DVDizzy Forum

I read somewhere that instead of doing Pan and Scan, Pixar actually rearranges characters in shots so they will fit in the 4x3 frame. I noticed this when I watched the Incredibles in widescreen at home and then fullscreen at school

Is there any truth to this?

Since the master for a computer animated film is in a computer and not something commited to film, the filmmakers can go back to the film before a DVD release and reframe any scenes where characters might be on the outer portions of the frame. For instance, if Woody and Buzz are standing on opposite sides of the movie screen they would be cut off on a full screen TV presentation, so they go in on the computer and slide the two characters towards the middle of the screen without really compromising the film as a whole.

I belive the 2003 DVD release of A BUGS LIFE was the first to do this, and there is a bonus feature about it on the disc.

Thanks!

Has Pixar actually done any repositioning of characters and elements since <i>A Bug's Life</i>? I figure 1.33:1 framing of <i>Cars</i> and <i>The Incredibles</i> would suffer the most, so perhaps things were reworked for those, but for the 1.85:1 films, I think they've mainly just opened up mattes to reveal more in the vertical.

I actually saw Cars fullscreen at Wal Mart a few days ago on one of their TV's and it actually adds more screen to the top and bottom. However, the widescreen is still the way to go.

Cheers,
JM

I have both editions of The Incredibles and it didn't look at all to me like they did anything to it, It just looked like they cut off a little on the sides and "squished" the picture a little to be able to show more on the screen.

In some scenes it was really obvious when something that was supposed to be round was on screen it looked squished and oval shaped and the whole movie just looked akward. Infact, It actually looks closer to the correct dimensions when stretched out on a widescreen TV.

I figured they just went cheap for this release and decided to do it this way because most of the fullscreen loving public that would be buying it probably wouldnt notice nor care as long as it fit the screen, the whole reason i bought it was because they decided not to include both versions on the same set and I liked having them both because its always interesting to see the two versions to see the difference between them, but now that i've seen how crappy the fullscreen version was and since i now have a widescreen TV i will just be getting widescreen from now on.

They don't animate a fullscreen picture. They do it in widescreen. On the Finding Nemo dvd, they tell us that they took the real, widescreen version of the movie and just animated small strips for the top and bottom, so that it will cover an entire, antique tv screen. But this will look completely silly when everyone gets a widescreen tv. Instead of having bars on the top and bottom as you get on a regular tv, if you watch a 4:3 movie/show on a widescreen set, you'll get the bars on the sides.