Hey, does anyone know why the Columbia Tristar DVD (U.S.) of this seems to be in 1.85 (wide screen, contemporary aspect ratio) rather than in the squarer 1.37 aspect ratio that I assume it was shot in, in 1954? This seems strange to me.
shareHow does it look? Like it's inappropriately cropped and lacking headroom? This is a year after the coming of CinemaScope but I don't know when it became widespread to project non Scope films at 1.85 and compose for that cropping during photography. (There were theatres showing films that way long before what we normally consider to be the start of the widescreen era with Cinerama and CinemaScope but films weren't really shot intended for cropping until about the mid fifties.)
Steve Kraus
Lake Street Screening Room - Chicago
The Academy Standard ratio of 1.85:1 came into being around the same time as CinemaScope became the new "panoramic" widescreen process of choice (1953/54).
In order to compete with television, the movie industry decided to depict all movies as being "wide screen," not just those made in "scope," so they began to tell theatre owners to install new, wider screens and start showing all their movies in a new, non-TV-like aspect ratio -- either 1.85:1 for regular productions or 2.55:1 (at first) for the anamorphic ones.
Although there were still plenty of movies photographed on open matte, 1.37:1 film stock for years after that point (even now), circa 1954 the "standard" became for projectionists in movie theatres to mask the screen with blackout material so that the projected movie appeared to be in a minimum 1.85:1 ratio, even when it was shot on a fuller frame.
That's why, when you see those disclaimers pop up before movies are shown on TV now, "This movie has been modified to fit your screen", it's quite often technically untrue. Lots of movies, even post-1953 ones, still fit on a regular, 1.33:1 TV screen without any real modification -- you're just seeing a lot more information on the top and bottom of the screen than patrons saw in the movie theatres and, admittedly, lots more information than the filmmakers ever intended you to see after 1953, since they knew those top and bottom portions would be matted off in the theatre.
So the Academy Standard really refers to what you are intended to see of a movie frame, not what actually fits into the entire frame of the raw film stock. Hence, DVD companies use 1954 as the threshold release year for when they letterbox or put an anamorphic 16:9 squeeze on the video release.
An exceptionally helpful reply -- thank you!
"All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."
As I type, GET-TV is showing IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU. Slighty letterboxed- inside a square windowbox- yet the image is still squeezed in on the sides!
On my old tv- ZOOM only makes the whole squeezed-in image bigger. On my newer digital widescreen one- it does stretch the image out to fill the screen
correctly.
Making me wonder- is this being shown from an unsqueezed,anamorphic DVD??
This is the only movie GET-TV has shown this way. Though earlier in the month they did mistakenly show several widescreen movies in pan and scan- and squeezed THAT images DOWN with letterbox bars on top and bottom! They looked a mess.
Do they not have someone human monitoring their broadcasts for such problems?
Questions?/Comments? * This Has Been e-mail From: Dr. Mark Hill * The Doctor
Of Pop Culture
As I type, GET-TV is showing IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU. Slighty letterboxed- inside a square windowbox- yet the image is still squeezed in on the sides!
On my old tv- ZOOM only makes the whole squeezed-in image bigger. On my newer digital widescreen one- it does stretch the image out to fill the screen
correctly.
Making me wonder- is this being shown from an unsqueezed,anamorphic DVD??
This is the only movie GET-TV has shown this way. Though earlier in the month they did mistakenly show several widescreen movies in pan and scan- and squeezed THAT images DOWN with letterbox bars on top and bottom! They looked a mess.
Do they not have someone human monitoring their broadcasts for such problems?
Questions?/Comments? * This Has Been e-mail From: Dr. Mark Hill * The Doctor
Of Pop Culture
The other answers below are more technical and are helpful in giving an overview, but for what it's worth, imdb lists ISHTY's aspect ratio as 1.85:1, so presumably that's how it was shot.
"All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."