolutely stun me if Criterion didn't bother to ask again - all evidence for every prior release suggests they ask this. Look at The Last Emperor - they asked at least twice to make sure they heard what they thought they heard.

They clearly asked Feil - so what? My point is a very simple one - include the way it was shot for the cinema and this other Academy version. Everyone wins.

 

[TravisR]

"opened up" ?

Around the early 1990's, many TV shows started shooting 16x9 but the directors and DOPs knew that their work would only be seen at 4x3 (until whenever HDTV would become the norm) so they would have composed for the 4x3 frame and just left empty space on the edges of the 16x9 frame. That extra information was never meant to be seen, it was just there so it can fill the wide TV screens of people of the future (or the ones who don't care about the original photography anyway).

Better explanations and plenty of debate between David and I can be found here: http://www.hometheaterforum.com/topic/319803-tv-shows-and-tv-movies-gone-w-i-d-e/page-1