Full-Screen

Oh yes, an exposed raw nerve that forces me to respond with Untouchables quotes and sarcastic smilies. The seething anger, I can barely contain it....


You can surely follow 60% of a book too, if the main narrative is left in tact but more abstract things are excised. I didn't mean four out of every ten pages would be ripped out randomly, or four of every ten words, that's not the analogy. It's the Reader's Digest version if you will, keeping the general thrust of the story but taking away the arc and the color and the specifics. If you don't think the visual elements of a film are equivalent to that, then the analogy truly doesn't work for you, but that's what it is.

You don't need to see the entire frame of what the director and cinematographer composed, you don't need to see all the elements they deliberately put together to convey mood and emotion and nuance. Hell you can "watch" a movie while multi-tasking, hardly glancing up at the TV screen at all, and for most flicks you'd very much understand the basics of the narrative and the performances. But assume for a second you're not watching a sitcom, grant that a great or even good film does more than just tell a simple story. It's not just a radio play with moving pictures. There are reasons for the images as they are, completely as they are. Or at least there damn well should be. Not in your basic Adam Sandler movie maybe, I'll admit, but by and large, yeah, that's what movies do.

Or not. WhatEVER. If any of that, including and especially my tone, comes off as rude or elitist in your eyes, so be it.

Oh, I am SO mad!



There. You've been trying to bait me into a "debate" for weeks. All you had to do was center it on movies in some way.

Happy now?

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Give in to your hate.


It's not that I don't think the visual elements of a film are equivalent -- it's that they simply aren't. Not every inch of of the screen is wholly deliberate in its contents. With a book, every word is specifically written. The analogy falls flat. Does full screen suck? Sure. Is it at all the same as what you're describing? Nah-uh.


"Then you should definitely change your name from 'moviefan', because it's woefully inaccurate.

Here are some examples of the kinds of visual and contextual information you're missing through your ignorance..."

There's really no "in my eyes" here. See my last post for more information.


Intended as little more than a paper airplane to the back of the teacher's head, in a sense. I'm not dumb enough to expect you to bite. It's little more than a timekiller, but if it particularly annoys you, just say the word, hummingbird.

I don't quite understand the full cinematics of movies. I like to WATCH the movies. Sorry to all who I offened but I never really got into the difference of Full Screen or Wide screen and such. I took a film making class in high school but all we used was the editing machine with vhs tapes. Sorry.
Holden, you are a very educated and opinionated person. I respect how you feel and you express it very clearly.
Yoda, i don't know if you were defending me, but if you were thanks, if not...that is ok.

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Plus a lady fan of PimpDaShizzle V2.0 and Most importantly JRS

I'll bring the guns, but could I get someone to volunteer to supply transportation? Bring on the pain!

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Allow me to demonstrate the difference

Allow me to demonstrate the difference between an incomplete post and a complete post.

Holden (or anyone) can you please post a link to a website (possibly the one where you got the screenshots) where I can read up on this sort of thing, I'm very interested.

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i tried to convince my friends in high school what they were missing in the pan n scan version. they wouldnt here of it. they thought widescreen was to small because it didnt fill the whole screen.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, The Atombrain Guide to Letterboxing is an excellent primer that will give the basics in an easy to swallow way.

Another good resource with plenty of examples and lots of links is The Letterbox & Widescreen Advocacy Page.



Enjoy.

Only recently the studios have been hyjacking the term FULL SCREEN instead of using the previous term of PAN & SCAN (which I prefer to call pan & scam).

For films shot originally in widescreen, the director and editor work together to present an image to force the eye of the audience to a specific storyline.

If the widescreen film were to be cut to a pan and scam TV box version, then the character-driven film becomes a snapshot rather than a photograph.

We had friends over for dinner last night, and then had just finished renting a VHS tape of Harry Potter. They did not care for the film. I suggested they view it in full widescreen on a home theater screen, which could make all the difference in the world.

Not to confuse widescreen versus full screen, many films are shot in full screen and then the editors mask out the top and bottom to provide a widesreen effect. Again, the director wanted the eye of his/her audience to concentrate on the characterization of what was presented. Why? Because too much information on a screen becomes distracting, like a newscaster speaking into a camera with a crowd in the wide background making monkey faces. So if the camera cannot zoom in a little closer to mask out the background distraction, a film editor can achieve a similar affect in the editing room.

Years ago I believed that all theatrical films were shot in widescreen. It was not until I read up on the reasons why full screen is a popular choice among directors, and gives them the choice to leave it it full, or to mask it to present it in widescrteen.

FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON, filmed in full screen, yet the opening titles were masked for widescreen.

BILLY JACK, shot in widescreen and butchered later by the actor/producer because he didn't want to invest $60,000 to restore the widescreen.

WALKING TALL BOX SET, which I just ordered, was shot in full screen (to my delight, because I thought it went the way of Billy Jack in a butchered version). So I wil see all there is to see.

TOM CRUISE/NICOLE film(s), shot in full screen at times.

Earliest widescreen films? Around 1953-1954-1955. These were the transition years. So when I order a classic western, I usually go to www.imdb.com and look up the specifics.

HBO MOVIES? Lately they have been widescreen, but some are shot in full screen.

DRIVING MISS DAISY: Released in pan and scam cut version. Latest release is widescreen.

BONNIE AND CLYDE: Released in pan and scam cut version. Latest release is widescreen.

Most of the $5.88 DVD movies on sale at stores are pan and scam versions, making room for new releases in widescreen. But I have picked up some widescreen editions at that cost.

All the best,

Jeremy

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Thanks for that Jeremy, by the way are you in any way related to Holden ????

You mean Bill? (William Holden?)

No, but I met with him several times after high school before his death.

I hate that panning thing movies do....
They do it on a lot of movies that they put on tv.
I know that in A League of Their Own they do it.
Why
By the way.... I got another DVD that gives the option of wide or full in it, instead of buying one or the other.

which movie...just curious.

The last two DVDs I bought both have wide & fullscreen formats: Desert Heat (Jean Claude Van Dam movie, no explanation needed why I bought that now), and As Good As It Gets.

Maid in Manhatten and I also believe The Friday After Next

I wonder how they pan & scan Jennifer Lopez's behind.

(Jean Claude Van Dam has a better one.)

Oh...sorry for the confusion.
The option of full screen or wide screen, came with Maid in Manhatten and Friday After Next.
I Don't see much of the panning effect in current movies ( I could be missing something), I see it on tv (when they put older movies on tv). Can someone tell me why they do panning, i find it to be distracting.

Check out the links I provided earlier in the thread, look at their explanations.

In a true widesceeen image, the compositions often use the whole frame. Since only about 60% of that image is going to be used for the TV reformatting, somebody has to pick and choose which 40% is going to be excised. In this Mummy example...



One of those three characters is going to be cut out of the scene. On a line of dialogue, they may choose to add an artifical pan, to show the character they decided to excise but has now become more important to the scene. The other option is to cut it so there's no panning, but the image will now focus on the other two characters. These pans and these cuts were not developed by the director, editor or cinematographer, but artifically imposed by formatting for a standard-sized TV screen.

A third option, though rarely done anymore, is to squeeze the image, making it look very odd and even more distracting than pans and scans. This was usually done for opeing credit sequences, though often now they'll letterbox, or at least partially letterbox, for the credits, then go into pan & scan for the body of the flick. I guess all those producers and actors wanted their names able to be read. Too bad they don't seem to care as much about the entire film's composition.


Pick up the S.E. DVD of Die Hard sometime. It has a good walk-through of all this in the special features.

Now i get it