[versions] Why SO many versions? (aspect ratios, colors, HDR, sound...)

[deleted user]

@crumpled666

I don't understand the slavish adhesion to the idea of scope being "cinematic" either. It's like with 24 images per second. All these things were probably simply technically convenient once upon a time and then they become a religion.

With that said, I'm all for the artist having the choice, just like a painter would choose the proper canvas.

One thing that speaks for anamorphic prints is that they tend to maximize the amount of sharpness the film has to offer. 1,78:1 prints and similar have less resolution typically compared to a scope print, unless you watch them open matte.

Why did they film more than they needed? Well, you gave one answer yourself - so it could be formatted for TV. It's a practical consideration. I speculate that another reason might be that scope lenses are much more expensive than normal ones. Plus, if your intended ratio is 1,78:1, then you really have no choice but to waste some space. Sometimes they matte out that additional image right in the camera, other times they leave it in. Ultimately it doesn't matter that much since it would be matted out in cinemas anyway during projection.

One more thing about the "religion" aspect of it - you rightly (or not?) said that you get more image with an Open Matte. Yet many years ago, when all displays switched from 4:3 to 16:9, there was massive propaganda being put absolutely everywhere for "WIDESCREEN". Remember those ads where they would show you a tiny 4:3 image and then they would show you how it "opens up" towards the sides? It's a trick on the mind. The irony is, you're both right and wrong at the same time. What constitutes "more image" is completely relative. If a film is shot in 16:9 and cropped for 4:3, yeah you're losing image. But if it's shot in 4:3 and cropped for 16:9, you're also losing image. But in practical terms, for computer displays, I'd actually argue 4:3 is much more useful.

I've speculated or read speculations that they switched to "WIDESCREEN" because when they sell a 19" display for instance, that ends up being less area in 16:9 than in 4:3, since the 19" describe the diagonal length. The bigger the difference between the sides while keeping the same diagonal length, the less area. Think of the extreme, where an image would be roughly 19" wide but only 1 pixel high. It would have almost no area at all, yet technically qualify as a 19" display.

So someone used to paying a lot for a 19" display will suddenly see a 19" widescreen display for a good price and think he's getting a good deal when he's really not.

[MrBrown]

As someone who works on computer as software developer everyday, I disagree with 4:3 being better.
I prefer the Widescreen AR, because I can put two working areas next to each other that won't really feel right on a 4:3 screen. So I can have my working tool and a notepad next to it with informations and such.

[deleted user]

As someone who works on computer as software developer everyday, I disagree with 4:3 being better.
I prefer the Widescreen AR, because I can put two working areas next to each other that won't really feel right on a 4:3 screen. So I can have my working tool and a notepad next to it with informations and such.

Have you tried it on a 4:3? I thought about trying it but I couldn't actually find a display with a decent resolution. It's all around 1280x1024 iirc, so rather inadequate. But if updated with a nice modern resolution I think it could be great.

Wider screen you can see long lines of code, but with a high display you could see more of the vertical span and more of the logic, I think that could be quite nice. About two working areas, not sure what you mean exactly, but for serious programming I think having two displays is kind of a must have anyway.

[Lio]

Why do you say anamorphic lenses are ideal compared to cropped Super 35 or say Techniscope? Anamorphic widescreen was invented to combat television, getting audiences into the theater to see this wide screen. If audiences really want 2.35 does it matter if it's anamorphic? And again, what's up with movies Still being in scope? Is it just because they're movies and that's how they're distinct compared to TV?

For practical purposes, Super 35 ends up being used because it's cheaper/easier/faster to set up (time is money). But anamorphic has a larger print area so it grabs more real detail than Super 35 would, especially in outdoor naturally-lit scenes. The Super 35 would in place of this detail have grain. This weakness becomes more apparent when you're cutting out a lot of the Super 35's information and magnifying what you want in the 2:35 crop.

Why do they crop it in the first place, you ask. The whole point of using Super 35 is that different extracts can be taken from it without looking like information is missing in whatever AR you make of it. The 2:35 theater appearance is the #1 priority for everyone, so they will take that more seriously than the DVD pan-and-scan or HDTV 1.85, but in order to help with that flexibility you make the compositional choice to keep the stars in the center-top of the frame. You are shooting for flexibility, not objectivity. What you see on a virgin Super 35 frame is not at all what the movie is supposed to really look like. The "real" framing of the movie comes only in Avid or whatever when they're cropping the movie -- usually to 2:35. If you were to watch a movie in the uncropped super 35 frame size, you'd be staring at the very top of your TV screen a lot (instead of the center, where the action usually should be) because they're putting way more crap at the bottom of the frame than they need to, as protection for when the framing is squashed and stretched for different distribution outlets.

You bring up how widescreen cameras like Panavision once contrasted the narrow frame of TV sets. It's funny how IMAX now sort of tries to match the full 16:9 image you can get on TV. Also, lots of demographics probably feel like TV shows have outpaced blockbusters in writing and equaled them in production quality -- plus these shows have more image on the top and bottom so another advantage is that it literally looks bigger than the latest Hollywood CGI slop (unless you're paying extra for that Liemax showing). For those reasons you gotta wonder whether studios sooner or later will let up on the 2:35 mandate, especially since the fading relevance of the "theater experience" has been catalyzed this year.

In short if you had plenty of time and plenty of money to shoot, and were only thinking about the normal theater AR, then I think the DP would like to stage things across the full berth of the frame and really compose things in a way that makes the scenery look vast, instead of keeping everything interesting sort of planted at the center. But what do I know, maybe that technique in general is sort of old-fashioned.

I remember there was some online resistant against Joss Whedon shooting The Avengers in 1.85. Why though? You get more picture.

Because it's not television. People above me call it a religion but convention is a fairer word. Just as there are certain cosmetic conventions which the publishing industry follows between hardback and paperback books, there are cosmetic rules which movie studios feel should be followed between blockbusters and TV shows. Whedon is a TV director and I guess that's what he and his team were most familiar dealing with, and apparently he lobbied Marvel enough to get it theatrically released in that ratio. I guess people felt like there are certain framing conventions you expect from a blockbuster as opposed to a movie-of-the-week.

So what's with all the debate around sound and if it's 4 channels or 6 channels or 5.1...?

Sometimes blowing up an older movie's mix to more channels can result in phasing issues, especially if the original mix was mono. That's a practical issue. A preservation issue is that often the original mix is left off of new releases like it never existed. It'd be like if they colorized a black and white film and then threw the B&W version deep in a vault somewhere, never to be seen again. You'd only have the revisionist color version, which obviously doesn't represent the film as it was when it was created, and doesn't represent how the director and the DP and the set designer etc. did their jobs -- it's a disservice to both the history and the art of cinema to pretend the original has been supplanted just because we can make it look or sound newer. And if they're going in and actually changing the sound effects or music around then that's even worse.

[spoRv]

We all also forgot the most important thing: human sights is frontal and mostly horizontal, hence the wide screen is the best to "fullfil" our view. 16:9 was only a compromise between cinematic ratio (mostly 2.35:1) and old television (1.33:1) - I also bet because at the time CRT were impossible to produce in 2.35:1 ratio... lately, we got few examples of HDTV in 21:1 - mainly Philips with its Cinema line, and Vizio IIRC - and still today we have 21:9 monitors.

[MrBrown]

We all also forgot the most important thing: human sights is frontal and mostly horizontal, hence the wide screen is the best to "fullfil" our view. 16:9 was only a compromise between cinematic ratio (mostly 2.35:1) and old television (1.33:1) - I also bet because at the time CRT were impossible to produce in 2.35:1 ratio... lately, we got few examples of HDTV in 21:1 - mainly Philips with its Cinema line, and Vizio IIRC - and still today we have 21:9 monitors.

Yeah, I do not need my Screens in more height as they are, because I more look to the left and the right, than looking up.

@TomArrow: My First computer had a 4:3 screen, back when I was in school more than 30 years ago.
You might be right with the "profit" point of view: With the same diagonal number you have a slightly bigger screen on 4:3, but till the wider screen is easier to use for working.
I have two screens on my Computer, and IF I would prfer a more vertical working space, I could put them that way, but I prefer the more wider working space. Software should not be programmed in classical long sequences of programm, but should be divided in smaller chuncs of pieces, that can be put togethzer, reused, and such, so in an optimal development world, you won't need a vertically large screen to see much lines of coding. (As working in ABAP, the language on SAP systems, I can tell you the world is not optimal, but still a 4:3 AR brings no real benefit.) I had a working desk some month ago, before home office was used, because of corona, that still had one 4:3 screen, and that AR was just disturbing. With 4:3 Display I really NEEDED the 2nd Display, while using widescreen now in home office, I am happy using just one display for work. (Even if I sometimes use the 2nd, when I really need 3 or 4 Tools next to each other.)

[deleted user]

@MrBrown Maybe you're right. I didn't actually try it. But if I ever do, I'll be sure to give my proper opinion on it as well.

Just quickly about the object-oriented stuff ... I think it's overrated and actually is responsible for making a lot of code these days completely unreadable due to ridiculous amounts of nesting and abstraction that end up being useless anyway because none of that code is really reusable, since it's tailored towards that specific tool/framework/whatever. Not that object oriented programming can't be great, it definitely can, but in my eyes it gets overused. I think good code should be readable first and foremost, and if OOP gets in the way of that, I think linear approaches are more appropriate. And in the case of scripting languages like PHP (what I worked with for a long time), it also creates huge overhead and makes everything slow as hell.

[WATCHMEN-NEO]

Question from a newbie：why some movie sequels change their theatre AR ？

Say Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes 1 has an AR of 1.85:1, but later on A Game of Shadows change it into 2.35(or 2.39?). So did The Avengers 2, it has a 2.35:1 AR(or 2.39?), but the first one is in 1.85. Such changes make me a little unadaptable no matter what AR i personally like.

I remember the first trailer of both JL and WW were released on the same day(on SDCC?), before that i was expecting JL a lot more because of Zack Snyder, his visual style and all that. But after watching them i was very disappointed in JL mostly for its AR choise. Zack's "epic" compositons fit with 2.35 the most IMO, and in my memory he's never changed it before(300,Watchmen,Man of Steel,BVS etc). I can say mainly for this reason i never went to the big screen to see it(criticism aside).

[Kynch]

Question from a newbie：why some movie sequels change their theatre AR ？

Say Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes 1 has an AR of 1.85:1, but later on A Game of Shadows change it into 2.35(or 2.39?). So did The Avengers 2, it has a 2.35:1 AR(or 2.39?), but the first one is in 1.85. Such changes make me a little unadaptable no matter what AR i personally like.

I remember the first trailer of both JL and WW were released on the same day(on SDCC?), before that i was expecting JL a lot more because of Zack Snyder, his visual style and all that. But after watching them i was very disappointed in JL mostly for its AR choise. Zack's "epic" compositons fit with 2.35 the most IMO, and in my memory he's never changed it before(300,Watchmen,Man of Steel,BVS etc). I can say mainly for this reason i never went to the big screen to see it(criticism aside).

I think the composition style for Justice League can be attributed to the fact that a lot of the film was shot in 1.43:1 for IMAX, which means that it would have been very hard to reframe it down to 2.35:1. 1.78:1 was a good middle-ground compromise.

[pipefan413]

I think the composition style for Justice League can be attributed to the fact that a lot of the film was shot in 1.43:1 for IMAX, which means that it would have been very hard to reframe it down to 2.35:1. 1.78:1 was a good middle-ground compromise.

Doesn't usually stop 'em. ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL, THE DARK KNIGHT (+ ... RISES), the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE stuff, 1917 etc. all have a bunch of IMAX scenes (and THE FORCE AWAKENS has one sequence) that were massively cropped to get a "cinematic" 2.39:1 ratio for non-IMAX presentations. And it almost never works, imo. 1917 was an exception because it was primarily composed for 2.39:1 and the extra image gained for IMAX was mostly junk (actors' legs more often than not). I saw it both ways.

Point being: it's definitely possible to compose for 2.39:1 while shooting on a sensor with a much larger vertical resolution, the Arri cameras and the like have a wee rectangle on the monitor to show you the 2.39:1 box.