Anamorphic movies being Pan & Scan on broadcast TV? (1 Viewer)

[Nils Helstrom]

Completely off topic and on topic

After Star Wars premiered on cable, we watched dozens of times.

Then Jedi came out and we saw that, but still hadn’t seen (one of my favorite movies ever ) empire

A triple feature was playing in theaters.
We saw Star Wars and finally empire.

I was watching parts of star wars I’d never seen.

Puzzled the whole film.

I was 9
This is when “letterbox” and “pan and scan” entered my consciousness

It would take a lot of time time and research to find out how to see films fill aspect ratio “letterboxed”

Then I grabbed a laserdisc player and joined the Columbia laser disc club?

Finally got to understand different aspect ratios

Could see Superman and die hard and all the Star Wars and blade runner in full letterbox


Pan in scan
The bane of my existence at that time.
I still cringe when I read it

That’s my story.

Down with pan and scan
Give the Viewer's a choice.

I had a similar experience with the disaster film Earthquake as a kid (maybe not the most profound movie, but it was very exciting at the time). When I finally saw a proper widescreen theatrical release, I was surprised by the additional visuals! I was also confused by the "missing" scenes since I had seen the extended tv version. My first experience with pan-and-scan vs widescreen AND with the concept of alternate versions of a film. Things that obsess me to this day!

 

[William B.]

Reminds me of a Benny Hill sketch where they were supposed to be showing a widescreen movie that was cropped to fit TV, so the titles were missing certain key letters that rendered what you saw as "unintentionally" funny.

It was a shame that, the direction his show took in the '80's, we never got to hear what his thoughts were about the trend of colorizing old B&W movies. What would he have done with that - if a character said "I'm feeling blue," would his skin have been literally bluish? But with that, Hill seemed to approach in a different manner from the critiques by the likes of Leonard Maltin, Siskel & Ebert, and director Martin Scorsese.