I’ve tried tried tried to explain the difference to various and sundry folks over the years, telling them that they’re actually seeing the entire movie only when they watch it in the original aspect ratio (be it 1.33:1, 1.85:1 or 2.35:1, or any of the other weird seldom used ones). Invariably, I am confronted with “I don’t like those black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. I want to see the whole movie.” At which point we loop around the Moebius and begin again. I have used every example I know of to convince people to turn away from the Dark Side of Full Screen, yet not one convert have I made.
Has anyone ever had any success in converting someone?
And for those of you who prefer Full Screen, could you please explain yourselves?
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Convert them? Sure, you just need the right converter. They probably have 'em at Circuit City.
Seriously, though, some people are just distracted by those ‘bars’, even if they realize they’re seeing the whole picture. Everyone I’ve talked to who prefers fullscreen actually knows the edges get clipped off, they just feel like they’re not seeing the whole thing when it’s in widescreen. Now, if they really think that they’re not seeing the whole movie, even after you explain that to them, I don’t know there’s anything you can (or need to) do.
And for the record, as was beat to death in this thread, a few movies are actually shot in fullscreen and cropped to widescreen for the theater.
I prefer wide screen, but I have no interest in converting people to my way of thinking (akin to religion). Many people find the black bars distracting, especially if on a smaller Television and I respect their opinion. They have no reason to care about what they’re missing if they don’t know what their missing – and let’s face it, most of what they’re missing is merely an expanded background; pan and scan is more than sufficient for these folks.
I converted my wife from preferring full-screen to widescreen. The best way to demonstrate the difference is to get ahold of the same movie in wide- and full-screen versions. Find a shot in the wide-screen version in which something of importance is happening on both the far-right and far-left areas of the screen simultaneously. Then find the same shot on the full-screen version and compare.
Actually, what convinced my wife that widescreen was better was watching a store-bought copy of a movie that we had previously recorded from TV. The pan-and-scan was slightly different in some shots, effectively masking some of what we had long been accustomed to seeing. She found it so irritating that she became a wide-screen afficienado overnight.
Note that some movies are shot with full-screen in mind, so instead of chopping off the sides to fit the TV screen’s ratio, they crop the top and bottom off of the picture for the wide-screen version. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was done this way.
There was a thread on this topic a few weeks back, but I wasn’t able to find it using the search. Maybe someone else who remembers can post a link.
In one of the responses in the other thread there was a link to a website that showed both the wide screen and full screen shots from some popular movies.
With some movies that have the on screen choice of full vs wide screen, they’ll give you a screen shot to help you see the difference. The Usual Suspects may be one of these. The most convincing ones are the ones that show several people standing shoulder to shoulder. In the wide screen, it will show all the people, in full screen you will see what it looks like with the edges clipped off. It’s hard to explain, but when you see it, it makes a lot of sense. It shows people what happens when you take a wide screen movie and make it 4:3.
I have a couple of movies that have both widescreen and fullscreen on the same DVD. The best example I found with a few minutes of searching is in Reservoir Dogs, the scene at the hideout where they’re all pointing guns at each other. In the widescreen version, you see the whole thing from Nice Guy Eddie’s left shoulder to the doorway beyond Mr. Orange’s feet as he’s lying on the floor. In fullscreen, you see from Eddie’s shoulder to Mr. Orange’s waist. It does change the feel of the scene quite a bit.
Some (most?) action movies would probably be able to illustrate the differences pretty well. the Normandy invasion scenes in Saving Private Ryan come to mind.
Tell people that in the near future, pretty much all tv’s sold will be 16:9 as opposed to 4:3. So all the dvd’s that they have that are fullscreen now, will have bars on the right and left instead of top and bottom.
I have always bought Widescreen mostly because I prefer to see the version the director intended. Pan and scan can also be a little annoying. I could care less what others prefer though, I have had issues with my family only because I have a very extensive dvd collection and when they borrow a movie they always ask me if the movie “will have those stupid bars on the top and the bottom”.
Mostly by accident I converted my brother, all I did was explain why I like widescreen and he happened to agree. He feels about movies much the same way I do so it was a pretty easy conversion, hell I didn’t do it on purpose.
I converted my girlfriend, which is good. I’m not really sure how it happened, though. I’d explained to her in the past about the difference, and she still preferred the pan & scan versions. Only once, when buying her a movie, did I sink to buying the P&S version (that was for How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, a movie I realized I wasn’t ever going to watch of my own free will anyway).
But then, months went by where I can’t even remember the issue coming up. And one day, while talking about DVDs in the car, she mentioned that she was starting to like widescreen movies better. I’m not sure what changed her mind; we watch a lot of movies together, and all of mine are widescreen, so I guess they just sort of slowly grew on her.
So, I don’t know what the trick is. I guess you should just expose the person to widescreen films for a long time, and eventually they may see the light.
I prefer widescreen versions, mostly because it slows down the editing. The pan-n-scan versions have a lot of additional cuts and jumps and pans during dialogue that give the movie a much more nervous feel, instead of the standard no-cuts two-shot that the director originally filmed. When the camera bops back and forth, it drives me nuts.
Watch the pan-n-scan version of “Ghostbusters” and see just how often Harold Ramis is cut out of the frame. Oh, and a great example of the difference between widescreen and fullscreen is “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.” Amazing.
ok, i have a prollem. i got a dvd the other day and i got it in widescreen. after about 20 mins of it, i immediately became a widescreen fan. is there anything i can do, other than returning it?
Ghostbusters might be the worst pan-n-scan movie EVER. We owned an older copy of the videotape, and it was so jarring to watch those transitions every time. I love the movie and I know it pretty damn well, so I could always tell what was missing from the frame. The widescreen Special Edition DVD was one of the first DVDs I bought, needless to say. And I still have the video, just to demonstrate in case anyone ever comes over and complains about “the black bars.”
Well, when you don’t have a giant TV and our old eyes won’t take being 3 feet from the screen so you can make out the expressions of the sctors, makes the idea of losing 1/3 of the size of the people kinda hard to take. Now if all you young folks with great eyes and giant TV’s are gonna buy me a new TV, well I might change my mind.
