Oh, Philster, you incompetent dweeb who has no understanding of the good, kind people who deign to shower you with artwork; you Philistine; you corrupter of the innocent and destroyer of creativity. Do you still operate under the delusion that people like you, with different tastes and different aesthetics, are equally worthy to those great ones? Do you still pretend that they have the least bit of time to waste on reasonable arguments and civility, when they’ve got their masturpieces to create?
You sad, sad soul. The sooner you recognize the futility of approaching them as a supposed equal, the better.
To clarify for those who choose to ignore the substantive section of my post and pick out only the one slightly snarky comment to which to react: I have no objection to the release of full frame versions of widescreen movies. Nor do I object to people viewing and appreciating these versions in their homes. I don’t understand it, but I don’t object to it.
To say that people who admittedly don’t care about the “art” of a movie lack aesthetics to fully appreciate it and don’t respect the artistic vision that went into it’s creation isn’t acting superior, it’s merely being descriptive.
Give those who see movies solely as entertainment what they want, and those of us who see it as art what we want, and I’ll be satisfied.
I didn’t care about the difference in prints of movies until one day I watched someone carry on a conversation with an elbow (it was a long time ago and I was probably “chemically enhanced” so I don’t remember the movie), somehow I thought that I was missing something.
Originally Posted by Ilsa_Lund
Sometimes, I get up and wonder what the meaning of life is. Then I yell “Goddamnit Ralph! Clean up the fucking cottage cheese!”
Me too, especially since I don’t know if Ilsa Lund is quoting something or having an attack of Tourettes.
Ah, playground reasoning. You’ve made a big mistake there, Bucko. I work with seven year olds, so I know the proper response to really put you in your place. Prepare to be devastated by my superior knowledge of this school or rhetoric:
Yeah, yeah, Monty. Arguments also aren’t simply ipse dixit ad nauseum. You keep making these obnoxiously arrogant, holier-than-thou claims, and when called on it, you say, “I’m not acting superior, I’m just telling it like it is.” That’s such sanctimonious bullshit that it didn’t dignify a real response.
When you resort to personal accusations without including any substantive reasoning, you’ve pretty much conceded the argument.
This is the exact statement to which you refer as “obnoxiously arrogant, holier-than-thou claims”:
Let’s see which part of that is arrogant and holier-than-thou.
I identify three groups that prefer full screen:
People who lack understanding: There are people who simply don’t understand that a full-screen version of a widescreen movie usually shows less, not more, of the picture. It’s fairly obvious that doesn’t apply to anyone posting this thread.
Several posters, including you, have expressed apathy or even downright hostility towards the idea of appreciating the “art” involved in a movie. I paraphrase that as a lack of aesthetics. Dictonary.com’s first defenition for aesthetics is: The branch of philosophy that deals with the nature and expression of beauty, as in the fine arts.
A person who is apathetic about or hostile to the artistic merit of a work of art by their own description lacks an aesthetic appreciation of it. Substitute “rap music” in the above, and you have me. Substitute “movies”, and you have several people in this thread.
People who lack the proper equipment: Your own post indicates that widescreen movies don’t look right on your screen because the picture is so small that you lose details. Equipment that is inadequate for or not designed for a particular task, whatever that task may be, can fairly be described as improper. A heavy wrench will drive a nail, but that doesn’t make it the proper tool for the job.
I describe PnS movies as “circumcised”. That seems a perfect metaphor to describe something that has had a portion of it’s end cut off.
Finally, I characterize those who prefer widescreen as respecting the creators’ vision. The vast majority of directors and cinematographers prefer that their movies be seen widescreen. Viewing a work of art the way it’s creator wants it to be viewed is respecting it. Ignoring the creator’s wishes isn’t.
Beyond that, if you read my posts for their content rather than looking for something to slam, you might see that I agree with you. I think the best solution is to provide both versions on a single dvd so that the consumer can choose the version that is best for their enjoyment. Two in one is far better than seperate releases, because it allows those who get it for the full screen version to display the widescreen when they eventually upgrade to the widescreen tv’s that will become standard in the foreseeable future.
Why hasn’t anyone mentioned Star Trek IV yet? Kirk and Spock in the back of a car with a woman between them, talking. There’s not time to pan from one to the other between lines, so you end up looking at a shaky picture of a silent woman while hearing Kirk and Spock speak.
Incorrect. I’d elaborate, but i assume your computer has a scroll bar, and you can verify for yourself that this is incorrect.
Kindly quote where I’ve expressed this. Because I absolutely don’t feel this way.
Wrong. My television is designed for watching moving visual images with accompanying sound. It performs this function properly. It displays full-screen versions of movies in a way I find more appealing than the way it displays wide-screen movies. This doesn’t make it inadequate for watching movies, just inadequate for watching widescreen movies.
It’s a terrible metaphor. Movies have no neurological system. Widescreen movies have a different part of the frame chopped off from what fullscreen movies have chopped off – remember that the director frames each shot from the larger frame of film. Fullscreen movies don’t have a better chance of getting blowjobs than widescreen movies. Widescreen movies don’t produce smegma. And circumcised penes are not inferior to circumcised penes, which seems to be the point of your metaphor.
Show me some stats, and I’ll give you this one. You’re wrong so often in this post that it ain’t gonna be a freebee, though. Even if I give it to you, I suspect that most directors also prefer that their movies be seen fullscreen if the alternative is that their movies aren’t seen at all; directors have to eat too, you know. The issue is more complicated than film school is teaching you.
Practically, sure, you agree with me. Your sanctimonious attitude is downright nauseating.
In this case, I will elaborate: this wasn’t the latest statement of yours that pissed me off, not your latest sanctimonious tripe. It was, however, one of your earlier snarky comments. In this instance, you were half-right.
“You keep making these obnoxiously arrogant, holier-than-thou claims, and when called on it, you say, “I’m not acting superior, I’m just telling it like it is.” That’s such sanctimonious bullshit that it didn’t dignify a real response.”
There are the personal accusations to which I referred, accompanied by an admission by you that you’d provided no “real response.”
Here’s the problem. I’ve said nothing that I intended to indicate that I feel superior in some way to those who prefer PnS. If you’re reading them that way, either you’re being thin-skinned and overreacting, or I’ve made an error in how I’m presenting my argument. Though I believe it’s more likely the former, I’m willing to consider the latter, so that I might avoid doing it again in future discussions. To do that, you’d have to be specific about which statements you feel contain this attitude.
I inferred from "There is no morality involved, no paean to the sanctity of artwork (remember, directors: if you don’t want your movie whored out, don’t finance it through a whorish studio). " and “I’m just an ignorant ass, incapable of appreciating the true grandeur of an artiste’s vision!” that you didn’t generally view movies as an art form or respect the artists desires. Given the content of your current post, I see I was mistaken in that belief, and I apologize for including you in that group.
There are others, however, who have expressed exactly the sentiment I described.
My statement was, “Sure, offer people who lack . . . proper equipment”. I thought it would be clear that this was referring to the proper equipment for displaying widescreen movies. You say in this post that your equipment is inadequate for that purpose. I don’t thing theres a big jump from inadequate to improper, but if that is what was bothering you about that statement, I will happily amend it to, “offer those who lack . . . adequate equipment.”
Nope. My point, which I elaborated already, was that both have a portion removed from the end. A metaphor needn’t be an exact parallel in every detail. And it’s poor form to attribute to me motives that clearly aren’t there, as I’ve already explained the intent of that statement once, quite clearly.
No statistics, just anecdotal. I’ve read and seen commentaries by many directors who hate it, including Steven Speilberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Richard Donner (all members of the Artists Rights Foundation), David Fincher, and only one, Stanley Kubrick, who prefers it. David Lean was somewhat on the fence; in a statement of his regarding Lawrence of Arabia he preferred the P n S version to the widescreen for smaller standard televisions for the same reasons you mentioned before.
It seems common sense to me that in the absense of contrary evidence, the AR in which the movie was created is the one preferred by the creators.
I suspect you’re right there.
Once again, you attribute to me an attitude I do not feel.
This method is called “open matte”. Movies filmed for a 1.85:1 ration are filmed on standard 35mm stock, with a standard ration lens, and hard matted in the theater to the proper ratio. This involves metal screens at the top and bottom of the projector that block those portions of the frame from being seen. When transferred to dvd, only the middle portion is transferred, with the top and bottom portions that are blocked in the theater left out. This is called “soft matte”.
During the transitional period from Academy ratio to widescreen, there were movies that were filmed in 4:3, then matted down in theaters to create the impression that they were the widescreen movies. Chopping off the top and bottom of such a movie (The Searchers for example), is just as damaging to the film as chopping off the sides of a movie filmed in widescreen. For example, late in the film, John Wayne has located the tribe that has his neice. The younger guy (don’t remember his name right now) is sent in to try to rescue her. He’s dangled and dropped from a ledge to the ground below. In the proper, full frame version, you can see that the ground is about 15-20 feet below, making the jump dangerous but not rediculously so. The matted version blocks out the place where he lands, making it look as if he’s being dropped a huge distance.
More modern examples include Robocop, and The Little Mermaid. These were created with the Europeaon standard of 1.66:1, but many theaters either didn’t understand or didn’t have the proper equipment to matte these for that ratio, so they had portions blotted out at the top and bottom of the screen to make them appear to be 1:85:1. I find this just as objectionable as pan n scan.
Most of the time, however, movies filmed for 1:85:1 are filmed using a full frame, but with the intent of showing only the top and bottom portions of the film. In my first post, I identify one example of how this can ruin the shot composition (in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure). Here’s another: In Body Heat, William Hurt is seen by a little girl approaching Kathleen Turner. He’s later accused of rape. The little girl who saw him describes seeing his genetalia. In the matted version, Hurt can be seen nude from the waist up, it’s easy to infer that he’s completely naked. The open matte version indeed shows more; it shows that Hurt was wearing boxers during the scene. As this was clearly not the intent of the shot, based on the little girl’s later statements, showing it ruins the shot just as much as cutting the sides from an anamorphic widescreen.
Directors often use a special camera that has the center area of the frame marked off so that they know where the “safe” filming area is. If you’ve ever been in a theater, and seen frequent shots of boom mikes or absent ceilings, it’s most likely because the director disregarded these when filming because they were in the top area that would be matted in the theater, and the projectionist has misframed the film in such a way that too much shows at the top.
One more example. In the original, Back to the Future video release, an open matte print was used for all shots not having special effects. There are a lot of full body shots. Matted to 1:85:1, the figures have their feet relatively close to the bottom and heads relatively close to the top; ie the headroom and footroom in the shot is right. The open matte shots show more of the frame as filmed, but it’s entirely dead space; what’s more, it radically changes the depth of field; the figures appear much further away than was intended. The director, Robert Zemekis, hated this. The deluxe dvd set has only widescreen versions of the movies. But they screwed up on the first two movies, and the technician who was doing the transfer showed a few seconds from a few scenes too high, ruining at least a couple of visual jokes. This upset Zemekis enough that he pressured the studio to replace the faulty discs, which they eventually did, for free.
Though open matte is less problematic than pan n scan, I still believe that it damages any film not specifically filmed and framed for 4:3 ratio. Many of disney’s live action movies from the 70’s (which usually starred Kurt Russel) fit this description. They were intended to play for a short period of time in the theaters, where they were matted to appear widescreen, then very quickly appeared on tv in open matte full frame versions. Nobody I know of has a problem with this, as it was the intent from the beginning.
So yes, I agree that widescreen isn’t always superior to full screen. But to my eye, Pan n scan nearly always looks awful compared to widescreen.