I got bored today and didn't want to work.....so I put together this quick little essay. NOTE: The matting demonstrations are not to scale. I did them uber quick, but they are to demonstrate an idea.
Framing It Out: A New Essay on the Aspect Ratio of Disney Films
By Aaron Willcott
Every story has a beginning, and it is only right to start there. Only 5 years after the first flexible film was invented, a standard would be created that is still used today. In 1892, 35mm film was introduced to the budding movie industry (if you could call it an industry at that time). It was called ‘35mm film’ because the width of the film was actually 35mm. This 35mm film ran on sprockets through a projector and showed the world some of its first moving images on screen. Each frame captured on the 35mm film was 22mm wide and 16mm tall, or more commonly seen printed in a ratio called 1.37:1…the original aspect ratio of mainstream cinema!
For almost 50 years, this 1.37:1 film ratio would be the mainstay in motion picture making. As technology improved the cameras were able to show longer films and tint them with color, but it was still almost all done on 35mm film. In 1927, synchronized sound found its way onto the scene with “The Jazz Singer”, and like wildfire spread throughout the world. These sound films caused the first mainstream changes in any aspect ratio.
The sound track to these new “talkies” was put on the same 35mm film as the 1.37:1 framed image. In order to make room for the sound track, part of the side of the image was lost. Each film frame was now only 21mm wide but it was still 16mm tall. For almost 5 years this new aspect ratio of 1.33:1 became the way that films were recorded and projected.
In 1932, in order to restore a more rectangular image ratio back on the screens, the picture was shrunk slightly vertically, by thickening the line between the film frames. With this new (altered) 35mm film, the sizes of each film frame were now 21mm wide and 15.33mm tall. This restored the aspect ratio of movies back to the classic 1.37:1 aspect ratio, and the term “Academy Ratio” was introduced (so named for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences formed in 1927).
Up until the 1950s, this “Academy Ratio” would be how almost all movies were filmed and projected in theatres. This included the feature films of the young Walt Disney Studios. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, “Victory Through Air Power”, “Saludos Amigos”, and “Cinderella” to name a few, were all filmed and originally shown in this “Academy Ratio” on 35mm film.
By the 1950s, televisions were showing up in households and people stopped going to the theatre to get their motion picture entertainment. Why pay to go to the movies when you could watch the same thing at home? In an effort to draw people back to the theatre, Hollywood started to popularize widescreen movies as an experience you couldn’t get with your television set. By widening the movie theatre screen, the audience could experience more of the environment the story was taking place in.
There were several camera developments that had been in the works since the 1920s. Films like “The Big Trail” (1930) and “Kismet” (1930) were early experiments in widescreen. But with the renewed fervor to get patrons back in the theatre, processes like Cinemascope were developed to allow any theatre the ability to show widescreen films.
Cinemascope was a process whereby an image was photographed onto 35mm film. The frame on the film was still in a 1.37:1 ratio, however, the image went through a lens before it was captured on the film frame such that the image was stretched vertically and filled the entire 21mm by 15.33mm film frame.
The same projector that has been showing 1.37:1 “Academy Ratio” films for years could now project widescreen films in an effort to increase revenue at the box office! Theatres all over the country, now, could give audiences widescreen pictures without having to go out and buy special projectors for their movie houses. However in order to fix this ‘squeezed’ image, the theatre projector needed to project the film through a special lens to widen out the image to its normal shape.
This process of ‘squeezing’ or morphing images onto film became known as ‘anamorphic’ filming. One of the first feature films to utilize this Cinemascope process was Walt Disney’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (1954). Always leading the wave, Walt Disney used Cinemascope on several films in the early days of the process including “The Great Locomotive Chase” (1956), “Lady and the Tramp” (1955), and “Westward Ho the Wagons!” (1956)
The Cinemascope process was an expensive one for the movie companies, though, and it was inevitable that a ‘scotch-tape-and-scissors’ method of making movies widescreen would surface. In 1953 George Stevens’ “Shane” was shot in “Academy Ratio” 1.37:1 format. The director framed the film in such a way as to achieve the highest drama and action using the full frame image. Paramount, however, wanted to release a widescreen movie to theatres.
The result was to have an attachment put on the projector that would ‘matte’, or cover-up, portions of the film on the top and bottom. When projected this way, the image appeared widescreen.
“Shane” was full of far away shots, and so Paramount thought that it could get away with this new matting process by changing the aspect ratio from the original 1.37:1 ratio to a widescreen 1.66:1 ratio. Not much could be lost in a cropping like that, and it would allow Paramount to market the film as a widescreen picture (to get more people out of the house and back in the theatre).
Soon all the major motion picture studios were doing the same thing. While Walt Disney was pioneering the Cinemascope process, he was also making ‘matted’ films. It became common practice to film a picture in “Academy Ratio”, but frame it for a widescreen presentation. The trailers would even promote the film as a widescreen picture…something you couldn’t see at home.
This is how movies were made. They were either filmed in anamorphic widescreen (with ‘morphing’ lenses), or they were filmed in “Academy Ratio” and matted for a widescreen release. Several extremely expensive processes were tested on some pictures. Some required special projectors because they weren’t using 35mm film. Some required multiple cameras to show a super wide image. For most of the Disney films from the mid 1950s on, however, this is how films were made.
Enter the 1980s and the home video market. In 1980, the Walt Disney Company released its first home video VHS cassettes. Televisions were still framed in a 1.33:1 ratio, and luckily for most of the Disney films there was an ‘unmorphed’ image pretty close to that ratio on most of their films. Most of the VHS released were prints of Disney movies that were made from the 35mm film WITHOUT any matting from the projector aperture. This allowed extra space to be shown on the tops and bottoms of films for the first time! Never before had the spaces above and below the camera aperture been seen by home audiences.
Now the film has been shown in two ways: 1) in the theatre shown in a specific widescreen aspect ratio. This ratio was framed by the director, and theatre owners were expressly told on how the film should be matted and displayed. 2) On your home television set with never before seen image outside the framing of the director’s film. Which becomes the ratio that Disney should distribute their films then? Should they release the films exclusively in their original theatrical aspect ratios regardless of previous loved releases and fondly remembered scenes? Or should they release the films in their original home video formats with opened up scenes and lose whatever impact the director intended for certain scenes?
In a day and age where we are receiving several cuts of a film (i.e. a director’s cut, and unedited cut, a producer’s cut, a European cut, and a theatrical cut), there is more and more discussion about which is the ‘true’ form of the film. Which is the ‘canon’, ‘pure’, or ‘right’ way to watch these movies? Perhaps the answer is all of the above. Maybe there is more than one form to film. Maybe it evolves over time. And maybe people will differ in their opinions on what they want.
The solution to this, then, is to make it ALL available. Please ALL of the audiences. By doing so, you endear the largest of groups and the richest of fans. You let the audience enjoy a film even more because they get to see it the way they like it. Let the audience decide which way is the right way to watch the film. So long as the film-maker gets to say, “this is how I want you to see it,” let the audience take the art and make it their own. After all storytelling has been going on for years, no matter how you frame the yarn.
