Distortion of old footage

Must have been your TV station / movie distributor. Here on German TV, it was shown properly (with black bars on the sides for old footage).

I saw it in a theater and it was present there too. There's one terrible shot in particular of Clinton, Arafat, Rabin etc. walking together and they all looked short and fat(ter). Kind of distracting.

I was going to start a thread on this topic myself; thanks, Vashbul, for doing it first. Your phrase "a shabby way to treat the camera work of others" captures the situation perfectly.

I think your reference to the stretching-out of the old 1.33:1-aspect-ratio footage (not "1:1.33", by the way) as a "rookie error" is arguably being too kind. I think that, more and more these days, people take the attitude that stretching 1.33:1 footage out to 1.78:1, or 1.85:1, or whatever, is in some absolute sense the correct way to show it, and that "the reason the old films and videos look funny is that the people of the past weren't as technologically advanced as we are". Uh, no, the reason those old films and videos look funny is that the television and movie documentary producers of the present are being dopes. It's rather similar to the way most people assume that the speeded-up look of old silent-film-era documentary footage is the result of a technological deficiency, whereas in reality it's the result of the failure of modern-day individuals to transfer that old film footage to modern video or film at the correct frame rate.

(Note that I've restricted my above remarks about frame rate to the case of documentary footage. In the case of fiction filmmaking of the silent era, it's been established by film historians that the speeding-up of motion in a film is arguably not always inauthentic, particularly for the later part of the silent era. Even though the speeding-up mostly originated as an abusive practice by theater owners trying to squeeze in more film showings per day and/or trying to maintain an inflexible scheme of film starting times, eventually it came to be regarded by filmmakers as something that could be used selectively--though in practice quite extensively--as an aesthetic gesture, a gesture manipulable by deliberate "undercranking" of the camera during filming and/or by the provision of detailed projection speed instruction sheets to projectionists.)

(And yes, I realize that frame rate conversion from silent film to modern video or film can result in distracting motion artifacts. But those artifacts are preferable to incorrect speed as far as I'm concerned; and furthermore such artifacts can now be smoothed out with digital image processing using frame-interpolation technology, producing a semi-synthesized end product that nevertheless is even closer to truthfulness than the correct-speed-but-with-motion-artifacts option.)

i noticed that myself regarding that aspect ratio, but I think it was to ensure that there wouldn't be any unexpected "black bars" to confuse the audience. Most audience members probably aren't too familiar with the "widescreen" vs. the 4:3 aspect ratio and having unexpected cropping of the picture would probably confuse some folks in the theater.

I just saw it on swedish TV and it was stretched. What the heck is wrong with todays broadcast engineers? Don't they have eyes to see with? I'm currently re-watching Morse episodes which are treated the same way, but can fix it manually with the TV settings. It's like there's a new generation who's never seen 4:3 format before and wonder why cameras in the past added 50 pounds instead of todays 10 pounds. What is happening to humanity? It keeps getting more and more stupid.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe..." - Roy Batty, Blade Runner