Hate Those
Black Bars? - Aspect Ratio Basics
So you get home with that DVD you've
been waiting for forever, load your player, grab a snack, turn it on, and
you find yourself looking at a whole lot of black nothing and some little
bitty actors running around on the screen.... Incredibly annoying -
You wanted to see a movie and instead you find that half the
screen is filled with black bars. There are a whole bunch of factors that cause
this, and believe it or not, what follows is the short version... Here
goes.... From your trips to the movie theaters,
it's obvious that the theater screens are much wider than your average home TV screen. The
difference is due to different aspect ratios. So what exactly are aspect ratios,
and how did they come to be? Here are the basics (for
a Quick and Dirty Example Click Here and Maximize the window
that appears).
The Way Movies Looked Before the 1950s
In early Filmdom, movies all looked roughly the same
shape in the theater. The ratio between a films width and height is known as its aspect ratio, and from the early days of
film (starting in the late-1890s) until the early-1950s, almost all films
had a standard aspect ratio of 1.33:1 In other words, the film image was 1.33 times
as wide as it was tall (also known as 4x3, meaning 4 units
of width for every 3 of height).
This eventually became
known as Academy Standard (when it was recognized formally by the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the 1930s). Almost every classic
film you can think of from this period of time appeared in this ratio. The
examples you see below are actual screen shots (taken from DVD) of 4 films
in their original Academy Standard aspect ratio.
Standard Format
Examples
(Also known as Full Screen or
4 X 3 or
1:33 to 1 or
Pan and Scan)
Above (L to R): It's a
Wonderful Life (1946) and MGM's Gone With the Wind
(1939)
Below (L to R): Warner's The Wizard of Oz (1939) Universal's Dracula
(1931)
When it comes to
transferring to home video films shot in the Academy Standard aspect
ratio, there's no problem at all. Why? Well, you may have noticed that
Academy Standard is shaped an awful lot like your current TV set. That's
because when it came time for the television industry to decide what shape
TV would take (in the early 1950s), the National Television Standards
Committee (NTSC) selected Academy Standard as the official aspect ratio
for TV broadcasting here in the United States (the current TV standard
here in the U.S. is also called NTSC, after the organization that set the
standard). You'll remember that we mentioned "4x3" a few minutes
ago - that's how many people in the industry refer to current TVs.
But once TV began capturing the imagination of American consumers, the
Hollywood film industry was faced with a problem: so many people were
buying TVs and staying at home to watch them, that theater attendance
began to decline dramatically. So the studios began making some changes to
the look of their movies.
The Way Movies Looked After the
1950s... and Still Do Today
What Hollywood began to do, was to experiment with making films in
three-dimension (3D) and widescreen aspect ratios. Some of you may
remember 3D films, which required that you wear a pair of rather silly
looking stereoscopic glasses (one of the plastic filters the glasses used
for "lenses" was blue and one was red). Experiments with both 3D
and widescreen in films had been occurring since the early 1920s, but it
was the 50s that they really took off. Sadly (and thankfully!), 3D was
nothing more than a passing fad, but widescreen was here to stay. In 1953,
20th Century Fox introduced the world to the CinemaScope, which was used
by many studios between 1953 and 1967 (it eventually gave way to
Panavision, which is the most used widescreen process today). In 1953,
there were some 5 films released in a widescreen aspect ratio. By the
following year, there were nearly 40. And by 1955, the number had exploded
to more than 100. Today, widescreen dominates American filmmaking in a
variety of aspect ratios. But there are two "standardized"
ratios that are by far the most common: Academy Flat (1.85:1) and
Anamorphic Scope (2.35:1). Other less used ratios include 1.66:1 and
2.20:1 (70mm), but we'll stick to 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 for the purposes of
our discussion.
In the case of Academy
Flat, the film is 1.85 times as wide as it is tall (it's often referred to
today as simply "Flat"). Anamorphic Scope is even wider, 2.35
times as wide as it is tall (it's usually called "Scope"). Some
familiar films shot in the Flat aspect ratio include The English
Patient, All the President's Men and The Birds. Scope
films include Star Wars, Apocalypse Now and Blade Runner.
Note the examples below.
Above: Miramax's The English Patient (1996) in Academy Flat (1.85:1).
Below: Fox's The Thin Red Line (1998) in Anamorphic Scope (2.35:1).
When it comes time to
transfer such films to home video, there's a problem with those wider
aspect ratios - they're too wide to fill the TV screen vertically if
you're seeing the whole image horizontally. There are two primary ways to
deal with this problem: pan & scan and letterbox transfers. The pan
& scan process has the video camera scanning back and forth during the
transfer to keep the most important action centered on your TV screen (on
DVD packaging, this is rarely referred to as pan & scan. More often
you see the words "full frame" or more recently,
"standard", which often - but not always - indicates a pan &
scan transfer. Basically, it means that the film has been
"modified" in some way to fit you TV screen completely). The
problem with this, is that you may lose as much as 50% of the original
film image and the widescreen-oriented composition is lost completely. Some
serious film enthusiasts prefer the letterbox format, in which the ENTIRE
film image is presented, and black bars fill the unused screen area at the
top and bottom of the frame (see examples below). While some vertical picture resolution
is sacrificed, the director's original widescreen composition is preserved
- you're seeing the WHOLE film, as originally produced. This however
results in the dreaded "Black Bar Syndrome".
The Black Bar
Syndrome
Left: Good Will Hunting in Academy Flat (1.85:1) on Standard TV.
Right: Rushmore in Anamorphic Scope (2.35:1).
This is where a
very strong difference of opinion begins to become apparent - I call them
the 'Black Bar Haters' and the 'Film Purists'.
The Film Purists consider it
cinematic blasphemy to mess with the original film and ask "Why would
you want to see the film in any other way?" They consider as wusses
those folks who demand that the picture fill their TV screen completely.
They maintain that if these people really knew what they were missing by
watching a "full frame" version of a widescreen film, they would
change their minds in a hurry. Maybe so. There is a lot to be said in
favor of viewing the film as originally planned by the director, and a lot
can be lost when it is messed with in cropping for a Pan and Scan version.
However, and it's a BIG
however.... The Black Bar Haters, myself included, simply
hate looking at a little strip of image running across the TV screen with
either medium sized (1:85) or HUGE (2:35) black bars taking up a big chunk
of the viewing area. It makes me crazy to sit 15 feet from my 36" TV
while watching James Cameron's True Lies and spend most of my time
trying to figure out which little figure is Arnold Schwarzenegger and
which is Jamie Lee Curtis (the little figure that picks up a little stick
(a rifle if you could see it) and kills 200 bad guys, I assume is Arnold). A slight exaggeration, but not much. Sometimes
it can be very difficult to watch the shows this way with the shrunken
images and the distraction of infamous black bars. In defense of the
Purists, I've got to say that a great deal is lost in changing a
Widescreen film to a Standard format.... but those annoying
Black Bars and little tiny actors, Grrrrrrr.......
Here's the rub... In a perfect world,
everyone would love to see each film in it's entirety as the director
originally intended. But I seriously doubt that a director would produce a
film in such a way that it would have resulted in it's being displayed on
the screen in the theaters as a thin strip of picture with huge black
voids above and below the image on the screen. The theaters would be
empty, the box office grosses would collapse, the movie moguls would have
to sell some of their jets and vacations palaces, and a lot of popcorn and
Kit Kats would go unsold.
The problem, in fact, is not with the Purists
or the Bar Haters at all - They are simply dealing with an issue
that originates elsewhere. The problem is the result of the total lack of
compatibility between the formats used by the TV manufacturers, the
Network/Cable/Satellite broadcasters, the film production and exhibition
industries, as well as many other smaller groups. Anyway, we won't
open that can of worms here, because the discussion would be endless.
Widescreen vs. Full Frame (2.35:1 Ratio Films)
Let's take a look at some comparisons between widescreen and full frame
presentation of Scope films (aspect ratio 2.35:1). Since this ratio is the
wider of the two common ratios in use today, it only stands to reason that
you'll be missing out on the most picture area when watching a full frame
version. On the other hand, when viewing it in widescreen on a standard
TV, you'll be seeing the HUGE black bars above and below the image, the
overall image itself will barely seem to fill up half of the screen, and
the individual characters in the show will seem like miniatures. All of
the examples shown on this page are freeze frames of actual DVD video,
taken from discs which include both full frame and widescreen versions.
The widescreen version will always be on the top or left depending on your
browser settings.
Above is an example of a
shot taken from Warner's Blade Runner. Deckard (played by Harrison
Ford - center) is talking with Rachel (Sean Young). Note director Ridley
Scott's striking composition and the imagery in the background on the
widescreen version. But in the full frame version, we lose much of the
visual impact of the background and fully half of the conversation.
However, what can't be seen in the above examples is that when the
widescreen version is shown on a standard TV, Ford and Young are virtually
unrecognizable since their images shrink to roughly half of the size of
what they are when shown in full frame. So you end up with a beautifully
composed scene with unrecognizable actors.
Here's another example
from Buena Vista's The Black Hole. The whole point of this shot is
to show off the vast scale of the setting, in this case, the bridge of the
spaceship Cygnus. The set is sweeping and alive with color, but look how
much of it you miss in the full frame version. But once again, the
trade-off is the same as mentioned above for Blade Runner.
No one used the widescreen
ratio more dynamically than director Sergio Leone, as seen in the
widescreen version of MGM's A Fistful of Dollars (above top or
left). Clint Eastwood's legendary "Man with No Name" has just
arrived in town, only to be challenged by a group of outlaws. Notice how
Leone spreads his action across the entire frame to enhance the tension
and the visual impact of the scene. But in the full frame version, we're
missing one of the bandits completely and the action is crowded into the
frame, resulting in a much less dramatic image.
Above is an example of how
full frame actually changes the editing in Columbia TriStar's A Few
Good Men. Kaffee and Weinberg (Tom Cruise and Kevin Pollak - in the
widescreen image) are talking with Barnes and Galloway (Noah Wyle and Demi
Moore) during a jeep ride in Cuba. They're all there in the widescreen
version, but in they don't all fit into the full frame, so the film has
actually been re-edited. In the full frame version, the film cuts back and
forth from one side of the screen to the other to show the whole
conversation.
Here's another example from
A Few Good Men. In this scene, Kaffee (center) is pressing his case
against Colonel Jessep (Jack Nicholson - right). The widescreen image
provides a fine example of how a film technique called "deep
space" has been used to increase the dramatic tension in the scene.
Notice that Kaffee (in the midground) is locked in a staring match with
Jessep (foreground). Meanwhile, Ross (played by Kevin Bacon - background
left) is objecting to Kaffee's argument. But in the full frame version, we
lose Jessep completely, along with much of the tension.
And here's Universal's October
Sky (above). The "rocket boys" are watching the launch of
their latest homemade rocket, but we don't even see them at all in the
full frame version.
Widescreen vs. Full Frame (1.85:1
Ratio Films)
Scope (2.35:1) films aren't the only ones to suffer from full frame
presentation. Here are some examples of films in Academy Flat (1.85:1)
aspect ratio, in both widescreen and full frame versions. While the
problem isn't quite as severe here as it can be with wider aspect ratios,
the result is just as bad in most cases. Once again, all images are actual
DVD snapshots (widescreen is on the top or left).
Here's Carol (Helen Hunt)
and Melvin (Jack Nicholson) in Columbia TriStar's As Good As It Gets.
Since Carol's doing the talking in this shot, the camera angle naturally
favors her. But at this angle, we almost completely lose Melvin from the
shot in the full frame version.
These are just a few of the examples that could be shown - there are
literally thousands. Now that you've seen the difference between
widescreen and full frame presentation, we should note that there are a
couple of techniques that can be used to get around the problem of
bringing widescreen films to home video. The first is a film/camera lens
format that some directors use (including James Cameron), called Super
35.
Above are the widescreen
and full frame versions of Columbia TriStar's Air Force One,
starring Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman. Here, director Wolfgang Peterson
has shot the film in Super 35. The film was presented in the 2.35:1 aspect
ratio in theaters (left), but we WEREN'T seeing the whole filmed image -
just a portion of it. When it was time to transfer this film to home
video, Peterson simply let us see more of the frame as filmed (on the
right). The white box outline on the full frame image was added to show
you exactly what portion of the picture was seen theatrically in
widescreen. This can be an effective technique, which has been used on
such films as Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Titanic and The
Abyss. But it also confuses many, and leads to some controversy. For
example, director James Cameron has gone on record as saying that he
actually prefers the full frame versions of several of his movies (much to
the consternation of widescreen fans).
There is one other very new process that can be used to create more
effective full frame presentations for home video, but it only applies to
films that are generated entirely by computer (like Disney and Pixar's
recent A Bug's Life). But we'll mention it here, because it will
probably become more common as more computer animated films are released
in the future. The process involves re-composing and re-rendering the
image for both widescreen and full frame formats.
In this example from A
Bug's Life, we can see the differences in the composition of the frame
in the original theatrical widescreen presentation (top or left) and the
re-composed full frame (bottom or right). For the full frame version,
Pixar's animators have actually re-positioned characters within the frame.
Arrows have been added to the full frame image, so that you can see how
the ant on the right has been moved to the left, and the entire leaf both
ants are standing on has been moved slightly to the right. The result is
an effective image, regardless of which version you're watching. But once
again, this is very rare (this is the only film to have been so modified
as of the time of this original writing).
Some other techniques are being used to try to come up with a happy
medium. Super 35, (mentioned briefly above re: Air Force One)
for example, is a controversial method which most savvy directors hate,
but some masters – like James Cameron (one of my personal favorites) –
swear by it. Super 35 is a highly confusing cinematography process whereby
the camera negative records an image at an aspect ratio of roughly 2:1.
This image is very flexible in that it can be slightly cropped off the top
and bottom to render a wider aspect ratio (used in theaters to create an
image with the same 2.35:1 dimensions as legitimate anamorphic films).
Likewise, this 2:1 image requires far less panning-and-scanning for the
transition to squarer TV screens than would anamorphic images: once the
full top-to-bottom dimensions are "unmasked" from theater
images, not as much left-to- right information is sacrificed in the
transition to standard format. The inconsistencies with Super 35 arise
from the fact that the standard pan-and- scan version of a Super 35 film
unmasks image information above and below the wider 2.35:1 image seen in
theaters, and in many cases this is information that the director doesn't
want you to see (such as intruding boom mics). Likewise, the wider 2.35:1
theatrical ratio might actually over-crop information you're supposed to
see. Depending on the care with which the director and cameraman frame
their shots, Super 35 films can look good either way. But more often than
not, both the 2.35:1 version and the 1.33:1 version of a Super 35 film
will each suffer in different ways.
So who's job is it to educate the public about the difference between
widescreen and standard presentation on home video? Well, it seems like
the studios would make greater efforts to do so for their own sake. It
also seem like the maker major retailers and renters like Best Buy and
Blockbuster should post signs on the subject to help educate their
customers. The guys at the store I frequent have told me that they waste
lots of time dealing with the 10 - 15 angry people a days who come in
complaining about the "Black Bars" on their TV screen. The
bottom line is that it's the same as with all other matters - "Buyer
Beware" translated into "Buyer Educate Yourself".
In any case, by now you can see the
difference between widescreen and full frame. It is now clear that widescreen presentation means that we get the full picture as intended,
but on home video has always meant letterboxing, which many people find
objectionable. Thankfully, DVD's anamorphic widescreen feature provides a
nifty solution to this problem on new widescreen TVs. However, we'll
see how this pans out when the new sets are within reach of the general
public. I'm also anxious to see how the broadcast networks adapt their
formats when the new wider TVs become mainstream.
