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Info: What is "Widescreen" in movies all about? In these days of digital photography, many people have forgotten how film looks like - especially the popular 35 mm film. But I am going to share some info about how movies are created. Now-a-days, the movie world is also going digital. Tests have already been conducted to store all the movie electronically in digital format and beam down to theatres via Satellite. But I am digressing ...
About Film Movies
Films, i.e. movies have always had two formats - 35mm and 70mm. These dimensions are the diagonal width of the film. We will talk about 70mm later - for the present let us discuss the 35mm movies. The film width:height ratio is always 4:3 and actual width and height can be found out using the Pythagoras theorem and some algebraic equation.
Demand for Panorama
In the yesteryears, the film was shot by a 35mm camera and stored on a 35mm film. Not a problem for anybody. But while 35mm was OK for drama, it too constricting especially for films which were shot on outdoor locations where panoramic view added punch to the scene. It is virtually impossible to imagine a battle scene without a panoramic view.
So an attempt was made to make the film wider and that is how 70mm was born. In the 70mm film the height of each film shot remained the same but the width was roughly doubled to give a double diagonal width of 70mm. This allowed movies to be shot in panoramic or widescreen format.
70mm Problems
The 70mm movies created several problems especially on the cost front:
Hence something else had to be done.
- The cost of the raw film was 4-6 times as much (not just twice). This is the typical demand vs. supply and mass production situation.
- It was very difficult to achieve consistent Silver-Nitrite thickness and quality on a larger area.
- Special cameras were required to shoot such films. Super-Panavision 70 cameras were very expensive, few and difficult to buy/rent.
- And finally, the most important issue of all. Not all cinema halls had the projectors to handle the large format. Such projectors were very costly too. (That is the reason why some cinema halls proudly add 70mm as a suffix).
- Hence to break the cost and earn profits via distribution, the movie had to be made in 35mm and 70mm which sorted of defeated the purpose of panorama. (The movie Sholay was made in 35mm as well as 70mm. Only a select few theatres in India got to exhibit the 70mm print.)
Anamorphic Widescreen
You must have heard this term. You simply know it as Widescreen. In India we also call it as CinemaScope. You have experienced a widescreeen movie and heard the terms. But perhaps never bothered to know what it really means. Now WS is a standard. No movie is made in the original 4:3 format. LCD/Plasma screens are widescreen. Even PC monitors are widescreen. To most who know, widescreen simply means a width to height ratio of 16:9.
But that is just the display. What about the source.
Here is an interesting fact: Most WS movies are still created on a 35mm film. What makes this possible is an interesting piece of innovation. The most startling and spellbinding innovations are the simplest ones.
- The movie is now shot with a large format camera - it is not 35mm but a super panavision camera.
- The output of the camera is still a 4:3 frame but much larger in size.
- During the editing and canning process, a portion of the scene in widescreen format is marked for transfer to film.
- Prior to the digital revolution, the widescreen shot was optically compressed (sqeezed) width-wise (height remain the same), so that the final size was 4:3.
- In today's digital world optical+digital compression is used. Please do not confuse compression with compression technology such as JPEG, MPEG, MPEG-2, etc. That is totally different. Just imagine that you have a spone of the dimension 16:9 and you press it sidewise to make it 4:3.
- This compressed image is transferred to the film
- Because of horizontal compression, the compressed image is optically distorted. People/buildings/etc. become thinner and taller.
- During the projection process, a special lens is added in from of the projector that again stretches the film back to its original size.
- This process of film making is known as anamorphic widescreen.
Advantages of Anamorphic Widescreen
These are obvious. The producers use the same 35mm film. Using special cameras and optical squeezing the film is stored on the conventional 35mm film. The costs are kept down. The cinema house need to invest just on an add-on lens for the projector. Clearly a clever piece of innovation.
Various Widescreen formats
Traditional widescreen is standardized to 16:9 (or 1.77:1) but some movies make substantial alterations to this format. A WS format of 2.35:1 is now almost common for movies; to the point that it is becoming standard for movies. But movies like Ben Hur go way beyond to 2.70:1.
Some visual examples ...
If you see a full-frame 4:3 movie (oldies) or a program on TV, your screen shot will look like this:
5.jpg
When the movie is shot, it is still shot in full frame (4:3) as shown above. During the editing/canning/transfer process, a widescreen portion is marked out first.
6.jpg
What I have shown above is not exactly correct. The marked portion is exactly in the center. But I have shown to give a better panorama.
The picture is then cut out, squeezed optically (and digitally) and transferred to film. If you see the print as is, the picture will look like this:
7.jpg
As you can clearly see, the image is distorted. All objects appear thinner and taller. This is known as anamorphic widescreen.
But when the image is projected on screen after the anamorphic widescreen correcting lens, it looks and projects like this:
8.jpg
The above will look perfect on you widescreen televisions also because the image size is true 16:9.
Super Panavision or 2.70:1
In case of super widescreen movies such as Ben Hur, the effect is even more dramatic. However please note certain subtle differences:
If the following stills belonged to Ben Hur, they would have been shot and transformed as shown. Note how dramatic the transformation appears:
- Ben Hur was indeed shot in Super Panavision 70 cameras and created in 70mm.
- The same technique of anamorphic widescreen was applied to the film but to 70mm media.
1. The original shot
1.jpg
2. The cut out
2.jpg
3. The Anamorphic Widescreen Transformation
3.jpg
4. How it would appear on screen
4.jpg
Please comment on this article whether this was of any use to you. Thanks.
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Originally Posted by powerdoc 
