Widescreen

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The inner box (green) is the format used in most pre-1952 films and pre-widescreen television. The two other boxes show widescreen aspect ratios commonly used in the cinema.

A widescreen image is a film, computer, or television image with a wider aspect ratio than the standard Academy frame developed during the classical Hollywood cinema era. Silent film was projected at a ratio of four units wide to three units tall, often expressed as 4:3 or 1.33:1. The addition of sound caused the frame dimensions to standardize by 1932 to Academy framing, which is actually 1.37 but often erroneously called 1.33.

Widescreen was first widely used in the late 1920s in some shorts and newsreels, including Fox Grandeur News and Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, both released on May 26, 1929 in New York City in the Fox Grandeur process. Other films shown in widescreen were the musical Happy Days (1929) which premiered at the Roxy Theater, N.Y.C., on February 13, 1930, starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell and a 13 year old Betty Grable as a chorus girl, and the western The Big Trail (1930) starring John Wayne and Tyrone Power, Sr. which premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on October 2, 1930^[1], both of which were also made in the 70mm Fox Grandeur process. RKO released Danger Lights with Jean Arthur, Louis Wolheim, and Robert Armstrong on August 21, 1930 in a 65mm widescreen process known as NaturalVision, invented by film pioneer George K. Spoor. United Artists released The Bat Whispers directed by Roland West on November 13, 1930 in a 70mm widescreen process known as Magnifilm.

By 1932, the Depression had forced studios to cut back on needless expense and it wasn't until the 1950s that wider aspect ratios were again used in a vain attempt to stop the fall in attendance due, partially, to the emergence of television in the U.S.

[edit] Widescreen methods

Note that aspect ratio refers here to the projected image, which may be different to the image that was initially recorded. There are various methods of producing a widescreen image of any given proportion. These are listed below in the order of popularity in the shooting of films for presentation in a theater.

1. Masked. The film is shot in the standard ratio, but the top and bottom of the picture are hidden or masked off by the aperture plate in the projector. Alternatively, a hard matte in the camera may be used to mask off those areas while filming. The picture quality is reduced because only part of the image is being expanded to full height. Sometimes films are designed to be shown in cinemas in masked widescreen format but the full unmasked frame is used for television.
2. Anamorphic. As used by CinemaScope, Panavision and others, anamorphic camera lenses compress the image horizontally so that it fits a standard frame, and anamorphic projection lenses restore the image and spread it over the wide screen. The picture quality is at maximum because this method both uses more of the negative frame than any other traditional 35 mm film process, optically compresses twice the image width, and does not require an intermediate conversion stage.
3. Super gauges. The full negative frame, including the area traditionally reserved for the sound track, is filmed using a wider gate. The print is then shrunk and/or cropped in order to fit it back onto release prints. The aspect ratio for Super 35, for example, can be set to virtually any projectable standard.
4. Large gauge. A 70 mm film frame is not only twice as wide as a standard frame but also has greater height. Shooting and projecting a film in 70 mm therefore gives more than twice the image area of non-anamorphic 35 mm film with no loss of quality. Few major dramatic narrative films have been filmed entirely on this format in the past two decades; the two most recent are Ron Howard's Far and Away and Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. Big release-films used to sometimes strike 70 mm "roadshow" prints from 35 mm masters in order to capitalize on the extra sound channels provided. The introduction of digital sound systems and diminishing number of installed 70 mm projectors has made a 70 mm release largely obsolete. However, blowups from 35 mm formats to IMAX has recently become popular for a limited number of blockbuster films. Paramount's VistaVision was a larger gauge precursor to 70 mm film; it ran standard 35 mm film through the camera horizontally to achieve a widescreen effect using greater negative area (though it was almost always optically blown down to regular 35 mm vertical prints). VistaVision is still sometimes used for shooting special effects, and is notable for its use in Lucasfilm's original three Star Wars films, among others.
5. Multiple cameras/projectors. The Cinerama system originally involved shooting with three synchronized cameras locked together side by side, and projecting the three resulting films on a curved screen with three synchronized projectors. Later Cinerama movies were shot in 70 mm anamorphic (see below), and the resultant widescreen image was divided into three by optical printers to produce the final threefold prints. The technical drawbacks of Cinerama are discussed in its own article. Only one feature film, How the West Was Won was shot in "pure," three-camera Cinerama. With the exception of a few films created sporadically for use in specialty Cinerama theaters, the format is essentially dead. A non-Cinerama, three-projector process was famously pioneered for the final reel of Abel Gance's 1927 epic, Napoléon. Consisting of three 1.33 images side by side, the total aspect ratio of the image is 4:1. The technical difficulties in mounting a full screening of the film, however, make most theaters unwilling or unable to show it properly. Between 1956 and 1957 the Soviets developed Kinopanorama, which is identical in most respects to the original three-camera Cinerama.
6. 70 mm anamorphic. 70 mm with anamorphic lenses, popularly known as "Ultra Panavision" or "MGM Camera 65", creates an even wider high-quality picture. This camera process was most famously used in the 1959 version of Ben-Hur, resulting in an aspect ratio of 2.76:1, one of the widest prints ever used for a feature film. 70 mm anamorphic was not commonly used, due to the very high production costs, although it was favored for epic films such as Ben-Hur in order to capture wide panoramic landscapes and high-budget scenes with thousands of extras and enormous sets. This system is basically obsolete, although it would likely be technically easy to revive.

[edit] Comparison of Flat, Anamorphic, and Super 35 systems

"Flat" refers to non-anamorphic films shot with a standard 35 mm gate. 1.85 and 1.66 tend to be its most common ratios.

[edit] Flat

[edit] Pros

1. More compact visuals
2. Sometimes better for films with many interior compositions
3. Better depth of field than anamorphic
4. More vertical format; better for taller composition
5. Simplest system technically and most standardized; therefore has the most equipment at its disposal
6. Equipment is less expensive and thus better for stunt cameras
7. Easier to "protect" for video

[edit] Cons

1. Inefficient use of negative space; anamorphic uses 59% more than 1.85, for example.
2. More visible set ceilings (or lack thereof)
3. Grainier opticals
4. Greater magnification than anamorphic and more noticeable projector movement
5. Incompatible with 70 mm blow-up

[edit] Anamorphic

[edit] Pros

1. Larger negative area lowers grain, improves opticals, and increases sharpness
2. More interesting compositions possible
3. Preferred by big action, event, or epic films
4. Closest to normal human field of vision
5. Less vertical set design needed
6. Highest resolution format; still far ahead of HDTV
7. Most compatible with 70 mm blowup

[edit] Cons

1. Format most hurt by pan-and-scan conversion for television
2. Close-ups on a single person leave wide areas of the frame open
3. More action to block out within a wider frame; more extras and/or set design may be needed
4. Too expensive to use with a stunt camera

[edit] Super 35

[edit] Pros

1. Better depth of field than anamorphic
2. Final ratio can be changed between anamorphic and flat later in post-production, if the frame has been adequately protected
3. Smaller lenses than anamorphic allow the camera to go to tighter places with less weight

[edit] Cons

1. When used for 2.39:1 aspect ratio, has the smallest negative area of any 35 mm format, which makes for more grain and magnification
2. Grainier image
3. Requires an extra intermediate step of printing in the lab
4. Prints cannot be struck from the original negative
5. Full aperture can make dailies difficult to properly project
6. Grain from the smaller negative must be countered with either slower film stock or overexposure of faster stock
7. Pan-and-scan from a small negative magnifies grain
8. The need to shoot a film for varying aspect ratios (2.39:1, 1.85:1, or 1.33:1) can and often does compromise shot composition
9. When originally used for 2.39:1 aspect ratio, creates burdens and confusion among consumers when it comes to purchasing decisions between the widescreen and pan and scan versions if they are sold separately

[edit] Widescreen TV and computer displays

Conan O' Brien poking fun at his show's then new HDTV widescreen format.

Historically, consumer TVs have been 4:3 and since many U.S. TV viewers seem to prefer to see a TV screen completely filled with image, U.S. television networks often show widescreen movies with the sides truncated, using a technique called pan and scan. Because of this truncation, part of the image is concealed. While many film viewers consider this a great loss, this has not always been the case; the original standard aspect ratio for films was 4:3 (which is why television sets were originally built to that specification), and the switch to a wider format was met with some resistance within the film industry. Today, however, it is solidly the norm.

In Europe, the PAL TV format with its higher number of visible screen lines (576 vs. 483 for U.S. NTSC) means that the low vertical resolution associated with showing uncropped widescreen movies on TV is not as bad, which has resulted in most European television networks showing widescreen movies uncropped, and in the general unavailability of cropped "fullscreen" DVDs of widescreen movies in the European DVD market. There is even an extension to PAL, called PALplus, which allows specially equipped receivers to receive a PAL picture as true 16:9 with full 576 lines of vertical resolution, provided the stations employ the same system. Standard PAL receivers will receive such a broadcast as a 16:9 image letterboxed to 4:3, with a small amount of color noise in the black bars; this "noise" is actually the additional lines which are hidden inside the color signal. This system has no equivalent in analog, NTSC broadcasting. Despite the existence of PALplus and support for widescreen in the DVB-based digital satellite, terrestrial and cable broadcasts in use across Europe, only the UK, Ireland and Belgium have taken up widescreen at any great rate, with over half of all Widescreen channels available by satellite in Europe targeting those two countries.

An 82 cm/32-in, CRT, widescreen television monitor, with BBC News 24's 4:3-visible DOG

The past two years have seen a rapid growth in the number of 16:9 TV monitors. These are typically used in conjunction with digital, high-definition television (HDTV) receivers, or standard-definition (SD) DVD players and other digital television sources. Digital material is provided to widescreen TVs either in high-definition format, which is natively 16:9 (1.78:1), or as an anamorphically compressed standard-definition picture. Typically, devices decoding digital standard-definition pictures can be programmed to provide anamorphic widescreen formatting, for 16:9 sets, or letterbox and pan-and-scan formatting for 4:3 sets; however the pan-and-scan mode can only be used if the producers of the material have included the necessary panning data. If this data is absent, letterboxing or centre cut-out will be used instead.

HD DVD and Sony Blu-ray disc players are going to reach the U.S. market in 2006. This may stimulate the sales of HD pre-recorded films on disc, and more HD monitors and tuners. Consumer camcorders are also available on HD-video format at fairly low prices. These developments will result in more options for viewing widescreen images on television monitors.

"Widescreen" can also refer to computer displays, which can be used to view widescreen movies, among other things. Widescreen computer displays are typically of the 1.6 (8:5, typically written as 16:10) aspect ratio.

This page viewed from a widescreen monitor.

Widescreen computer displays.

[edit] Criticism of widescreen

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Comparison of three common aspect ratios constrained by the screen diagonal size (the black circle). The smaller box (blue) and middle box (green) are common formats for cinematography today. The largest box (red) is the format used in the cinema and television before the development of widescreen.

One rationale for widescreen is that, since the human eye has a field of view that extends farther to the sides than it does above or below, a widescreen image makes more effective use of the field of view, thereby producing a more immersive viewing experience. Critics of widescreen point out that the human field of vision, based upon the angular ratio of our fields of view (180 degrees horizontal, 135 degrees vertical), is in fact closer to the older ratio of 4 to 3, and not widescreen ratios such as 16:9 or 2.35:1^{[citation needed]}. Consequently, large-format technologies like IMAX favor a 4:3 format^{[citation needed]}.

One can further criticize the superiority of widescreen by calculating the area of different aspect ratios that have been constrained by the size of the diagonal and not the vertical.

That is, if you compare rectangular shapes with the same diagonal size, the aspect ratio of 1:1 will have the largest screen area. In more practical terms, a typical 100" diagonal projector screen in 4:3 format is measured 60" by 80". The same 100" diagonal screen in 16:9 format is 7" wider, but 12" shorter which results in a 15% smaller viewing area.

This kind of criticism is often countered by noting that widescreen is not about image area (maximal area for a certain diagonal length would actually be a square) but about compositionality: A widescreen image is said to be better suited for displaying many real-life scenery, such as outdoor landscapes, while a 4:3-screen can feel too narrow for this.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Magnified Grandeur - The Big Screen 1926-31, David Coles, 2001.

[edit] See also

• 14:9
• Active Format Descriptor (AFD)
• Anamorphic widescreen
• Aspect ratio (image)
• Cine 160
• Full frame
• Full screen
• IMAX
• Letterbox
• List of common resolutions
• List of film formats
• Motion picture terminology
• Open matte
• Pan and scan
• Widescreen display modes
• Widescreen signaling (WSS)

[edit] External links

• The American Widescreen Museum
• What is Widescreen?
• Why Widescreen?
• The Widescreen and Letterbox Advocacy Page
• Widescreen Resources & Information