Showing my friend the benifits of OAR!!! (1 Viewer)

[Christina_V]

Well i was over at her house yesturday & we watched a few movies on video(she does'nt have a dvd player)......though she had the sound on pretty low,that it was no fun watching the films,since we just chatted girlstuff anyway throughout.
We watched A Nightmare on Elm Street 4,Halloween 4 & the first hour of Halloween 5. She was in the mood for horror + i have'nt seen either of those films in years except for Elm St 4 since i have the dvd set.
Anyway.......widescreen was brought up a few times since i kept saying how i love dvd because of that & tryed telling her why it's good. She saying she hated it & loved the picture filling up the screen(has a 20-25in tv from what i could tell) 7 then said as long as it doesn't bother me,theni don't mind & was the same way on censorship as well. Mentioned how she loves the Friday the 13th series,expecially part 7...so i mention how heavily censored that was & she says. "Oh i never payed attention"!.
Then on Halloween 4 the credits were in widescreen. So i mention see this is what 1:85 looks like. Theres not a huge differnece between this & full frame,but it's how it's really supposed to look. She nearly freaked out,saying "oh my god, i never noticed that before..is the whole movie like this? Dammit ect". When the credits where over the movie went to full frame & she calmed down. I said see the bars are going away,lol.
then i mentinoed real widescreen asi call it(2:35) & thats what she REALLY hates. Though i could understand why,since she loves alot of movies from the 50's-60's & said how she tryed watching Oceans 11 & Maryln Monroe films ect in widescreen on AMC/TCM & the picture was soooooo small you could barely see anything. I said i understand that because they where shot in wider than widescreen,that the picture shows up to small on just about any screen. So i mentioned howi could never sit through the whole thing of My Fair Lady in widescreen since the picture was microscopic on my 25
in tv.
So trying to reason with her i mention most movies even in 2:35(where black bars cover more of the screen) the movies look perfect and can be seen clearly on most tvs(25in ect) especially 70's-todays movies filmed in that ratio. + i said you gain more picture & are not loosing any unless watching it in full frame.
So for an expample since she almost got me to watch the first two Halloweens on video in P&S......i have the dvds & OAR only for me on those and other 2:35 movies!! Which is why i asked could we watch 4 & 5 instead,since i have'nt seen them in years.
I said "You know that scene in the school where Loomis is talking to that girl & then mentions about the state trooper who's there to escort him out of Haddonfield?"
She said "yeah"
"Well remember theres alot of noise in that scene & it sounds like there in a geneator room or something?
She said "yeah, i always wondered what the hell that was & where they were,but they're just in the hallway"
So i said "well i just got the dvd a couple months ago & saw it in WS for the first time & in that scene you can see a janitor in the background waxing the floor,thats where the noise is coming from!"
She was suprised and like wow i never knew that. I gotta see this ect. Though still stuck to,well i like the whole screen being filled ect. So i said,well your'e loosing ALOT of picture then.
So she said we should get together at my house sometime so i can show her what dvds like + show her a few examples of OAR.
So i'm thinking of showing some clips form movies that have both versions on the disc like True Romance & Halloween 1,Blade Runner.
Also the Die Hard demo,the Halloween 2 scene i mentinoed & maybe a couple others. The trick is to show movies that they like + have alot of visual info in the shots.Then say,see what your'e missing?
Since she didn't really know anything about censorship as well. Maybe go rent Friday the 13th part 7 & tell her where all the cuts are-ie everything! Then also Jason Goes To Hell since its' the only Friday avalble in a R & Unrated version in the US. + She hasn't seen that one yet,so maybe we could watch the unrated version...then just check out a few scenes from the R version to show her how heavily censored it is?

 

[John_Bonner]

Hey Christina...Welcome aboard!

I know what you mean. Sometimes you have to actually show people the difference before they understand. I did this recently with one of my neighbors. I was showing him my HT setup and we got to talking about widescreen and how he felt the movie was being "cutoff" in widescreen. I tried to explain that it's cutoff in full frame not widescreen. Anyway a few minutes later I'm flipping through the channels and "A Perfect Storm" is on cable (Full Frame of course!). So I pull out my DVD of the movie, pop it in and catch up to the same point in the movie. Using my tv's picture-in-picture I was able to switch back and forth and show him the difference. There was a scene where Clooney is talking to Mark Wahlberg and Walhberg's not even ont the screen. I then switch to the DVD and they're both on the screen. He finally understood. He then didn't understand why the DVD picture(coming through component input w/anamorphic squeeze) looked better than the cable picture (through coax). I decided that was a lesson for another day...

 

[Tommy G]

Christina, welcome to the forum! Anyway, I feel your pain. My wife is a P&S lover. However, I have been able to "convert" my 7 year old daughter. When we watch Princess Bride, she always asks for Widescreen. Anyway, if your friend likes old movies, I would suggest showing North by Northwest as a great example. The scene I am talking about is just after Eva Marie Saint shoots Cary Grant with the gun with blanks and he fakes his death and they end up in the woods just outside of Mt. Rushmore. There is a scene where they are talking to each other on opposite ends of the screen. The only way to capture what they are thinking and feeling at the time was to have this incredible separation between them. In P&S this would be completely lost. Thankfully, I have never seen the P&S version of North by Northwest.

 

[Jim A. Banville]

"So i said "well i just got the dvd a couple months ago & saw it in WS for the first time & in that scene you can see a janitor in the background waxing the floor,thats where the noise is coming from!"

If this statment won't convert someone to OAR, nothing will!

 

[PhilipG]

Christina, methinks you've written more in your first post than all my 1000+ posts put together. Welcome to the HTF!
BTW, you don't need DVDs with both w/s & pan/scam for the demo. Just attach some cardboard mattes to either side of the TV screen. When your friend complains about losing the left and right of the image, you have another convert!

 

[Christina_V]

I was thinking of doing that as well. I watched the begining of Armageddon last night,finding good widescreen demos & held two pillows up on both sides of the screen(since there as no cardboard around) & it didn't look good at all,lol. To much was lost and with no scanning,you could'nt tell what was going on.
I'll have to throw on a couple 1;85 demos' as well. Otherwise she may think all movies are in 2:35 & go nuts with 1:85,thinknig your'e missing alot of the picture still,lol. I don't know if it'll work. She'll probably be stuck loving P&S,unless she got a dvd player,though i doubt even that would work....but you never know.
What ratio is North By Northwest? I love that movie and have yet to get the dvd or other Hitch movies on dvd since i'm low on $$ ect & have'nt bought anything in a long time. I thought ity may be 1:85 since the dvd box said it was matted.

 

[DarrenA]

It still amazes me that someone can go into a theater and watch a 2.35:1 movie that is clearly rectangular in shape, then when they watch the same movie on a Pan & Scan home video version on a 1.33:1 square-ish television, they don't think they're missing any portions of the image?! I always thought it was simple geometry.
BTW, one funny note about North by Northwest on DVD. Check out the scene at Restaurant near Mt. Rushmore. If you look closely, you will see a young kid holding his ears before the gun is fired. Ah, the magic of Holywood.

 

[John Chow]

Check out www.widescreen.org if you haven't already.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

The only way to capture what they are thinking and feeling at the time was to have this incredible separation between them. In P&S this would be completely lost. Thankfully, I have never seen the P&S version of North by Northwest.

The full frame North by Northwest was done by a combination of matte opening and panning and scanning of the full exposed frame. Most of it is open matte with slight cropping on the sides, but the cropping gets more severe in some process shots where exposing the full Vistavision frame would have also exposed matte paintings and edges of rear projection screens.
Anyway, it might not be the best demo material for this purpose. Any Sergio Leone western ought to do the trick,. though.
Regards,

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

Yeah, the best way I've seen so far to explain to people why pan&scan is evil is the examples page over at http://www.widescreen.org/examples.html

 

[MathewM]

God, it hurts just to look at those cropped images.

I think the best way for showing people the difference is right there a top the store shelves. A simple side by side comparison with the latest releases. Ofcourse, you'll still have people who understand the difference but don't like widescreen nonetheless. You mustn't forget that most people don't view movies as art. It's no different from watching the news.

 

[Richard_Huntington]

There is a scene where they are talking to each other on opposite ends of the screen. The only way to capture what they are thinking and feeling at the time was to have this incredible separation between them. In P&S this would be completely lost. Thankfully, I have never seen the P&S version of North by Northwest.

NbyNW is not cropped like that. It is open matted and slightly cropped, so this shot is a-OK panned & scanned, with opened up top and bottom. Other shots fair worse.

The best "older" non anamorphic film I use is THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, which is very clearly cropped in the pan & scan version.

 

[Barry S]

I had always thought that all 1.85:1 movies were matted top and bottom with little to no cropping on the sides in full screen versions. However, I was watching Fargo the other day, and decided to do a comparison of the widescreen and fullscreen sides. I looked at an early scene in the film where Jerry Lundegaard comes home from his trip to Fargo and his wife is cooking in the kitchen. Particulary the shot where he walks in his front door. In the widescreen version, on the very right side of the frame you can see into another room where a lamp is sitting on a table. You can also see the entire coatrack by the front door on the left side. These were my points of reference for comparing the two versions. Upon looking at the full screen version, I was surprised to see that there was no additional picture information on the top or bottom of the frame in full screen mode. There was, however, severe cropping on the left and right sides. The lamp on the right side of the screen was completely cut off as was the tail end of the coatrack on the left side. So it seems that Fargo is at least one 1.85:1 movie that is severaly cropped in P&S format. Once again, widescreen proves to be the way to go.

 

[Ted Lee]

welcome! congrats on helping us educate the masses! another good link for OAR is the digital bits - widescreen o-rama

 

[JonZ]

Its early and my brain isnt working yet, but I have one example I can give you:

I nticed this years ago and used to show people when I bought The Thing LD was when Kurt Russells charater was telling everyone he was gonna tie them up to test them.

A second earlier you had seen a hand take the scapel off a table, but it wasnt seen again.On the left side in the foreground u can see one Clarke holding a scalpel behind his back he had taken off the table. Completely missing from the P&S version.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

I had always thought that all 1.85:1 movies were matted top and bottom with little to no cropping on the sides in full screen versions.

Actually, if one accepts that 4:3 presentation is a requirement of the market, the best way to go about it is to consult the filmmakers and let them decide which shots should be open matte and which should be zoomed/panned/cropped/whatever, even if open matte is possible for the whole film.

I once noticed that some of the deep focus shots in "Miller's Crossing" did not look so "deep focus" when shown unmatted (i.e foreground elements covered by the lower matte were not quite in focus). Zooming can also preserve the integrity of close-ups better than matte opening in certain situations.

Regards,

 

[Carlo_M]

Actually, you know it's bad when you watch a movie on TV and you can sort of tell where the pans and scans and zooms are even if you've never seen the film before!
I can sort of tell (in an amateur way) the way a shot should be (or would be) framed by a DP and to see what happens especially when a 2.35 movie is edited for TV...it's just downright wrong.

 

[PaulG]

I never cared much for widescreen until I bought a larger TV about a year ago. I really like widescreen now. I even find myself commenting on scenes that would be ruined in P&S. It is definitely the larger TV that did it for me. When watching a movie for the second time (or more), you start to realize what else is going on.

I have a friend who has the same TV as me, and inists the if he doesn't have the picture full, he is not getting full value from his TV. I think his words where something like "Hey, I paid for the whole TV, I want to see the whole TV". I suggested when watching a widescreen movie, say a 2 hour movie, just watch the first 90 minutes, then take the movie back. He thought I was weird, but I told him, "Hey, you are only watching about 75% of the movie in P&S anyway".

I guess until you start to notice what you have been missing you just won't get it. I'm glad I finally got it, because I seem to enjoy watching DVDs a whole lot more.