People, sad to report that you all better get used to it. Another generation
and 16.9 will be the standard ratio for everything - old and new. This is
not just me talking, this is what I am hearing direct from industry
insiders.
In Australia, the Foxtel monopoly cable broadcaster already shows virtually
all 2.35/2.40 in 16.9. There is no choice.
Phil
----- Original Message -----
From: "McDaniel Kirby" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, June 12, 2009 12:36 AM
Subject: [MOPO] Slightly OT: HD DVD pan and scan
This is by Glenn Erickson from the website DVD Savant:
Hello! Well, Savant has run into something worth complaining about! I
DVR'd MGMHD's Hi-Def cablecast of Michael Powell's The Red Shoes a couple
of days ago and discovered something very disturbing. Ever since about
1970 or so I've been a regular whiner about the practice of Pan-Scanning
widescreen movies for flat televisions, pointing out ruined compositions,
squeezed title sequences and the famous shots where we see people's noses
on each side of the frame while the Pan Scan stays firmly planted on a
table lamp at screen center. The ability to see movies in their real
aspect ratios is what pulled me into the expensive hobby of laserdisc
collecting; as I'm sure I've said too many times, I bought a 16:9
television in 1995, two years before enhanced DVDs came around, for the
express purpose of cropping full-frame transfers of movies that were
supposed to be matted for widescreen. Now, in 2009, widescreen TVs are
finally the norm and the transition is complete.
Except with what I saw with the 1948 The Red Shoes, a flat 4x3 1:37
aspect ratio feature film. MGMHD was showing it Tilt-Scanned to 1:78.
Somebody decided that Powell's classic looked nice at the wider ratio,
you know, to fill widescreen TV screens. MGM pillar-boxed The Quatermass
Xperiment full-frame, when it should be at least as wide as 1:66, and now
they've taken it upon themselves to chop up a widely acknowledged
classic. The Red Shoes is a ballet movie, and the first thing that
happens in many shots is that feet cross the line out of the bottom of
the frame. Masking off feet in a dance movie is a serious problem, to say
the least. When Powell and cameraman Jack Cardiff get fancy with mattes,
double exposures and strange angles, the Tilt-Scanning makes it difficult
to locate our intended focus. This movie has just had a major restoration
/ repremiere, and doesnot need to be "reformatted" to fit our TV
screens".
So for heaven's sake, someone sic Martin Scorsese, Thelma Schoonmaker and
the disc producers at Criterion on these people ... let's not let
Tilt-Scanning get a foothold on HD video!
Kirby McDaniel
www.movieart.net
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