TV shows and TV movies gone W I D E (1 Viewer)

[DVDvision]

Hahaha, actually, as I think I made the point here from time to time, going wide is the only way to respect the original photography top and bottom intent, (on the series fitted for this). The additional left and right information is not damaging to the shots and composition. However, any additional top and bottom (as can be seen on most remastered series where the whole frame, or near whole frame is revealed) is always damaging.

 

[Simon Massey]

Depending on present sales (it's sooner or later in any case -- this is Star Trekwe've talking about), it will. But for this round of releases, it was finances (once again) that determined "to W I D E or not to W I D E", as revealed in this fascinating and excellent behind-the-scenes look:
CBS Digital & Star Trek The Next Generation Restoration (FXguide TV, Episode 161)
https://www.youtube....h?v=dPHP5izB8MU
@9:50 -- about the decision to remaster at 4x3 as opposed to 16x9 -- "... it was cost prohibitive ..."

Agreed excellent look at the restoration and love how you actually ignore the explanation he gives to justify your opinion. Why was it cost prohibitive ?

See the thing is its pretty clear that both HDVision and Spaced simple want to fill their TVs. I don't have a problem with that - personal choice - though you are not really going to find many agreeing with you here. But we all want to enjoy the shows we like in the format we want it, and I'd happily accept a dual release to make sure everyone is happy.

It's the fact you try to justify your wish with arguments suggesting directorial/producer intent, that your opinion on whether it looks better must be correct or that somehow 4x3 is an invalid format (which is quite frankly the most ridiculous argument I have heard). Im not going to convince you Im right obviously but it is amusing watching you ignore points made to you and repeat the same rather odd arguments that have already had flaws point out. Burst out laughing when it was actually suggested that director intent is a red herring. Just come out and say you want your TV filled. Or better yet use the zoom button on your TV!!

Id be surprised to see a widescreen release of TNG in the future. As the clip showed, it was cost prohibitive because they would have to alter the original framing, which if they were even to attempt it would take a long time for each and every show when most are happy with what they are getting. i suspect it may well be produced for TV channels perhaps and involve simply zooming in most of the time probably very badly.

 

[DVDvision]

The clip is manipulating the truth. The SFX are clearly marked for widescreen on the monitor screens.

All the TOS series SFX were redone in widescreen and cropped for 4/3, you don't think they wouldn't do it for TNG.

 

[Simon Massey]

I have have no opinion on whether they made the new SFX for TNG in widescreen. I'm sure it is possible, perhaps even likely, but also irrelevant to the points being made.

 

[Matt.Koz]

I recently watched the Lost In Space restoration test on my projector system and have to say, I liked the widescreen. The slight loss of top and bottom info was slightly more apparent on a larger screen, but, I enjoyed the cinematic feel of the wider image. That being said, I understand those who favor the aspect ratio of the original television presentation (I'm particularly sensitive to music replacements/edits - they drive me nuts!) and I have used the zoom feature and been horrified by the results so I feel its a case by case basis. Ultimately, you cannot go wrong with the original presentation; but I would prefer the choice of standard or wide, and would most often choose the latter - and let it be on my conscious when I'm wondering what happened to the tops of everyones' heads!

 

[DVDvision]

X-FILES original 4/3 cropped seasons are going W I D E

EPIC WIN

1x20 Darkness Falls

1x21 Tooms

 

[DVDvision]

More captures from the pilot

 

[Hollywoodaholic]

Is that going to be on the BD release or just how it's being broadcast somewhere?

 

[TravisR]

Is that going to be on the BD release or just how it's being broadcast somewhere?

It hasn't been confirmed either way but my guess is that these awful cropped versions are what will be on the Blu-ray.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Is this yet another instance of a show broadcast in 4:3 that people think was really shot by the crew with 16:9 in mind?

Or is it a correction of a 16:9 broadcast that was cropped 4:3 for a home video release?

All those screencaps don't show me anything and there is no explanation.

 

[TravisR]

Is this yet another instance of a show broadcast in 4:3 that people think was really shot by the crew with 16:9 in mind?

Or is it a correction of a 16:9 broadcast that was cropped 4:3 for a home video release?

The X-Files was absolutely framed for 4:3 but, given the era, they shot 16:9 to futureproof the series. They apparently knew that even in the future, people would still want to fill their screen despite what was intended by the creative team.

 

[DVDvision]

Actually, it was shot retro-proof. They made sure the framing worked as if the series would have been filmed before 1953, for meat cleavering tube TVs, knowing those would be gone down the road. Welcome to the future

 

[LeoA]

So you have some quote from someone like a director?

This might work well for some modern programs if artistically they did have the foresight to expect the widescreen HD revolution that was coming and planned for it to future proof their work. But for classic programs beyond the late 1990's, it deserves to be derided just like pan & scan was by classic movie fans.

It's better than stretching something to full 16:9 proportions and distorting everything, but that's about the nicest thing that can be said for 16:9 crops of material that were never intended to be viewed as such.

 

[AndyMcKinney]

So you have some quote from someone like a director?

Exactly. I'm not buying his explanation unless someone who was actually involved with the production comes forward and says they actually composed the shots for both aspect ratios.

Since X-Files premiered in the early 1990s, there is definitely no guarantee that the producers composed for both aspect ratios. True, there was talk about widescreen TVs being the future at that time, but it was still just talk, and not all TV people were composing shows with that framing in mind (I pretty sure 16:9 hadn't even been decided on as the new screen size in 1993).

Just because the producers might have been future-proofing for reruns doesn't mean that's necessarily how they wanted their show seen. We have only to look at a later show, Buffy, for which the show's creator himself has come forward and said that 4:3 is the intended aspect ratio for all but one of the episodes.

So, until Chris Carter or someone else involved with the production of the show comes forward and says what the aspect ratio should be, we shouldn't assume anything.

I'm not even a fan of X-Files and have no intention of buying it (no matter what screen format a BR is released in), I'm just a champion of shows being released in their intended aspect ratios rather than altered ones.

 

[Everett S.]

Oh the horror, think of the hours they spent moaning and complaining about not being able to shoot in widescreen because we really can't compose shots any other way. And while we are at it someone really needs to reframe Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind because Im sure they would have preferred widescreen too, especially Gone with the Wind with it being labelled an "epic" and surely benefiting those beautiful vistas and scenery they show.And we really need some windows in those rooms in Star Trek so we can see outside. They would have done that you know if they could have afforded it in the 60s.On a serious note.For once, Im lost for words... Really ????.... Someone needs to tell the makers of The Artist that their format is not a valid format!!! And while they are at it, they need to colour it too..Trouble is you aren't getting many artists or directors actually saying that!!!!. Is there a Star Trek director or cinematographer stating their preferred AR is widescreen for their particular episode? If you actually read this thread you would find that the intention of the director/filmmakers are in fact the most important and I would happily concede a widescreen release if they state this was intended and they shot for this. I suspect even in this case, most filmmakers would welcome a dual release because fortunately most of them do actually recognise the value of framing. Two excellent example for this are Cameron's Titanic ( he had the sense to release both and by the way since he uses Super 35 there is more of Terminator 2 at the top and bottom so we should see a full frame of this ASAP) and Apted's Voyage of the Dawn Treader where the director changed the AR for Bluray, a decision I personally did not like since it was 2.35 for cinema, but accept it as a directorial decision at the time.

Gone With The Wind was redone in 70mm in the early 1960's for a RoadShow run. It was really done poorly.

 

[TravisR]

So, until Chris Carter or someone else involved with the production of the show comes forward and says what the aspect ratio should be, we shouldn't assume anything.

John S. Bartley (the show's director of photography for the first 3 seasons) has said that they protected for 16:9 which is NOT the same as framing for 16:9. They composed the show for 4:3 and so there would just be empty space on the sides of the 16:9 version. No DOP would deliberately compromise their work thinking that it might be seen correctly at some far off unknown date in the future. And in the case of The X-Files, it would have been a big 'might' because the show wasn't a hit at the beginning.

Beyond that, you can look at the early season episodes and see that they're composed for 4:3. There's no parts of actors or props cut off (as there is in modern shows when they get cropped for 4:3). And when you look at the later season episodes (that are in widescreen), you can see they have empty space on the sides of the 16:9 frame to the point that I could draw a square in each 16:9 shot and see the correct framing.

 

[Harry-N]

Early shows that were produced for HDTV still protected and composed for a 4:3 middle. There was essentially nothing on the left and right - just breathing room. I was amazed the first time I saw a show like CSI in widescreen HDTV. I could clearly see that the 4:3 middle was where all of the important action was and that the DP framed it so that most of the audience, with their old tube sets, would have a "proper" picture. The HD version was, at that time, the "also-ran" that was out there for the video geeks who had HD.

Those early HD network broadcasts were a separate stream that even had different ways of handling on-screen bugs and logos, and they even ran the end credits in full while the old analog network was doing its scrunching. I observed this in the late spring and summer of 2005. By that fall, the networks moved their logo bugs to the 4:3 screen and all credits were scrunched, so I believe that fall 2005 was the first time that most shows began to really compose for 16:9. NBC was ahead of the game as they forced their analog affiliates to letterbox their programs like E.R. Those were definitely composed for 16:9 and looked odd when some cable companies rebroadcast the letterbox image as a center-screen crop.

Harry

 

[DVDvision]

The pratice of protecting for 4/3 (meaning the essential action is framed within the 4/3 borders of your widescreen TV) still continues to this day on most shows, I think I posted a frame grab from a making of the recent Nikita series recently, where the 4/3 frame is clearly delineated on the camera viewfinder. That's 2013! It doesn't mean you have to view the show in 4/3. 4/3 TV for fiction is a forced truncated format, not an artistic choice, in most cases.

That's why you get all these shows going wide as listed in this thread.

 

[TravisR]

The pratice of protecting for 4/3 (meaning the essential action is framed within the 4/3 borders of your widescreen TV) still continues to this day on most shows, I think I posted a frame grab from a making of the recent Nikita series recently, where the 4/3 frame is clearly delineated on the camera viewfinder. That's 2013!

The difference between today and 20 years ago is that they compose for 16:9 while making sure that nothing important is outside of the 4:3 frame. With HD, widescreen SD presentations, download/streaming and Blu-ray/DVD, a current show will be immediately and probably predominantly seen in its 16:9 aspect ratio so they compose for that AR. A couple decades ago, no show would have been seen in 16:9 so they wouldn't have composed for that aspect ratio.

 

[Vic Pardo]

Exactly. I'm not buying his explanation unless someone who was actually involved with the production comes forward and says they actually composed the shots for both aspect ratios.

Since X-Files premiered in the early 1990s, there is definitely no guarantee that the producers composed for both aspect ratios. True, there was talk about widescreen TVs being the future at that time, but it was still just talk, and not all TV people were composing shows with that framing in mind (I pretty sure 16:9 hadn't even been decided on as the new screen size in 1993).

Just for the record, I remember going to a comics show in either late 1993 or early 1994 and one of the dealers of anime tapes had a widescreen CRT TV from Japan for showing widescreen anime. That was the first time I'd seen anything like that. I remember him selling NINJA SCROLL at the time and using that TV to show it, although it wasn't yet called NINJA SCROLL (the official U.S. release title, which was announced after this show) but NINJAS OF THE WIND or something similar. (I still have that tape somewhere.) Not that he had many other tapes in that format to sell.