I thought I'd heard every J6P argument in favour of pan & scan, but I was wrong ... (1 Viewer)

[andrew markworthy]

In a store this morning, a woman (Josephine Six Pack?) was returning a video because it was widescreen. The reason she doesn't like widescreen? 'Everyone knows that the top and bottom of the picture are cut off'. This woman actually believes that horizontal slices are taken out of the image to *create* the black bars.

 

[Steve Tannehill]

Well...in some cases, she is right.
- Steve

 

[Kevin P]

She just explained anamorphic downconversion!

KJP

 

[David Lambert]

More accurately, she was describing closed matte.
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DAVE/Memphis

Did you want us to respect your cause? You just damned your cause.
Did you want to make us fear? You just steeled our resolve.
Did you want to tear us apart? You just brought us together.
http://www.miami.com/herald/content/...ocs/000565.htm

 

[Steve Tannehill]

Oops, I did not mean to imply that her value judgement was "right"...
I wonder what will happen in the future when she has a widescreen television and tries to watch something in 1.33x1 ratio? Will she take the video back because the black bars are artificially placed on the sides?
- Steve

 

[andrew markworthy]

I think this woman would think closed matte was a kind of weaving.

 

[Brad_W]

Though we (film fanatics) know that the occasional "widescreen" movie is actually matted, the average John Q. Videorenter doesn't know this. I worked in a video store throughout college and I eventually made it my quest to try and convince people of widescreen. I heard that they (the anti-widescreeners) don't like the Black Bars on the movie (which eventually frustrated me so much that I wrote a song about it for my old band [I was a drummer in a band called, "Oddity"]) and that they want the movie to fill their screen, etc., etc., ect. When the Star Wars SEs came out, the video store I worked at rented both the widescreen and the P&S. When people asked, returned because of "the black bars," or seemed interested, I would show them the difference using the first 2-3 minutes of Star Wars: ANH. When they saw that R2 and 3PO were actually walking side by side down a corridor (the P&S version only showed an obnoxious close-up of either one as if the camera was 2 inches from their face) some were impressed, others (semi-Star Wars fans) were over-joyed, and others didn't care.
I eventually gave up this quest when I realized that I was a nerd and not everyone cared whether they saw all the film or not. One thing that really got under my skin though is this: around the time that DVD was getting semi-popular, we started to rent them. Now at this time DVD players were still around 2-300 dollars so if you bought a player, you obviously enjoyed movies and/or appreciated them. I had so many people complain that most DVDs were in widescreen. I thought (and still think) that if you buy a DVD player, you obviously enjoy film a lot and would appreciate this aspect, especially after you spent so much money to watch these films. The rant goes on and on...
Yes, I know I'm lame.
Brad "I take things too far" W.
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"I was born to murder the world." -Nix (Lord of Illusions)
My Home Page http://www.geocities.com/masternix/DVD.html

 

[Jan Strnad]

The term is "Jane Boxwine."
When I decided to revise my guide to letterboxing, I decided to make it really elementary to address exactly the issue you mentioned. The issue is, "Where the black bars come from," and it's insanely easy to demonstrate on a web page.
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http://www.mindspring.com/~atombrain/risenintro.html
Jan Strnad
author of Risen (now in Palm Reader format) and
"The AtomBrain Guide to Letterboxing"