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Screenshot from a scene in Pulp Fiction (1994)
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Have you ever inspected the packaging around a product while in the store to see whether it had already been opened? If you weren't planning to ingest it, rub it on your body, put it in your hair, or shove it up your rectum, why did you bother? What were you worried about?
I readily admit I check the integrity of the packages all the time. If the package has been opened, something is wrong. Maybe the product was tampered with. Maybe parts are missing. If either of those things is true, then the product differs from what the manufacturer made. It isn't what I intended to buy.
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Pantages Theatre in Hollywood
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Well, that's the way it is every time a theatrical super-widescreen movie is shown or streamed on your TV or other device after having been "formatted to fit your screen" to remove those black bars at the top and bottom. (By the way, "super-widescreen" is not an industry term. I use it to identify widescreen movies with aspect ratios of greater than 1.85:1. What are aspect ratios? Stay tuned.)
The process involves a human being operating a "pan-and-scan" machine. A copy of the original film is run through the machine and, with the functionary's guiding hands and, we hope, keen eye, scans the super-widescreen movie (typically 2.40:1, i.e. 9x22) from beginning to end with the 1.78:1 (9x16) dimensions of the modern viewing screens, sometimes moving the scanner from one side of the picture to the other to keep the action inside the frame. The movement of the scanner appears in the finished product as a camera pan. When the final scan is blown up to fill in the black bars top and bottom, the parts that the pan-and-scan operator decided weren't worth keeping will have been omitted from the movie.
This madman has tampered with the product the filmmaker made. He or she is an officious meddler that has re-edited the film and made artistic decisions about what parts on the right and left sides of every scene that you don't need to see. Sydney Pollack took a Danish distributor to court in Denmark for showing Three Days of the Condor on TV in a pan-and-scan format, and Pollack won his case. The court described what the pan-and-scan operator had done as a "mutilation" of Pollack's work.
No thank you. I don't want a mutilation of the artist's work. I want the whole movie. I want the film the filmmaker intended me to see.
If you go to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, you don't want to be shown just her face in an oval frame and be told that's all of the Mona Lisa you need to see. When you go to see Rodin's "The Thinker," you don't want the curator to have chopped the statue up, shown you only the head and shoulders, and told you not to worry your pretty little head about the rest of it.
Here is how the film tampering affects your home viewing experience.
All screens for personal use today—TV, computer, phone—have the relative dimensions of 9x16. The relative dimensions of a picture (i.e., its shape) are referred to as its aspect ratio, which is expressed as a mathematical ratio. The aspect ratio for 9x16 is 1.78:1. It might surprise you to learn that few movies in history were made with that aspect ratio, and none are made that way today.
Before the advent of widescreen TVs and computer screens, filmmakers in the modern era often referred generally to a film's theatrical aspect ratio as "letterbox" to distinguish it from "pan-and-scan," the version of the movie formatted to fit the nearly square screen (4:3) on old TV sets.
All theatrical films made today are letterboxed. The majority have an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and the shape of the picture resembles the shape of a #7 (personal letter) envelope. At the same time, many films have a much wider aspect ratio—2.35:1 or 2.40:1, with a shape more like a #10 (business letter) envelope.
Regardless of which aspect ratio your movie choice was made in (1.85:1 or 2.40:1 or something in between), it will be wider than 9x16 and so black bars will appear at the top and bottom of your screen if the film hasn't been tampered with by an officious meddler. The black bars are quite skinny for a smaller aspect ratio and quite fat for the larger sizes.
If there are no black bars, a you-know-what has re-edited the movie for you.
It pains me to know that many, many people would rather have those black bars removed and see the movie "full screen." Oh, I'm in pain.
The 1959 Charlton Heston version of Ben-Hur is one of the jewels in Hollywood's crown. It won 11 Academy Awards. And it was shown in theaters with an aspect ratio of 2.76:1, more than 2¾ times wider than its height, the widest widescreen movie ever made.
The top image shows how Ben-Hur looks on a widescreen TV after an officious meddler has gotten his or her hands on it. The middle image demonstrates how much of the picture is lost in that process. And the last image is how a preserved Ben-Hur appears on a widescreen TV.
Any questions? Yes, you over there. I'll repeat it so everyone can have it. Since all screens are 9x16 and all modern films are widescreen, how can I tell whether I'm seeing a movie in its theatrical aspect ratio? Ah that's a great question. If black bars appear on the top and bottom of the screen, you know you're seeing the movie in its theatrical aspect ratio. If there are no black bars, you can go to imdb.com, navigate your way to your movie, scroll three-fourths of the way down the page to "Technical Specs," and look for the aspect ratio. If the aspect ratio is 1.78:1, there was no officious meddling. If the aspect ratio is 1.85:1, double-check the picture. The skinny black bars can be hard to detect. If the aspect ratio is wider than that, a you-know-what definitely re-edited your movie.
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| Director Sophia Coppola |
This issue of re-editing the movie to remove portions of the sides is no small matter. Directors, cinematographers, art directors, and set designers look through that movie camera viewfinder. They often go to painstaking efforts to get the scene composed just right. If they want something in the frame they put it there. If they don't, they remove it. It might be a small object on a table or a big piece of furniture in a room. It might be cars parked on the street or people inside restaurants, seen through the street windows. You can bet that the director and set designer wanted viewers to see everything in the frame that they saw through the viewfinder.
Make a habit of making sure you're seeing your movie the way the filmmaker wanted you to see it.
