I think you’re missing my point. The film was shot with the intent that it would later be matted, and the matting was done with the approval (and likely the supervision) of the director and cinematographer. Therefore, that’s the way I want to see it. What I don’t want to see is the second-rate frame shuttling of some Scorsese wannabee at Warner Home Video.
Matting the frame under the direction of the filmmakers is just part of the process of making a complete film, no different from editing or looping dialogue.
What you describe is preferable to traditional fullscreen transfers (since nothing is cut out), but still not the way I want to watch the movie. Perhaps we should make a distinction between “fullscreen” and “pan and scan” transfers. Fullscreen of the type you describe is fine, I suppose, but I’d still rather see it as the filmmakers originally intended, and typically they don’t want the stuff under the mats to appear on the screen.
One notable exception to all this is Stanley Kubrik, who, I understand, shot his movies with 4:3 screens in mind and preferred releasing his movies in that aspect ratio when they went to home video. Since that’s what he wanted, I don’t have a problem with it.
And I’ll repeat, director James Cameron, like Stanley Kubrick, preferred that the home video release of Titanic be full screen, not widescreen.
And yojimboguy, I said the Titanic was shot in full screen, meaning what is called Academy Standard. I did not specify a screen ratio of 4:3, which hasn’t been used in Hollywood feature production since 1931.
But to be specific, Titanic was shot in Super 35 (except for the underwater documentary footage of the wreck, which was shot in Techniscope). Super 35 shoots with a regular, non-anamorphic, spherical lens on an unmatted 35mm negative.
This was discussed in the home video section of Entertainment Weekly’s issue of 11 September 1998.