Vic Pardo
Screenwriter
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2013
- Messages
- 1,520
- Real Name
- Brian Camp
I meant to edit my post but hit "quote" instead and now I can't delete it. I just wanted to add this:Vic Pardo said:You're assuming that the people running studios these days have any idea what you're talking about. I'll bet that most of them can't tell the difference between "scope" and "flat." Or 2K and 4K. Or whatever...
It's not like when Jack Warner, Harry Cohn, Darryl Zanuck and Louis B. Mayer were running the studios and sat in their screening rooms at the end of the day and watched every single film their studios made and gave orders on what to fix. Back in the 1960s and '70s, the studios were taken over by businessmen from other industries who didn't know a Goddamn thing about movies. Today, the heads of production are often people who come out of television.
I work at a TV station and I see problems with aspect ratios all the time as we transition from standard def to high def. Do you think the boss can tell the difference? No, he can't. Nor can many of the program suppliers. On PBS, any time a documentary uses standard Academy ratio archival footage, that footage is now either stretched out anamorphically or cropped at top and bottom. It's so frustrating that I hardly watch new TV shows anymore, just old shows on tape or disc.
Not that the old studio heads were never wrong. Back in 1953, after HOUSE OF WAX was such a big hit, Jack Warner ordered everyone to make their films in 3-D, assuming that it would be the norm within a year. We saw how well that worked out. In the late '60s Warner sold his studio to a guy that owned parking garages.