What's new

Movies with significant content in the outer frame (1 Viewer)

Brian Borst

Screenwriter
Joined
May 15, 2008
Messages
1,137
When I saw Magnolia for the first time (beautiful cinematography by Robert Elswit) it was on the BBC, and our cable company was still cutting of the edges off widescreen broadcasts and because the BBC already cut off the edges to fill the 16:9 screen, it was just panned and scanned exactly in the middle of the screen. It was ugly. The title wasn't even seen totally. There was one scene when Melora Walters and John C. Reilly have a discussion and both are at opposite ends of the frame, so you couldn't see them both for a couple of minutes
htf_images_smilies_smile.gif
.
And of course Star Wars. That was probably the first time I noticed something must've been missing from the picture.
 

WillG

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jan 30, 2003
Messages
7,563

Some do, I know Michael Mann apparently has "No Pan & Scan" clauses in his contract. I know that for "Collateral" even the VHS was widescreen only and the DVD specs specifically said "Full Screen not available" I could be wrong about this as well, but it seems to me that the studios are starting to scale back on P&S versions slightly. Of the top of my head, take "Sleeping Beauty" The first release had Widescreen and P&S versions and now the new release is Widescreen only, and in especially wide 2:55.1 no less

But as I said earlier in the thread, I think the real question is that since virtually every major film on DVD is available in a OAR version and DVD has been around for 10 years, why do filmmakers still feel the need to shoot "safe" for 4:3 television? People who insist on P&S don't care about composition or missing information anyway.
 

paul_austin

Second Unit
Joined
Jun 16, 2002
Messages
278
comparing 1978's superman between p&s and widescreen is a crime, im sure there are several examples but what immediately comes to mind is many of the shots in lex's underground lair
 

Al.Anderson

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jul 2, 2002
Messages
2,736
Real Name
Al

I knew about P&S, but when I asked the question I can only say I neglected to consider it.

BUT, to back away from my omission admission a bit, the original question came from the consideration of Netflix movies using the RoKu box. A review I read for the RoKu (CNET. I should know better.) said that many movies are delivered non-widescreen. My non-thinking assumption was that Netfix would be using their standard widscreen/OAR material (not P&S) and RoKu would be simply "truncating the picture". So I guess I DON'T know enough about modifying widescreen material. Does anyone, particularly RoKu, just truncate when they convert; or is all modified widesceen always run through a P&S process?

And once more, just in case - I'm not trying to justify non-OAR with my question here - just some idle curiousity about what's lost at the edges. Otherwise I'd have stated somewhere, "I really liked what they did to Kung Fu Season 1!" just to torque people up.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Latest Articles

Forum statistics

Threads
356,815
Messages
5,123,830
Members
144,184
Latest member
H-508
Recent bookmarks
0
Top