*Awards TonyWDA the
Dethie Medal of Honor
Years go by and we're still discussing this?
I guess this bear's worth repeating.
Disney theatrical films after Lady And The Tramp in 1956 were
made composed for the widescreen ratio, BECAUSE theaters went Widescreen in the
mid fifties to entice people away from watching 1.33 black and white TV. (You'll also notice Hollywood practically stopped making movies in b & w, and began using multichannel stereophonic sound, like Mary Poppins, for the same reason). Disney just kept shooting their animations with the Disney's Sequential Technicolor 1.375 aperture camera, as they had one and it was a very special camera!
It's been 50 years that Hollywwod went away from Academy, people.
A film shot in a 1.375 aperture camera CAN be composed for Widescreen theaters and PROTECTED for 1.375 , but it
CAN NOT be composed for 1.375 and PROTECTED for Widescreen theaters, which is their MAIN INTENDED EXHIBITION. (They are theatrical films, no?). Heads would be cropped on the theater. Sometimes horribly.
Again.
It's been 50 years that Hollywwod went away from Academy, people.
Another thing, some of you crop from 1.33, but DVDs are not 1.33 they are slightly wider so if you crop 1.75 from a computer 1.33 sized capture, you start by incurring in a slight error. 1.66 crop is actually 1.70, 1.75 one is actually 1.79, and 1.85 one is 1.90. On top of that NTSC 480 pixel mpeg-2 DVDs are made from NTSC 486 scanning lines masters so the height has been cropped 6 pixels (unevenly at that, 4/2), and you have to take that into account when positioning the center or the height of the cropping area. Related to that, what makes you think the matte crop in the film negative/print was
exactly in the center? It should be, but not necessarily. That's why projectionist have
frame knobs in their projectors.. They can frame up and down slightly for the specific movie. Vertical framing should be standardized on the center but sometimes it isn't, specially with European 1.66 screens showing 12% more height than USA 1.85 screens:
Also: What makes you think your 4:3 DVD or VHS is showing you 100% of the Academy Sequential 1.375 area, and you can crop 1.66 out of it with the full width? You may think your 4:3 version is showing the full 1.375 area but it may not! Many shots and transfers are zoomed in, because either the movie was shot in open matte Widescreen and the telecine operator is trying to get some of the close-ups and intimacy back, or to try to get enough detail in a NTSC video by enlarging (zooming in) the image slightly. Remember, even letterboxed widescreen transfers have been sometimes over-zoomed, not showing 100% (old Ben Hur DVD and Sleeping Beauty are about 12% zoomed). And many times it's not centered!
Here. Compare 4:3 areas of Sleeping Beauty 4:3 VHS (yellow) vs Sleeping Beauty 4:3 DVD (red). You think that doesn't happen on true Academy 1.375 movie transfers, or in 4:3 Open matte Widescreen movie transfers too, which have much more leeway and lots of non intended to be seen empty areas??
<img src="
http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/6161 ... hedyz3.jpg" height=380 length=20>
(by the way the green is what the 16:9 DVD shows. (which, appart from the missing yellow area height, it might also be missing a few % of the image at the sides. I'd calculate, maybe 5% of the width)
Well anyway, with Blu-ray and 16:9 displays, hopefully we'll get proper
original theatrical aspect ratio versions of this movies.
I have 12 Disney Blu-rays and I''m loving it, and can't wait (however long it takes) to get these on them in 1080 x 1920.
.
