Widescreen flat-out didn't look good on a lot of really old TVs, purism be damned. Now that technology has improved, we have the luxury to think about and discuss "the director's vision" of how certain frames are supposed to look, etc.
I have to agree that the full screen conversion can cut into the films character. That’s probably why there was a market for the letterbox vhs tapes. However a well done pan and scan can be impressive for its own sake.
Is this even an issue anymore? Anyone who has bought a new TV in the past 5 years has a widescreen TV. So we can see them in their intended form quite easily. Now the current trend of taking old TV shows (in 4:3) and butchering with them to make then widescreen... THAT IS A big problem.
THANK YOU. As a Dragon Ball fan, I am no stranger to cropped releases. Cropping really does ruin the image. That's why I paid 200 bucks for Dragon Box 2, because I want to watch DBZ, not 80% of DBZ.
Well the TVs we have at home now are 16:9. Yes they are wider, but they're not as wide as the movies. Therefore some pan and scanning is still taking place, albeit not as bad as before. Most TV shows now are shot in 16:9, so it's only the movies where we have this problem. And as for the old 4:3 TV shows, I like to stretch them to fill the screen. That way, it doesn't cut out any of the image, although it makes people look a bit fatter, but I got used to it lol
This video here is shown every now and then on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), but to me, I agree, widescreen is definitely better, only if it has the same height as the fullscreen version.
***** Yes, but sometimes on TV, bozos like to pretend that a movie is widescreen by chopping off the tops and bottoms of the fullscreen movie. It sometimes happened with copies of "The Wizard of Oz"
+Robert Ivey Yeah, Im with you, I don't like it when they crop the top and bottom to make widescreen, like they did with the Matrix and Avatar. If you are restoring parts on the side that are lost, then it is a good thing, but to cover or crop part of the picture to get widescreen sort of goes against the whole pro-widescreen argument. I'm glad videos like this helped proper aspect ratios to be accepted by the public, but it isn't always the case that the sides are chopped off for the the 4:3 version. . .
I had the first Harry Potter movie on VHS and theyvpan and scan it. I never new what that was until I brought the DvD version and found out that the film was alot wider than I expected.
This applies to the same for anything shot in 4:3 aspect ratio, and people hating the black bars on the side. And these are the same people that hold their phones vertically while recording a video.
3:44 wow that is actually a really smart comparison and way to explain its true like they are showing you what they think is most important to the movie
I was linked to this video completely at random, and now I'm glad that I was. I suppose I didn't know enough about the cropping process to understand what sort of things you miss out on in a full-screen movie. Great video, thanks.
Ok, I'm sold on widescreen! It always bugged me that I couldn't see the full picture, but I love how they explain you're missing meaning, not just an image.
I saw Ben-Hur on a video cassette a few years before seeing this. When I did, I looked up the movie on TCM. the film being in widescreen definitely looks a lot better.
If you have a widescreen monitor, lets say a 20" 1680x1050px monitor, like the one I use all the time for not only photoshop, but for video editing, if you have it set to a resolution that is 4x3 like 1024x768 (streched) it will distort the image. If you use the native resolution of the monitor the image will be not distorted at all. I'd suggest you look up the "Native" resolution of your monitor and set the display settings on your computer to match this.
I agree. The Price is Right looks perfect in 4:3 as do many other shows. For me, the aspect ratio has always been part of the way the artist sets the, for lack of a better word, mood of the film/show.
I try to avoid it. Because Full screen sucks. Like, why even call it full screen if it ain’t even full? It’s more like, half screen, because you’re only seeing half the film. Widescreen feels a lot more full than full screen. Full screen is nothing but a lie. I mean of course I love movies with a burning passion, but having to watch a movie with less image is like taking away the director’s vision of the film. I can watch films in the letterbox format only if the film was originally shot in the letterbox format.
General Uprising Personally I don’t mind films originally shot in the letterbox format, because I know that Widescreen wasn’t a format back then. The problem I have with films originally shot in widescreen, then converted into a pan and scab full screen format is that the film has its sides chopped off and zoomed in. I really find it annoying when the film has to pan constantly. It’s movement is dramatically fast and really inconsistent. Which is why the widescreen format is my preference because the camera doesn’t move as much, it shows the entire film (not an altered version of it where the sides are chopped off) and it feels like an easier experience.
I study things like this a lot, and it was informative, but if you have 4:3 television, it doesn't matter if you lose some of the resolution because in essence, making the picture fit the frame is what matters more to most viewers.
17 years later, I'm a CRT enthusiast who prefers pan-and-scan VHS on my 4:3 TV. For most movies anyways. There are some examples (Ben Hur and many other Panavision movies) where the context really is altered, but for most movies I've seen, I'd rather have the image fit my screen. VHS quality can be very hit or miss, and my CRT is nothing you could consider hi-fidelity, so to me the movies look better when the viewing area is maximized. Maybe I'm just nostalgic for 4:3 video that actually fits the screen after the last 15 years of widescreen TVs and pillarboxing on old videos. Long live the CRTs and long live 4:3!
In short: FULLSCREEN DVDS SHOULDNT EXIST BECAUSE YOUR PLAYER CAN ALREADY ZOOM IN THE PICTURE TO FIT YOUR SCREEN BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY ITS NOT HOW MOST FILMS NOWADAYS ARE MEANT TO BE SEEN.
This videos would have been a Godsend when I was in middle school, attempting to explain to others why widescreen was important. It may not converted everybody, but it would have made things a whole lot easier to explain.
@sugartuff ... Actually more videos were filmed in 16:9 than you think... Alot of them were cropped to fit 4:3 tv screens. For example F.R.I.E.N.D.S. tv show was all originally filmed at 16:9 but was cropped to DVD which at the time most tv's were 4:3.... Some older DVD movies were cropped to 4:3 only again to suit TV.s using Pan & Scan etc. But later you had a choice of 2 DVD's 1 at widesreen or 1 at full frame or both on the one disc if you flip it over....
I absolutely Love WIDESCREEN Movies. After watching this video and another one on the same subject I could see how much of the Movie I was missing out of. I've even re-purchased movies that I have in Fullscreen. Now a days All DVDs are in one Widescreen format or another. I haven't seen fullscreen along the top of a dvd cover in years
What most people seem to forget is that movies are made for the big screen, the theater. It is only in the last 30 years that we've been watching them at home. In my opinion, the best way to watch a movie is in it's original format. TV's were made for broadcast television, and thus the 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio. If you want to watch a movie without the black bars, make yourself a nice projector setup. That's how movies are ment to be watched.
Full frame is not a term that should be applied to 4:3 or 16:9 or any other aspect ratio. It only refers to the amount of available recording medium. If you utilise all the frame its called full frame anything else is cropped or scanned (as in panned and scanned).
Had Star Wars ep 2 dvd widescreen when it came out. Didn’t appreciate on a square screen and thought it was weird, never seen that style before, but grew to appreciate it with time after that.
Different movies are filmed with different cameras and with different lenses, which changes the aspect ratio. technically speaking, "fullscreen" is fine, just as long as that's how it was originally shot.
i HATE fullscreen, and I've known people that cant understand that they are missing so much in widescreen.. This is a great video. I've rented movies in fullscreen on accedent, and I just return them because I would rather not watch the movie and miss half of the image.
So is widescreen better to buy in DVD when you have a flatscreen TV. I always wondered if they chopped off the bottom and top to give us more on the sides. is this true?
I still prefer Full Screen because Widescreen is just nothing more but cutting half of the entire open matte just to make it fit your smart TV. Plus the black bars are very distracting when trying to watch a full length movie.
@kdawq Typically speaking Widescreen is the better option for most DVDs since it shows you the whole image that the director intended when he shot the film. There are some DVDs when DVDs first came out (IIRC they were MGM movies) that took the Fullscreen version of the film (which was already Pan & Scanned) and then cropped it to fit in the Widescreen aspect ratio, so they were getting rid of a ton of the picture. Newly made DVDs typically won't do this though.
I’ve always had a sense that widescreen is better than full screen. I just didn’t know why until now when I just watched this video. Now, I feel confident enough to say that widescreen is in fact better than full screen.
It was great seeing Michael Mann in this. That man knows how to use the geometry of the widescreen frame. He can cut it up and direct your eye to a specific corner of it while also being able to create beautiful compositions with the help of great cinematographers like Danté Spinotti.
This video shows my thoughts exactly. They really should start making 2.35:1 TVs; it's such a popular aspect ratio. The 2.35:1 TVs could have a panel on each side to slide over the sides of the screen so you can cover the pillarbox bars when watching 16:9 or 4:3 videos. So many people think widescreen is achieved by having black bars cover up the top and bottom of the picture. This is far from the truth. Fullscreen pan-scans are made by hacking away the sides of the picture. So few know this.
People make the common mistake of thinking that there are only two aspect ratios...4:3 (square) and 16:9 (widescreen), but depending on the camera used, there are SEVERAL widescreen formats. A lot of those happen to be 16:9 so there won't be any black bars when watching on an HDTV, but the other widescreen formats will still have some black lines when watching on a HDTV. (but not as big as they would be if watching on a standard 4:3 TV screen)
@PeePulz If the picture looks stretched, that's a setting on your TV. There should be a button on your remote that changes the way the picture's displayed and can make it look normal. And yes, anything above 1.85 will have black bars, because higher ratios are still wider than your TV and thus have to have the picture shrunk down, resulting in the black bars. There are many different aspect ratios with films, so no matter what your TV is like there will always be movies that show black bars.
@leevois many blu-ray players remove the black bars while still allowing it to be widescreen, while fullscreen has even more distracting bars on the side.
The solution to this problem of filling the TV screen while seeing entire picture is simple. cut off the extreme edges and do an anamorphic squeeze...the picture is a little distorted but at least it fills the frame. I do that on my ipod to fit the apple trailers on the screen.
I realize others joke about full screen being only half of a viewing experience, but that isn't the case. Ninety-nine percent of the televisions that you buy today are not square anymore. They are wide screen. In fact, I have the widest screen that you can buy, and I still can't avoid the black bars on top and bottom! What gives? With a widescreen TV and a full screen DVD or streaming video you still get to view pretty much everything, with very little being cut off. If someday, my Xtoriez anthology gets turned into a movie, I will take it to the extreme. The black bars will cut off the actor's head from the top, and cut off everything up to the belly button from below-- then I will make it such a wide screen that not only does the main action play out in the center, but you will also see the cast and crew catering table on the right, as well as everything else all the way out to the actor's trailers in the parking lot on the left. Hollywood here I come!
The reason that they're still black bars is because the film was filmed in 35 mm or something close to that. If you zoom in it will cut a little bit out of the sides.
> > > > The reason you see black bars on top and bottom of dvds AND blurays ? Its because there is no such thing as a widescreen bluray or dvd , after people got tired at laughing and pointing at PAN & SCAN or FULL SCREEN , turns out their beloved widescreen is only a zoomed portion of the full screen version
lol thats what i do or when i get movies as gifts like i got some for christmas and there in full screen im made but i re bought them in widescreen now im happy
This comment section is just over 12 years old and the medium for viewing movies/tv has changed drastically. In the age of streaming, the average viewer wouldn't think twice about what's on screen.
I believe this was made for or by TCM (Turner Classic Movies). They air it semi-frequently, if you want to try catching it off the broadcasts between movies. Or you might try contacting them -- they have a website. If you want it for classroom use or something like that, they might have a way to send you a copy.
They forgot to mention that TV + VHS versions of many films have a thing called "open matte" where they leave extra picture on the top of bottom to not lose anything or just a little on the sides which catered very well for standard tvs. Back two years ago I would have preferred the fullscreen version of films.
I'm really glad they shoot hardly ANYTHING in CINEMA SCOPE anymore though since that is just way too WIDE for me personally since it comes in RIDICULOUSLY small on an old 4:3 and even small on modern day TV's that are 16:9 and would still come in small on the next gen TV's where they want to make them 21:9 which is what MOST of the JAMES BOND Movies and ALLOT of Other movies are shot in to.
Sometimes I would always wonder if I’m watching a movie in full screen on a square shaped tv for example how would a widescreen version be able to fit on the square shaped tv. I’m guessing the black bars are zoomed out to give the widescreen affect then zoomed all the way in to give the full screen affect
+Instrumental Central Early-mid '90s. I remember seeing it around the time I was in high school and it making me realize why aspect ratios were so important. I simply couldn't watch a damn pan and scan movie after that because I noticed it too much... it ruined my Ghostbusters videotape for me, until I could find a widescreen edition.
i have noticed that widescreen is made by a crop on the top and bottom of the movie camera, and of course fullscreen is the cropping of the sides of this image. in some movies they need to zoom out a little more so we can see everything better.
the whole reason that they wanted 16:9 is that all the picture ratios that they use can fit a 16:9 screen, yes your going to have black bars on the sides or the top and bottom, but your not losing picture. this whole video was about how pan and scan was re-editing these videos and not giving you the experience as the director originally intended, with a hd tv, yes your going to have black bars, but your not going to have to crop to get it on the screen.
One's you get settled with the movie or you already been absorbed on it., Fullscreen is just okay. Actually when I started watching some of my DVD in fullscreen...it doesn't matter anymore. But if you really A/V spectator or just a collector, Widescreen is the way to go. The moral lesson here: watch the movie on its original aspect ratio. If your only after the movie...choose either Fullscreen or Widescreen.
Most 1.85 (and the various "super 35" format) films are in fact shot open matte. But having screened film dailies on over 60 features I cannot once remember anyone wanting to see what's outside the 1.85 (or 2.39) projected area to check how that composition will look like. That's not to say that later on when the video transfer is done they might not zoom back out a bit and show more headroom and footroom in order to avoid having to lose so much via P&S. And that can vary shot to shot.
You know, it makes me wonder: Since IMAX is the only major theatrical format that shows films in 4:3, I wonder how the old, pre-widescreen movies would look on there? Imagine: "Casablanca", "The Wizard of Oz", "Citizen Kane" -- all bigger than life again! :)
You're right that there is no point in making a 2:35:1 tv, but there are a lot of movie screens in that format and with a 16:9 screen, you only get minimum letter boxing. I love wide screen. It looks so much better then "full" screen
@piofinn You know the "black bars" are the limitations of a square television screen in projecting a rectangular image, right? You're not actually losing any of the picture in wide screen.
This also goes the other way around. I have some dvd's of movies that were shot in a 4:3 ratio, but were now cropped for display in widescreen TVs. And let me tell you, it's as frustrating as mutilated widescreen movies :U
Widescreen is fine for movies, but some HD television shows just do not look right in widescreen (i.e: American Idol, The Price is Right) widescreen isn't always best, but for the movies showcased in this clip it is.
there are places you have to look on the net that show classic movie on theater screen i should know i saw the sound of music in a theater in la last year
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but what Scorsese says at 3:24 sounds like total nonsense. He claims that when you cut off the sides of a movie you have to blow up the image in order to fill the frame, which produces a more fuzzy picture. This makes no sense. If you put a pan and scan movie on DVD, you're using much more of the resolution that the DVD offers than you would with a letterboxed movie. There is no blowing up of the image. Sure, you're butchering the composition and I agree films should be presented in their intended aspect ratio, but the quality is not diminished by presenting a widescreen film in 4:3. It's actually worse since a large portion of the DVD's pixels are being used for the black bars.
It's true that Mr. Scorsese had it mixed up; zooming into the frame means that more of the available resolution of NTSC/PAL video was being put to use, of which DVD (of all home video systems for the NTSC/PAL standards) was technically most able to push to their limits. However, as you know, you can't show the entire frame at once within the 4:3 aspect ratio when it comes to doing "fullscreen" transfers of features that were done in what I would call a hard widescreen format, such as features filmed in anamorphic processes like Panavision, CinemaScope, and Todd-AO 35. To properly preserve the aspect ratio, the cost will be leaving a portion of the video resolution unused.
In my modest experience the top and bottom are occluded because they are not generally part of the framed shot when it is conceived. Action happening outside of the frame is generally considered to be irrelevant...
Saw Ben Hur a 3rd time because it was shown on a television network who never shows the pan and scanned versions.Where until then it had been on networks which never used letterbox formats. It would still be widescreen but pan and scanned to 16:9
Fullscreen is basically just cutting off the left and right sides of the images and showing you what's in the middle or what's the most important part of the full picture that they can fit on the screen and is zoomed in so what you do see is bigger but your not seeing everything, Widescreen shows you everything.
i think the problem here is that you don't know what resolution is. what actually happens when you take a widescreen movie and pan/scan it to fit on a 4:3 tv you're getting rid of the sides of the image and scaling what's left to fit the screen. there's actually less information, but it's displayed at a larger visual size, which makes the image softer and you lose detail.
I'm ashamed to admit that there was a point in my life where I consistently opted for Fullscreen releases.
That was my Dad
Not all fullscreen versions were butchered by pan and scan, many of them were open matte formats...
@@TELLViSiON Some CGI movies like Cars would be reframed so they could fit on old TVs.
I watch most of my dvd's on an old trinitron crt therefore i opt for full screen. I loathe watching wide screen on crt tv's for obvious reasons
Widescreen flat-out didn't look good on a lot of really old TVs, purism be damned. Now that technology has improved, we have the luxury to think about and discuss "the director's vision" of how certain frames are supposed to look, etc.
I liked to watch Widescreen movies. The only time I watch stuff that's Full Screen is Old movies and some children's movies.
Having worked there myself, this should be playing at every Wal-Mart in the country.
I have to agree that the full screen conversion can cut into the films character. That’s probably why there was a market for the letterbox vhs tapes.
However a well done pan and scan can be impressive for its own sake.
@LaserDiscWarrior3043All my VHS copies of Titanic are in fact letterboxed. I have yet to see the fullscreen version.
Is this even an issue anymore? Anyone who has bought a new TV in the past 5 years has a widescreen TV. So we can see them in their intended form quite easily.
Now the current trend of taking old TV shows (in 4:3) and butchering with them to make then widescreen... THAT IS A big problem.
THANK YOU. As a Dragon Ball fan, I am no stranger to cropped releases. Cropping really does ruin the image. That's why I paid 200 bucks for Dragon Box 2, because I want to watch DBZ, not 80% of DBZ.
Well the TVs we have at home now are 16:9. Yes they are wider, but they're not as wide as the movies. Therefore some pan and scanning is still taking place, albeit not as bad as before.
Most TV shows now are shot in 16:9, so it's only the movies where we have this problem.
And as for the old 4:3 TV shows, I like to stretch them to fill the screen. That way, it doesn't cut out any of the image, although it makes people look a bit fatter, but I got used to it lol
+eyeh8nbc - Amen.
+eyeh8nbc My god, this guy makes crappy music too! And just playing it on my sound system gives it better quality than it deserves!
+eyeh8nbc - What are you on about?
aww those black bars are covering up the picture.
Me: ...(facepalm)...
@Risen General exactly
Super 35 says "hi"
Sometimes they are covering the picture. Back to the future is one example
But it is, all that stupid matting. I could be enjoying watching the booms swivel around and admiring the studio catwalks.
Pan and Scan Guy: (tearfully) " I'm just doing my job, its not like I'm killing somebody!"
This video here is shown every now and then on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), but to me, I agree, widescreen is definitely better, only if it has the same height as the fullscreen version.
***** Sometimes they cut out the tops and bottoms of a picture to make it appear widescreen.
***** Yes, but sometimes on TV, bozos like to pretend that a movie is widescreen by chopping off the tops and bottoms of the fullscreen movie. It sometimes happened with copies of "The Wizard of Oz"
+Robert Ivey Yeah, Im with you, I don't like it when they crop the top and bottom to make widescreen, like they did with the Matrix and Avatar. If you are restoring parts on the side that are lost, then it is a good thing, but to cover or crop part of the picture to get widescreen sort of goes against the whole pro-widescreen argument. I'm glad videos like this helped proper aspect ratios to be accepted by the public, but it isn't always the case that the sides are chopped off for the the 4:3 version. . .
I had the first Harry Potter movie on VHS and theyvpan and scan it. I never new what that was until I brought the DvD version and found out that the film was alot wider than I expected.
This applies to the same for anything shot in 4:3 aspect ratio, and people hating the black bars on the side. And these are the same people that hold their phones vertically while recording a video.
3:44 wow that is actually a really smart comparison and way to explain its true like they are showing you what they think is most important to the movie
I was linked to this video completely at random, and now I'm glad that I was. I suppose I didn't know enough about the cropping process to understand what sort of things you miss out on in a full-screen movie. Great video, thanks.
Ok, I'm sold on widescreen! It always bugged me that I couldn't see the full picture, but I love how they explain you're missing meaning, not just an image.
Never will I ever watch a film again without it being in widescreen.
Same... unless it was originally produced in 4:3.
I saw Ben-Hur on a video cassette a few years before seeing this. When I did, I looked up the movie on TCM. the film being in widescreen definitely looks a lot better.
We live in a lucky era where we can watch most movies in their original aspect ratio.
If you have a widescreen monitor, lets say a 20" 1680x1050px monitor, like the one I use all the time for not only photoshop, but for video editing, if you have it set to a resolution that is 4x3 like 1024x768 (streched) it will distort the image. If you use the native resolution of the monitor the image will be not distorted at all. I'd suggest you look up the "Native" resolution of your monitor and set the display settings on your computer to match this.
Kinda ironic that youtube's changing algorythm and the original format means you're watching a 4:3 video at no higher than 360p
I agree. The Price is Right looks perfect in 4:3 as do many other shows. For me, the aspect ratio has always been part of the way the artist sets the, for lack of a better word, mood of the film/show.
Who still watches full-screen 2019
I do, but I pillarbox it
A lot of comedy movies and documentary’s are shot in full screen
No.
I try to avoid it. Because Full screen sucks. Like, why even call it full screen if it ain’t even full? It’s more like, half screen, because you’re only seeing half the film. Widescreen feels a lot more full than full screen. Full screen is nothing but a lie. I mean of course I love movies with a burning passion, but having to watch a movie with less image is like taking away the director’s vision of the film. I can watch films in the letterbox format only if the film was originally shot in the letterbox format.
General Uprising Personally I don’t mind films originally shot in the letterbox format, because I know that Widescreen wasn’t a format back then. The problem I have with films originally shot in widescreen, then converted into a pan and scab full screen format is that the film has its sides chopped off and zoomed in. I really find it annoying when the film has to pan constantly. It’s movement is dramatically fast and really inconsistent. Which is why the widescreen format is my preference because the camera doesn’t move as much, it shows the entire film (not an altered version of it where the sides are chopped off) and it feels like an easier experience.
I study things like this a lot, and it was informative, but if you have 4:3 television, it doesn't matter if you lose some of the resolution because in essence, making the picture fit the frame is what matters more to most viewers.
17 years later, I'm a CRT enthusiast who prefers pan-and-scan VHS on my 4:3 TV. For most movies anyways. There are some examples (Ben Hur and many other Panavision movies) where the context really is altered, but for most movies I've seen, I'd rather have the image fit my screen. VHS quality can be very hit or miss, and my CRT is nothing you could consider hi-fidelity, so to me the movies look better when the viewing area is maximized. Maybe I'm just nostalgic for 4:3 video that actually fits the screen after the last 15 years of widescreen TVs and pillarboxing on old videos. Long live the CRTs and long live 4:3!
this is really well explained thank you
I love widescreen you see so much more!!
In short: FULLSCREEN DVDS SHOULDNT EXIST BECAUSE YOUR PLAYER CAN ALREADY ZOOM IN THE PICTURE TO FIT YOUR SCREEN BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY ITS NOT HOW MOST FILMS NOWADAYS ARE MEANT TO BE SEEN.
This videos would have been a Godsend when I was in middle school, attempting to explain to others why widescreen was important. It may not converted everybody, but it would have made things a whole lot easier to explain.
Where was this clip taken from originally?
@sugartuff ... Actually more videos were filmed in 16:9 than you think... Alot of them were cropped to fit 4:3 tv screens. For example F.R.I.E.N.D.S. tv show was all originally filmed at 16:9 but was cropped to DVD which at the time most tv's were 4:3....
Some older DVD movies were cropped to 4:3 only again to suit TV.s using Pan & Scan etc. But later you had a choice of 2 DVD's 1 at widesreen or 1 at full frame or both on the one disc if you flip it over....
I absolutely Love WIDESCREEN Movies. After watching this video and another one on the same subject I could see how much of the Movie I was missing out of. I've even re-purchased movies that I have in Fullscreen. Now a days All DVDs are in one Widescreen format or another. I haven't seen fullscreen along the top of a dvd cover in years
What most people seem to forget is that movies are made for the big screen, the theater. It is only in the last 30 years that we've been watching them at home. In my opinion, the best way to watch a movie is in it's original format.
TV's were made for broadcast television, and thus the 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio. If you want to watch a movie without the black bars, make yourself a nice projector setup. That's how movies are ment to be watched.
Full frame is not a term that should be applied to 4:3 or 16:9 or any other aspect ratio. It only refers to the amount of available recording medium. If you utilise all the frame its called full frame anything else is cropped or scanned (as in panned and scanned).
what's best for watching widescreen movies on a 16:9 tv: wide zoom or full?
I only buy fullscreen if I forget to make sure I'm getting the right version.
Had Star Wars ep 2 dvd widescreen when it came out. Didn’t appreciate on a square screen and thought it was weird, never seen that style before, but grew to appreciate it with time after that.
And to think there’s still this war with 2.39:1 movies being cropped to 16:9
Different movies are filmed with different cameras and with different lenses, which changes the aspect ratio. technically speaking, "fullscreen" is fine, just as long as that's how it was originally shot.
i HATE fullscreen, and I've known people that cant understand that they are missing so much in widescreen.. This is a great video. I've rented movies in fullscreen on accedent, and I just return them because I would rather not watch the movie and miss half of the image.
@gamma626 ...Wrong!.. Tv screens are 1:78:1 not 1:85:1.....
So is widescreen better to buy in DVD when you have a flatscreen TV. I always wondered if they chopped off the bottom and top to give us more on the sides. is this true?
Indeed; Orson Welles' giant lips whispering "Rosebud"... *shivers* :D
I still prefer Full Screen because Widescreen is just nothing more but cutting half of the entire open matte just to make it fit your smart TV. Plus the black bars are very distracting when trying to watch a full length movie.
Widescreen all the way!!!!!!! Widescreen is the REAL viewing experience!!!!!!!!!!!!
@kdawq Typically speaking Widescreen is the better option for most DVDs since it shows you the whole image that the director intended when he shot the film. There are some DVDs when DVDs first came out (IIRC they were MGM movies) that took the Fullscreen version of the film (which was already Pan & Scanned) and then cropped it to fit in the Widescreen aspect ratio, so they were getting rid of a ton of the picture. Newly made DVDs typically won't do this though.
I’ve always had a sense that widescreen is better than full screen. I just didn’t know why until now when I just watched this video. Now, I feel confident enough to say that widescreen is in fact better than full screen.
Full Screen forever!
It was great seeing Michael Mann in this. That man knows how to use the geometry of the widescreen frame. He can cut it up and direct your eye to a specific corner of it while also being able to create beautiful compositions with the help of great cinematographers like Danté Spinotti.
This video shows my thoughts exactly. They really should start making 2.35:1 TVs; it's such a popular aspect ratio. The 2.35:1 TVs could have a panel on each side to slide over the sides of the screen so you can cover the pillarbox bars when watching 16:9 or 4:3 videos.
So many people think widescreen is achieved by having black bars cover up the top and bottom of the picture. This is far from the truth. Fullscreen pan-scans are made by hacking away the sides of the picture. So few know this.
People make the common mistake of thinking that there are only two aspect ratios...4:3 (square) and 16:9 (widescreen), but depending on the camera used, there are SEVERAL widescreen formats. A lot of those happen to be 16:9 so there won't be any black bars when watching on an HDTV, but the other widescreen formats will still have some black lines when watching on a HDTV. (but not as big as they would be if watching on a standard 4:3 TV screen)
Dumb question... but, how would a film with a full frame ratio look like on a widescreen TV? Do you get black bars on side?
@PeePulz If the picture looks stretched, that's a setting on your TV. There should be a button on your remote that changes the way the picture's displayed and can make it look normal.
And yes, anything above 1.85 will have black bars, because higher ratios are still wider than your TV and thus have to have the picture shrunk down, resulting in the black bars. There are many different aspect ratios with films, so no matter what your TV is like there will always be movies that show black bars.
@leevois many blu-ray players remove the black bars while still allowing it to be widescreen, while fullscreen has even more distracting bars on the side.
The solution to this problem of filling the TV screen while seeing entire picture is simple.
cut off the extreme edges and do an anamorphic squeeze...the picture is a little distorted but at least it fills the frame.
I do that on my ipod to fit the apple trailers on the screen.
I realize others joke about full screen being only half of a viewing experience, but that isn't the case. Ninety-nine percent of the televisions that you buy today are not square anymore. They are wide screen. In fact, I have the widest screen that you can buy, and I still can't avoid the black bars on top and bottom! What gives? With a widescreen TV and a full screen DVD or streaming video you still get to view pretty much everything, with very little being cut off.
If someday, my Xtoriez anthology gets turned into a movie, I will take it to the extreme. The black bars will cut off the actor's head from the top, and cut off everything up to the belly button from below-- then I will make it such a wide screen that not only does the main action play out in the center, but you will also see the cast and crew catering table on the right, as well as everything else all the way out to the actor's trailers in the parking lot on the left. Hollywood here I come!
the reason why u cant avoid the black bars is because some movies are filmed a little too wide for some TV screens.
joshuab36 I found that you can get rid of the black bars by hitting the 'zoom' button on your remote.
The reason that they're still black bars is because the film was filmed in 35 mm or something close to that. If you zoom in it will cut a little bit out of the sides.
> > > > The reason you see black bars on top and bottom of dvds AND blurays ? Its because there is no such thing as a widescreen bluray or dvd , after people got tired at laughing and pointing at PAN & SCAN or FULL SCREEN , turns out their beloved widescreen is only a zoomed portion of the full screen version
+ZEROREZ You have no idea what you're talking about.
thats why I love Blu-ray. All movies are in their original aspect ratio! NO FULLSCREEN!
which shinning are u talking about because the 80s version was in widescreen the tv movie is fullscreen i have both
lol thats what i do or when i get movies as gifts like i got some for christmas and there in full screen im made but i re bought them in widescreen now im happy
This comment section is just over 12 years old and the medium for viewing movies/tv has changed drastically. In the age of streaming, the average viewer wouldn't think twice about what's on screen.
@TheObfuscatedOne fullscreen is still modified from it's original version, it's still missing picture.
ot4kon, they're using older films because it is Turner Classic Movies, a channel that focuses on older films from it's heyday to some of todays.
Ah, my favourite argument to have...
absolutely love this documentary I have showed it to many people who don't believe widescreen is better
I believe this was made for or by TCM (Turner Classic Movies). They air it semi-frequently, if you want to try catching it off the broadcasts between movies. Or you might try contacting them -- they have a website. If you want it for classroom use or something like that, they might have a way to send you a copy.
i have widescreen movies on dvd but there are no bars when i watch them. does this mean it's full screen?
They forgot to mention that TV + VHS versions of many films have a thing called "open matte" where they leave extra picture on the top of bottom to not lose anything or just a little on the sides which catered very well for standard tvs. Back two years ago I would have preferred the fullscreen version of films.
I'm really glad they shoot hardly ANYTHING in CINEMA SCOPE anymore though since that is just way too WIDE for me personally since it comes in RIDICULOUSLY small on an old 4:3 and even small on modern day TV's that are 16:9 and would still come in small on the next gen TV's where they want to make them 21:9 which is what MOST of the JAMES BOND Movies and ALLOT of Other movies are shot in to.
multijamesbondfan Practically every film nowadays is still shot in 2.39:1 or 2.40:1 format (which is considered cinemascope).
Sometimes I would always wonder if I’m watching a movie in full screen on a square shaped tv for example how would a widescreen version be able to fit on the square shaped tv. I’m guessing the black bars are zoomed out to give the widescreen affect then zoomed all the way in to give the full screen affect
what is the last movie?
Anyone know what year this video was made? Martin Scorsece is looking really young!
+Instrumental Central
Early-mid '90s. I remember seeing it around the time I was in high school and it making me realize why aspect ratios were so important. I simply couldn't watch a damn pan and scan movie after that because I noticed it too much... it ruined my Ghostbusters videotape for me, until I could find a widescreen edition.
'Stand by to repel boarders!'
'How do you repel boarders?'
'Don't change the bed linen!!!! '
i have noticed that widescreen is made by a crop on the top and bottom of the movie camera, and of course fullscreen is the cropping of the sides of this image. in some movies they need to zoom out a little more so we can see everything better.
This sums up all of my thoughts on the subject. Pan and scan sickens me.
the whole reason that they wanted 16:9 is that all the picture ratios that they use can fit a 16:9 screen, yes your going to have black bars on the sides or the top and bottom, but your not losing picture. this whole video was about how pan and scan was re-editing these videos and not giving you the experience as the director originally intended, with a hd tv, yes your going to have black bars, but your not going to have to crop to get it on the screen.
One's you get settled with the movie or you already been absorbed on it., Fullscreen is just okay. Actually when I started watching some of my DVD in fullscreen...it doesn't matter anymore. But if you really A/V spectator or just a collector, Widescreen is the way to go.
The moral lesson here: watch the movie on its original aspect ratio. If your only after the movie...choose either Fullscreen or Widescreen.
On most TVs you can set it to do either, but usually the default is to have black bars on the sides so that it doesn't distort the image.
Most 1.85 (and the various "super 35" format) films are in fact shot open matte. But having screened film dailies on over 60 features I cannot once remember anyone wanting to see what's outside the 1.85 (or 2.39) projected area to check how that composition will look like.
That's not to say that later on when the video transfer is done they might not zoom back out a bit and show more headroom and footroom in order to avoid having to lose so much via P&S. And that can vary shot to shot.
i like full screen because you see the FULL screen!!!
You know, it makes me wonder: Since IMAX is the only major theatrical format that shows films in 4:3, I wonder how the old, pre-widescreen movies would look on there? Imagine: "Casablanca", "The Wizard of Oz", "Citizen Kane" -- all bigger than life again! :)
I think widescreen is cool. :D
Doesn't explain why 16:9 still shows black bars. Just shoot in 16:9 or give us TVs that display correctly!!!!
Theatrical films are shot wider than 16;9.
Good luck getting a TV that correctly displays every movie ever made.
TheTCOLL There's also tons of content shot in 4:3, so 16:9 gives both an equal letter/pillar boxing for the respective ratios.
www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-29UM68-P-ultrawide-monitor
www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-29UM68-P-ultrawide-monitor
@JayArgonaut it's a short that airs occasionally on turner classic movies.
Correct. Widescreen is better. I remember that Spielburg refused to release Raider Of The Lost Ark in Pan and Scan for VHS, but was forced to anyway.
I like full size just like the dvd
You're right that there is no point in making a 2:35:1 tv, but there are a lot of movie screens in that format and with a 16:9 screen, you only get minimum letter boxing. I love wide screen. It looks so much better then "full" screen
Same for Disney's Sleeping Beauty (1959), The Goonies (1985), 101 Dalmatians (1996), Ice Age (2002), etc.
Scorsese hit's the nail on the head when he says it's redirecting the movie. Pan and scan is absolutely horrendous.
@piofinn You know the "black bars" are the limitations of a square television screen in projecting a rectangular image, right? You're not actually losing any of the picture in wide screen.
What about animated films? And how do they manage to come to the same theater screen with different sizes
Thx
Widescreen is so better than full screen.
This also goes the other way around. I have some dvd's of movies that were shot in a 4:3 ratio, but were now cropped for display in widescreen TVs. And let me tell you, it's as frustrating as mutilated widescreen movies :U
Have tcm made any other docs about movies? This is really well made!
Who else makes good docs like this about filmmaking?
Widescreen is fine for movies, but some HD television shows just do not look right in widescreen (i.e: American Idol, The Price is Right) widescreen isn't always best, but for the movies showcased in this clip it is.
there are places you have to look on the net that show classic movie on theater screen i should know i saw the sound of music in a theater in la last year
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but what Scorsese says at 3:24 sounds like total nonsense. He claims that when you cut off the sides of a movie you have to blow up the image in order to fill the frame, which produces a more fuzzy picture. This makes no sense. If you put a pan and scan movie on DVD, you're using much more of the resolution that the DVD offers than you would with a letterboxed movie. There is no blowing up of the image. Sure, you're butchering the composition and I agree films should be presented in their intended aspect ratio, but the quality is not diminished by presenting a widescreen film in 4:3. It's actually worse since a large portion of the DVD's pixels are being used for the black bars.
It's true that Mr. Scorsese had it mixed up; zooming into the frame means that more of the available resolution of NTSC/PAL video was being put to use, of which DVD (of all home video systems for the NTSC/PAL standards) was technically most able to push to their limits.
However, as you know, you can't show the entire frame at once within the 4:3 aspect ratio when it comes to doing "fullscreen" transfers of features that were done in what I would call a hard widescreen format, such as features filmed in anamorphic processes like Panavision, CinemaScope, and Todd-AO 35.
To properly preserve the aspect ratio, the cost will be leaving a portion of the video resolution unused.
In my modest experience the top and bottom are occluded because they are not generally part of the framed shot when it is conceived. Action happening outside of the frame is generally considered to be irrelevant...
Saw Ben Hur a 3rd time because it was shown on a television network who never shows the pan and scanned versions.Where until then it had been on networks which never used letterbox formats. It would still be widescreen but pan and scanned to 16:9
Fullscreen is basically just cutting off the left and right sides of the images and showing you what's in the middle or what's the most important part of the full picture that they can fit on the screen and is zoomed in so what you do see is bigger but your not seeing everything, Widescreen shows you everything.
I pefer full screen because the black bars annoy me . However, most of the time, I don't care.
the irony of this being in 4:3 is wonderful
i think the problem here is that you don't know what resolution is. what actually happens when you take a widescreen movie and pan/scan it to fit on a 4:3 tv you're getting rid of the sides of the image and scaling what's left to fit the screen. there's actually less information, but it's displayed at a larger visual size, which makes the image softer and you lose detail.