IN SEARCH OF THE CASTAWAYS, THAT DARN CAT, etc. coming in PAN AND SCAN ONLY! (2 Viewers)

[Everett S.]

I worked in the Movie theatres from 1967 til 1995 and I think all the Disney films in the 60's & 70's were FLAT not SCOPE or WideScreen. They were the same ratio as the cartoon shorts, as I remember the screen masking not opening any wider for the feature, I was a projectionist, usher then manager. And I love movies! I do not buy pan & scanned DVD's! I have "That Darn Cat" ordered.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

I just popped over to IMDB to check on some of these.

In Search of the Castaways - 35mm - 1.75:1
Summer Magic - 35mm [blank]
That Darn Cat! - 35mm - 1.75:1

Close enough?

Glenn

 

[walter o]

I think the BIGGEST backlast against fullscreen vs widescreen to average consumers who goes to wal-mart is, that many of these films, when presented in fullscreen, are actually open matte presentations, (umless it was shot scope, of course), so imagine to a uneducated family, as if someone keeps calling these 'open matte" presentations as instead "pan and scan" and so they say "Ah, I am losing as much as 50% images on widescreen presentations" and suddenly they make a comparison of a open matte presentation vs matted, they see they are "losing" images instead, even though it is images the filmmakers didnt want you to see, (this can be troubling especially on super 35 films where they lose alot OF DEAD SPACE) but since we taked to them about pan and scan and not "OAR" they get confused? thats my guess on why wal-marters like fullscreen.

 

[Jon Martin]

Even among widescreen fans, this gets to be a confusing issue. I mean, look at the thread title, calling these films PAN AND SCAN when they aren't.

Pan and scan is when a widescreen film is transferred, and they add artificial pans to the transfer that were never intended. This is a far far more damaging way of transferring a film than an open matte transfer is, or when they just zoom in on the transfer, cutting off the sides.

So, if home theatre regulars aren't even fully aware of the issue, Joe and Jane Six Pack at Wal Mart can't really be expected to fully understand it.

 

[rich_d]

I couldn't find any reference to this at ultimate Disney ... could the O.P. share the link.

Jon,

How do you know that these films are open matte versus pan and scan?

 

[george kaplan]

Some Disney releases are open-matte, but certainly others are pan & scan (e.g., Blackbeard's Ghost).

 

[Jeffrey Nelson]

The full-frame release of THE ABSENT-MINDED PROFESSOR definitely has material chopped off at the sides. The widescreen version looks much better. I hope THAT DARN CAT! was shot in the Academy ratio, for masking by the projectionist later. I can live with an open-matte CAT.

 

[Jon Martin]

None of them were widescreen films so no panning and scanning is involved. Even in 1.85:1 films (and these are all at most 1.75), there is usually no panning and scanning. They either zoom into the picture, cutting off the sides or open up the matting. That isn't panning and scanning as the picture remains steady.

Panning and scanning is when, on a widescreen film you have say a static shot of two people talking on either side of the frame. In the panning and scanning, the transfer will show one person, and then pan across the image to show the other person. The pan wasn't there in the original film. The director didn't intend it. It changes the film.

Like I said, panning and scanning is a truly awful practice, but the term gets used incorrectly too often. Too many people call any transfer that isn't widescreen pan and scan and that just isn't the case.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

That is not true. While there are more than a few true open-matte video transfers, there is more often than not some panning and scanning for 1.85:1 films.

Regards,

 

[Jon Martin]

Not noticably so that it changes the whole film.

1.85 and 1.33 are not different enough to make true panning and scanning possible.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Well, that's one opinion. For me, it's usually really easy to spot the compositional deficiencies of panned and scanned 1.85:1. I suspect most others around these parts could do the same. Taking a gander at the syndicated reruns of season 3 and later episodes of the show "Angel" should make one painfully aware of the problems with panning and scanning even 16:9 originated and composed programs with large TV-safe title/overscan allowances.

Regards,

 

[Paul_Scott]

as does Moon-Spinners.
iirc, you can tell by how cramped the titles are, as well as several medium shots with two characters side by side.
i bought it becausei had always wanted to see it, but sold it off after a first viewing.
shame too, because i enjoyed the movie and would have liked to have seen it again (but won't until a proper OAR release).

its amusing to me how many people are screaming for Blu-ray, saying how crappy the alternative format will be when they have yet to see any examples, and the only thing that IS concrete is the participation of which studios for which format- and of the three identified as 'all on board' all three are notorious OAR offenders, and are still consisitently releasing mediocre a/v presntations on standard def.
what good are better specs when the studio releasing things on it has a track record for shoddy, LCD(lowest common denominator) work?

 

[george kaplan]

Call it what you want, but if the sides are being cut off and you're losing picture, who cares if the camera is panning back and forth or not? You're still not seeing the whole film, and it's definitely MAR, not OAR.

 

[Ernest Rister]

I saw a Samsung DVD player advertised today as having "letterbox elimination" technology.

I think this is called the "zoom" button.

 

[Ernest Rister]

Oh, by the way, according to Disney.com the following new releases will also be in the 1.33 aspect ratio:

The Adventures of Bullship Griffin
Lt. Robinson Crusoe, USN
The Barefoot Executive
Million Dollar Duck

 

[Jon Martin]

Well, it is quite a difference. It is one thing to have part of the picture cut off, but another to have a large part of the picture cut off AND all sorts of pans back and forth of the picture when the director intended it to be a still shot. That is a significant change in the film. Most of the time the director isn't even involved in the transfer too.

 

[FrancisP]

The real question is what format were the films shot in. We
all know that a film shot in 1:33 can be shown in a wide screen format. It also is true Disney was always thinking ahead. When they shot these films they had a eye on running them on the tv show.

 

[Ernest Rister]

Public airing on the TV show was the eventual fate of all of the live-action underperformers, while many of the live-action hits were revived theatrically just like the animated films. Some of them were even re-titled. Third Man on the Mountain was re-christened Banner in the Sky for TV airing.

The irony is that some of the made-for-TV shows were so popular, they found life in the theaters, like the Davy Crockett episodes. The 1st season of Zorro was cut together into a single movie, which I saw on a double-bill with The Jungle Book in the mid-to-late 70's.

What worries me is that there is going to be the potential to slice off the top and bottom of 1.33:1 features in the new HDTV future, mirroring what Disney did in the 70's and 80's with their animated features. I remember Siskel and Ebert chastising Disney in 1987 for releasing Snow White to theaters in a compromised form, slicing off the top and bottom of the image to fit the wider screens. This may be at the root of the "window-boxed" opening credits for the 1988 re-issue of Bambi, which recently caused me so much confusion.

In any event, this practice was halted with the 1990 re-issue of Fantasia, with the 1.33:1 aspect ratio masked within the frame of the 35 mm film print, virtually requiring all theaters to show the film in the correct aspect ratio, a practice continued with theatrical re-issues of 101 Dalmatians, Pinocchio, and the 1993 reissue of Snow White.

 

[MatthewA]

Ernest,

You are thinking of "The Sign of Zorro," first released in 1960.

Many of the longer anthology series programs were released theatrically overseas as well.

 

[Joe_Pinney]

That would be Richard Cook, President of Walt Disney Studios (which runs Buena Vista Home Entertainment), former Disneyland monorail pilot, Disney Channel pioneer, former President of Buena Vista Pictures Distribution and champion of the restoration of Hollywood's El Capitan Theater (which Disney owns), so he really should know better than to play dumb about such important matters as OAR.

http://corporate.disney.go.com/corpo...hard_cook.html

And you're wrong about nothing being consistent from Disney in the last 20 years, Marco. You know what's consistent at Disney? The inconsistency!