Aspect Ratio Documentation (3 Viewers)

[FoxyMulder]

Originally Posted by OliverK /t/319469/aspect-ratio-research/210#post_3940941
Maybe I am alone in this but it irritates me to see Mr. Rotunno approving two discs that are so different in so many aspects (no pun intended).
So while I would like to hear what he says about the new disc I would also like to hear why he changed his mind compared to the Criterion edition that loooks completely different despite also being approved by him. Or maybe some of the info we got about one of the releases is not entirely correct?

I agree.

 

[pinknik]

So, is the history of 65mm/70mm aspect ratios (for theatrical films, not Imax or ride films) as convoluted as those for 35mm? I've always read about 2.20:1 (IIRC). Were there many variations? Thanks.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Well there's also 2.76:1, which was the ratio used on the small amount of Ultra Panavision 70 productions made in the late 50s through mid 60s. There's the case of Jacques Tati's Playtime which was shot in 65mm but used an experimental 8-track stereo that chopped the overall ratio to 1.85:1. And there's also some films like the reissues of Black Orpheus and Fantasia that were windowboxed to maintain their original 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

 

[zoetmb]

While not mentioned in the list above, this seems to look like TLA:

With every square mm of real estate used for printing.
RAH

You're absolutely correct. I missed that when I was scanning my list. But thanks for that capture because that's a great artifact of the era.

 

[zoetmb]

Well there's also 2.76:1, which was the ratio used on the small amount of Ultra Panavision 70 productions made in the late 50s through mid 60s. There's the case of Jacques Tati's Playtime which was shot in 65mm but used an experimental 8-track stereo that chopped the overall ratio to 1.85:1. And there's also some films like the reissues of Black Orpheus and Fantasia that were windowboxed to maintain their original 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

Right. Ultra-Panavision 70 films (which were mainly, but not exclusively produced for single-projector Cinerama):
Mutiny on the Bounty
It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
The Fall of the Roman Empire
The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Hallelujah Trail
Battle of the Bulge
Khartoum
(Hopefully I haven't missed any this time).
My notes show that Playtime was shot in straight 65mm, no squeeze. Ultra-Panavision added a 1.25 squeeze to the regular 70mm 2.2 AR to get the 2.76:1. When they printed back down to 35mm, they added another 1.6 squeeze to turn it into an anamorphic Panavision-compatible print with a 2:1 squeeze. I saw a 70mm revival of Playtime a few years ago at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York and AFAIK, it was a regular 6-track mag 70mm print. Sound was not particularly impressive, although I don't know how worn the print was or whether the playback heads were in decent condition. One projector had a very soft image.

 

[RolandL]

MGM Camera-65 which has an aspect ratio of 2.76:1 for Rainree County (although it was only released in 35mm scope) and Ben-Hur. I think the 1967 re-issue of Gone With The Wind was 2.00:1 but I could be wrong. The 1929 and 1930 70mm films like The Big Trail were also less than 2.2:1.

 

[zoetmb]

i would tend to believe the statements of people who were running films theatrically in the 1960's (which is what was given here) rather than your unsubstantiated comment:

Agreed, but some guy saying "I ran a mag print in the 1960s" is still anecdotal and only tells us what was going on in one theatre.

If that were the case and theaters HAD stopped playing magnetic stereo as soon as the "heads wore out" why were films still available with magnetic stereo into the 1970's? Who was running them?

I didn't claim that absolutely every theatre had stopped playing mag. But most had. My original comments (if you go back and look) were about theatres outside of places like Manhattan, Los Angeles, San Francisco, maybe a few theatres in Chicago, etc. There's a whole list of Panavision films from the 1960s and 70s for which there were reputed to be 35mm mag prints, but I saw most of these first run and most weren't presented mag when I saw them: Planet of the Apes ('68), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, M*A*S*H, Westworld, Jaws, Nashville (that one I did see in Dolby mag stereo), The Omen, Norma Rae, The Elephant Man, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, etc. I also saw Monterey Pop in 4-track mag in 1969 at the Kips Bay in Manhattan.

I'll append to that question.
Why were films still being produced in mag stereo in the early '80s, such as Scarface?
RAH

My opinion is that just a few prints were made and they were for the big theatres in NY and L.A., but if you think otherwise, I will concede the entire debate because you've probably forgotten more about film history and technology than I will ever know, no matter how much research I do and how many of my film experiences that I remember. (And in those days, if there was no 70mm release and a 35mm mag print was playing somewhere, I would seek it out and it was rare that I ever found any.)
My list of Panavision films does include Scarface as supposedly being released in 35mm mag stereo, along with Silkwood, Iceman, Buckaroo Banzai, Prizzi's Honor, Ran, Running Scared and Short Circuit from around the same time, although since most of those films were also released in 70mm blowups, I wonder if those "stereo" indications are not really referring to the 70mm version.
But again...if you think I'm wrong, then I'll concede I'm wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.

 

[Bob Furmanek]

some guy saying "I ran a mag print in the 1960s" is still anecdotal and only tells us what was going on in one theatre.

It's several guys who worked extensively in the Syracuse/Utica area and they were running film professionally in the 1960's. Yes, they were still running mag in Upstate, New York.

I didn't claim that absolutely every theatre had stopped playing mag. But most had.

Why do you keep making these kind of statements as if they are fact? You've done that before and I've come up with evidence to show otherwise.
There's SO much wrong information out there. It would be nice to have this thread contain factual documentation, not speculation.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Originally Posted by RolandL /t/319469/aspect-ratio-research/210#post_3941305
MGM Camera-65 which has an aspect ratio of 2.76:1 for Rainree County (although it was only released in 35mm scope) and Ben-Hur.

MGM Camera-65 is the same thing as Ultra Panavision 70. The name was changed after MGM's exclusivity contract with the Gottschalks expired allowing UA and Stanley Kramer to shoot Its A Mad, Mad, Mad World in the format.

 

[rdimucci]

MGM Camera-65 is the same thing as Ultra Panavision 70. The name was changed after MGM's exclusivity contract with the Gottschalks expired allowing UA and Stanley Kramer to shoot Its A Mad, Mad, Mad World in the format.

Actually, MGM's "Mutiny On the Bounty" was the first film credited on-screen as being filmed in Ultra Panavision 70.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Originally Posted by rdimucci /t/319469/aspect-ratio-research/210#post_3941673
Actually, MGM's "Mutiny On the Bounty" was the first film credited on-screen as being filmed in Ultra Panavision 70.

That's because MGM sold off their half of the contract (as well as their camera division) to Panavision midway though production on that.

 

[John Hodson]

Bob; have you any idea as to the OTAR of Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein when it opened in the US in 1957?

 

[Bob Furmanek]

Here you go, John:

 

[John Hodson]

Marvellous Bob, many thanks.

 

[Bob Furmanek]

My pleasure, John.
By September 1956, 1.85:1 had become the accepted, non-anamorphic industry standard for widescreen presentation.

 

[John Hodson]

My pleasure, John.
By September 1956, 1.85:1 had become the accepted, non-anamorphic industry standard for widescreen presentation.

In the US Bob; there's still some debate regarding Europe; far slower to adopt to the widescreen standards, and thus there are a raft of films having to cope with the possibility of being screened in a variety of ARs. I asked specifically about TCOF, principally because of this news, from Hammer.

 

[Bob Furmanek]

It would have been protected for 1.37 but even in the UK, I'm certain it would have been shown at least 1.66:1.

 

[John Hodson]

It would have been protected for 1.37 but even in the UK, I'm certain it would have been shown at least 1.66:1.

Mostly, yes, I agree. The issue is what Fisher and Asher shot it for principally; Hammer insist it was Academy. There's a similar issue with The Ladykillers; the UK BD looks spot on in Academy, though it will matte down to 1.66:1 and even 1.85:1 reasonably enough. The UK, and especially the rest of Europe, was pretty slow to convert to widescreen. There'd been a war on, you know...

 

[Brandon Conway]

Originally Posted by John Hodson /t/319469/aspect-ratio-research/210#post_3942752
Mostly, yes, I agree. The issue is what Fisher and Asher shot it for principally; Hammer insist it was Academy. There's a similar issue with The Ladykillers; the UK BD looks spot on in Academy, though it will matte down to 1.66:1 and even 1.85:1 reasonably enough. The UK, and especially the rest of Europe, was pretty slow to convert to widescreen. There'd been a war on, you know...

In regards to The Ladykillers, film historian Phillip Kemp made the following comment back in 2010:

"I've never seen TLK screened in anything but Academy ratio. In fact as far as I know, only one Ealing movie was ever made in widescreen - the late and rather feeble comedy Davy, which was shot in Technirama. So 1.66:1 would distort Sandy's film rather badly."

 

[Bob Furmanek]

I believe Mr. Kemp is basing his opinion on later screenings and not what was originally shown in cinemas in 1955.
Watch this trailer:
Look carefully at the framing on the titles and you'll see that this transfer should have been pulled down a bit to give a little more head room.
Note the camera movement at 1:23 to keep Guinness on the stairs in the shot.
This film was definitely composed for widescreen. If they were framing for 1.37, there would have been no reason to pan up the camera.