SW Trilogy VHS aspect ratio? (1 Viewer)

[Jeffrey Gray]

SW was not in Super 35...it was in Panavision. The vertical cropping is very slight...heads get very close to the top of the Panavision frame. It looks like it has been cropped to 2.25:1 and matted back down to 2.35:1...this happens on all widescreen tapes of Episode IV...even the ones that are cropped to 2.20:1...but the pan-and-scan tapes have all of the vertical information of the part of the scene that appears in the transfer...dunno why.

 

[Greg O' Connel]

You know, am I the only one who notices that every widescreen tape of Star Wars is slightly cropped on the top and bottom.

You're not the only one. I was watching my WS version of Empire (1997 SE Release) earlier today, and I noticed for the first time that it didn't look like a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. I'm assuming that is supposed to be the correct theatrical aspect ratio, right?

 

[Jeffrey Gray]

For the THX tapes, it looks like they took a 2.35:1 print, cropped it to about 2.20:1-2.25:1, and matted it back down to 2.35:1 to simulate the original theatrical aspect ratio (I can't understand why they had to do that, unless they took them from a 70mm source), and yet, the pan-and-scan THX tapes have all the vertical information that was matted out on the widescreen THX tapes (at least for the part of the Panavision frame that remains visible in the P&S transfer)!