Quasi-OAR ads? (1 Viewer)

[Chris Bardon]

I saw a commercial for FOTR:EE last night, and noticed something really odd about the clips they showed from the film. The commercial was at 4:3, but the film clips were at 1.85:1 (rather than the actual scope ratio of the film). Is there any logical reason for this?

 

[Jason Whyte]

It's just marketing people playing with aspect ratios. This has been done for years.

Jason

 

[Bjorn Olav Nyberg]

The reason I once heard, and I may even have heard it from Jason Whyte on this forum, was that when preparing trailers for the cinema, they were all made in 1.85:1 to have an unison aspect ratio on a single reel. And apparently this is the reason trailers are 1.85:1

 

[Jason Whyte]

Well, sort of. You're talking about theatrical projection (which would have to match all of its aspect ratios or things would look distorted coming out of a different lens), where in this case Chris is referring to home video marketing, which will bend, stretch and re-frame everything to give it a more "cinematic" look.
Years ago, this was an interesting way to find out if a movie was "scope" in theaters. Studios like Columbia, Universal and Dreamworks would format their "scope" movies in a frame around 1.66:1-1.85:1 yet leave their "flat" films at a full frame.
These days, it's all over the map. Now I just use film-tech if I need to know a film's particular format before I see it.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

What *really* makes me sick in ads in home-theater magazines.
Whenever they show a 16x9 TV or screen they always show a 2.35:1 films cropped to 1.78 filling it. SHEESH! Even for product reviews or home-theaters featured by private owners the magazines also do this themselves!
I've also seen instances where 1.33:1 material was cropped to fill a 16x9 screen in a HT...there it was...the wizard of oz in all it's widescren glory
If these publications don't have the balls to show films OAR on their equipment for their advertisements and reviews they shouldn't be in business.
-dave