Windowboxing (1 Viewer)

[ScottR]

I mentioned this in the It's A Wonderful Life thread, but windowboxing appears in all sorts of ways so I thought I would give it its own thread. In the case of Life, the credits at the end are windowboxed, but there is a bit less picture information on the top and bottom compared to the non-windowboxed version. And the latter doesn't suffer from cropping on the sides. So why would Paramount windowbox something that didn't need it, and why is there cropping? Would this have been consistent with a print image aread compared to the negative image area (ala the previous release.) In other words, how much image would an Academy ratio print crop from its negative origins? And how do you guys feel about the general issue of windowboxing?

 

[Lord Dalek]

I blame Japan, they have this bizarre obsession with windowboxing and as a result most of their dvd transfers are crap.

 

[ScottR]

I'm a bit confused. Does windowboxing slightly crop the top and bottom of the frame?

 

[Chuck Pennington]

Not supposed to - it shrinks the image within the frame, thus reducing the resolution used on the actual film image.

 

[captainjoe]

I can unerstand it's use for title sequences but I'm against windowboxing an entire movie, which Criterion continues to do.

 

[ScottR]

So, if windowboxed, there is a chance that it actually shows more than a projected image in the 1930's? Didn't the Academy Ratio shrink the height of the negative image?