Hello Everyone,
Watching another movie at home and the annoyance sets in. Once again the film is shot in letterbox format, but there are still bars on the top and bottom where the picture doesn’t fill the entire screen. I hit the button on the controller to adjust the picture large to fill the screen, yet when you do that you lose something either at the very top or very bottom of the screen and in some cases on the sides. Why is it there isn’t an absolute standard format among movies? All of the new TV’s seem to have the same ratio, I think it is 16:9 if memory serves. Is it really that difficult to set a standard format to shoot and produce movies in? I know that there is a reason, hoping someone here knows.
Sometimes, 2.39:1 is going to be better for composition. Maybe not for a romantic comedy where most of the action takes place in close quarters, but if you’re shooting something epic you may want extra width.
You need to let go of the idea that something is being wasted if the image doesn’t take up “all of the screen.” You’re looking at the whole image, as it was intended to be seen.
Thanks for the reply, but it really isn’t the thought of it being wasted. It is more that the presence of the bars is visually distracting, even though they are black. Perhaps I just don’t understand the movie business, I would just think making a format standard wouldn’t be that difficult.
16:9 is somewhat wider than the standard 35mm film aspect ratio of 1.37:1. However, films shot on anamorphic widescreen can have an aspect ratio of anywhere from 2.35:1 to as wide as 2.55:1. These will never fit on a 16:9 TV without letterboxing. Just be glad you’re not watching it on a 4:3 tube, like it was the stone ages or something.
ETA: Oops, I screwed the numbers up. Standard 35mm ratio is 1.85:1, which is a tiny bit wider than a 16:9 TV.
Movies aren’t shot for TV screens, they’re shot for movie screens. Movies have always been squished to fit onto the small screen; with widescreen TVs you get less wasted space than with old 4:3 TVs.
What’s really annoying is that my (inherited) TV seems to be 14:9. Standard 4:3 transmissions leave bars at the side, 16:9 widescreen broadcasts leave bars at top and bottom. How the hell did someone decide to make an LCD TV that fits precisely NONE of the common aspect ratios?
In the good old days when Casablanca was made Movies were shot in 1.37 to 1. When TV was first developed they chose about the same aspect ratio to match the movies. Movie companies in order to compete with TV and each other came out with a large number of wide screen formats. The movie industry wants you to go to movie theaters so they make it difficult to get the movie experience at home.
Okay, not to hijack my own thread, but perhaps my question should have been why with these beautiful new widescreen tv’s aren’t the manufacturers making them compatible with current movie formats. I realize that movies weren’t made to be shown on TV, however the new widescreen TV’s change that game. They are pretty much bigger than the tubes and display a movie in the wide format that was intended. So why when they made the TV’s, they choose not to produce them in a common format?
It’s quite simple but also a little stupid. There’s quite a bit of history (often boring) behind aspect ratios.
One of the original standards for ‘talkies’ was a 1.37 to 1 ratio. Then, TVs came along and were designed along a 4:3 ratio, which was reasonably close to the 1.37.
Movie studios noticed declining attendance for movies and decided this was not a good thing. So, then came a slew of different film sizes to get people to come to theaters and deliberately avoid having the same aspect ratio as TVs. Two of the more common today are the 1.85:1 and 2.39:1, though several others do exist.
So, it was not so much a problem of movie studios having a hard time finding a standard but trying to differentiate from TV, in the hopes you will come to the theater, rather than sit at home. Apparently, the strategy of annoying home viewers works to some degree, if you are complaining about it.
The new 16:9 ratio on HD TVs is, in many ways, a compromise. Although we have to deal with black bars, they are capable of showing stuff from pretty much any aspect ratio (old broadcast TV, new HDTV, old movies) with a minimum of wasted screen space. It doesn’t match any of them perfectly (except stuff designed explicitly for it) but it doesn’t mis-match too horribly for any of them.
If you do some web research on aspect ratios, you’ll notice that future standardized aspect ratios ARE being discussed, but there’s a lot of legacy tech and in-fighting about which standards to use.
Actually, I believe very few “theater” movies use the 16:9 ratio that is currently the standard for HDTV, the closest common format is 1.85:1. The format used typically reflects the preference of the director, which, in turn, often depends on the visual effects of the film,as Larry Mudd pointed out. However some directors also have their own individual quirks regarding format - for example, I believe that Steven Spielberg uses 1.85:1 exclusively.
They are, really. It’s a sensible aspect ratio. The thing is, people shoot in different aspect ratios, for different reasons. If you shoot Cinemascope-style, you can get striking compositions like this. …but you don’t necessarily want all movies to be shaped that way, and you certainly don’t want to watch the nightly news in that format. So the aspect ratio varies, and the benefit of this vastly outweighs “not using all of the screen.”
That’s the great thing about standards, there are so many to choose from.
Why pick on movies vs. TV? I notice that the video card on my computer offers me many different types of resolution, and the ratios include 1.25:1, 1.32:1, 1.66:1, 1.77:1 and 2.13:1. Shouldn’t we be asking why they don’t produce computers in a single format?
That doesn’t make sense. The computer can output any of these, so there’s something that matches the native aspect ratio of any display.
Movies and TV are produced at a single aspect ratio, which seldom matches the native aspect ratio of all displays.
Check the settings in your TV menu, many TVs have a manual adjustment for the vertical height. Maybe someone messed with yours?
I’m with the OP. I thought that once I updated all of my gadgets and came into the 21st century those annoying black bars at the top and the bottom would be gone. Nope.
You do understand that film-making is a creative art, right? And that whatever standardized format one tries to force on film-makers is going to be insufficient to achieve what some of them are trying to accomplish? One might go so far to say that imposing standards is the antithesis of creativity.
The thing to remember is that when you watch a movie on a TV screen, you are watching an approximation of what you were meant to be seeing.
Well, most of the new TVs have different viewing modes that allow you to watch without the black bars. You have to accept a cropped or stretched image in this case, though. My father enjoys this option, though I find the both the cropping and the stretching more annoying than the black bars.
TANSTAAFL
I’d rather they cropped off the edges of movies to make them 16x9, instead of having the black bars. They seem to offer choices of 4x3 and 2.35x1, but not 16x9.
Meek’s Cutoff (2010) was filmed in 1.33:1.
I saw a review for a movie just a week or two ago that was also in a square-ish format, but I can’t track it down.
The point: All movies are not filmed in a fixed aspect ratio.
I have no idea what is bothering people about the black bars. In case you hadn’t noticed, (good) movie theaters have curtains they move back and forth to cover unused screen. I don’t object to the curtains at the side of the screens. In fact, I like them better than the alternative of having something cut off at the top and bottom to avoid blank space.
Learn to love the bars. They are there for your viewing enjoyment.
Speaking strictly for myself, what bothers me is that the picture is smaller than it would be if they cropped the edges. I can zoom it myself, but the resolution isn’t as good as if it had been put on the DVD cropped and zoomed.
I’m also speaking of 16x9 widescreen TVs, although even for standard definition TVs, cropping to 16x9 and showing black bars will still give a bigger picture with better resolution than showing a 2.35x1 picture with enormous black bars.