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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Author
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Topic: Projectionist test
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Stephen Furley
Film God
Posts: 3059
From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England
Registered: May 2002
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posted 05-02-2005 08:15 PM
quote: Michael Brown
I'm in England and all the cinemas I've visited project at 1.85:1
What countries actually use this standard?
Michael, it's not really a country thing in the sense that, for example, you could say that Germany uses 1.66 while Iran uses 1.85. You could find a 1.66 film from many countries, while many other films from those same countries would be in different ratios. You could say that 1.66 was less common in America and Asia than in Europe (I'm not sure about other parts of the World), and it seems to be less common now than it was in the past. A new 1.66 film would be most likely to come from mainland Europe, but in the past there have been plenty of British films at that ratio.
Wide screen films go back a long way. In the earliest days there were no standards, but within a few years 35mm film, and the 1.33 A.R silent frame became just about universal. With the coming of sound on film most, but not all, of the proposed standards retained the 35mm film, but reduced the frame width to make room for the track, reducing the A.R to around 1.1 something. This almost square picture was not liked, and so the height of the frame soon tended to be reduced to bring it back close to the old silent frame. The 1.37 Academy frame was standardised in about 1931, I think.
In the '20s people were thinking about widescreen film. Fox Grandeur had an A.R. of 2:1, and there were other wide film processes with similar ratios. Alberini (Sp?) was running 35mm film horizontally, with ten perforations I think, somebody else was trying to do it on the cheap by using a 2-perf frame, and there were suggestions of making the picture a 'more artistic' shape with normal film by masking down the projector aperture. Nothing's new! All of these ideas were revived a quarter of a century later, but at that time sound caught on, and widescreen was forgotten about for a while.
With the coming of Cinerama, Cinemascope, VistaVision, Todd-AO etc. in the '50s people wanted a cheap way of making widescreen films, and so the idea of masking down the projector aperture was revived; it was simple and cheap, and could even be applied to films already in production in Academy format. Various ratios were used, 1.66, 1.75, 1.85 and 2, possibly others. Different studios tended to adopt different ratios.
There are several problems with this:
It wastes a lot of the film area, not a good idea when moving to wider, hopefully bigger, screens.
The wider the ratio (and the bigger the screen image if using movable side masking) the smaller the frame area, and the dimmer the image,
With several different ratios in use, the film was likely to get projected in the wrong one. Gradually 1.66 and 1.85 got adopted as standards, while the others were dropped. With hindsight, it's a pitty that 1.75 wasn't adopted, as it's very close to the 16:9 of widescreen video.
If you run only current production, mainstream film, then you probably won't see 1.66, but anywhere with a broader programming policy probably will. I think (somebody correct me if I'm wrong on this) 'A Clockwork Orange' is 1.66, to name one well-known title, so it's not just obscure stuff.
A typical British Art-House venue can usually show 1.37, 1.66, 1.85 and 'Scope, while most multiplexes only have the latter two, because the type of films they run are normally in those ratios.
One problem is that cans and leaders, at least in this Country, are often not marked with the intended ratio, or are marked incorrectly. Sometimes you can find the correct information, but sometimes you can't, or you get conflicting information, and you just have to use your best judgement. It's not very satisfactory. A few months ago I had to ask in this forum for the correct rato for a film; 'The Birds' I think it was. I received conflicting replies, 1.66 and 1.85. In the end I ran it at 1.66, but I'm still not sure if this was correct.
I normally try to run a film at the correct ratio, but there are cases where it can be useful to run what is supposed to be a 1.85 film at 1.66. Subtitled films often cause problems. Sometimes the subtitles are printed very low on the frame, and will be partly cropped at 1.85. Obviously this is unacceptable. If you adjust the framing to show the subtitles correctly, then there is obvious cropping at the top of the picture. In this case running at 1.66 and showing slightly more than was intended at the botton of the frame is the best that you can do.
There have been two films in recent months which have simply looked wrong at 1.85, but were supposed to be in that ratio. The first was 'The Station Agent' There was a discussion about it here. There were some strangely-worded instructions provided with the print about how it was to be framed, which proved to be impossible to follow exactly. After seeing the film once at 1.85 I decided that it just didn't look right, and I ran it at 1.66 for the next show.
The second film was 'The Corporation'. This contains material from various sources, both film and video. There were extracts from '50s and '60s 16mm instructional type films which were printed the full width of the frame, and therefore seriously cropped at the top and bottom at 1.85. In some cases complete words of text were almost entirely missing, just a small part of the characters being visible at the very edge of the picture. There were also several places in the film where a small 1.33 picture is shown within an outer frame, like watching a video monitor. This outer frame is strangly cropped at 1.85, and I'm sure it wasn't intended to look like that. Again, the film looked much better at 1.66. Both films were hard-matted to something wider than 1.37, but 'The Corporation' had just a couple of shots which were hard-matted about to 1.75, and which therefore had narrow black bars top and bottom at 1.66, while 'The Station Agent' was matted to something slightly wider than 1.66, so I had to adjust the framing and drop the top masking by a few inches.
I believe that 'The Station Agent' was originated on Super-16, while 'The Corporation' came from many different formats. My guess would be that both films may have been composed for 16:9 video. I have seen both in that form, and in both cases the picture fills the screen, and there is more visible than there was with film at 1.85. If my guess is correct then this is probably a problem we will see more of in future.
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William Hooper
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1879
From: Mobile, AL USA
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-03-2005 01:30 AM
quote: Stephen Furley
Wide screen films go back a long way. In the earliest days there were no standards, but within a few years 35mm film, and the 1.33 A.R silent frame became just about universal. With the coming of sound on film most, but not all, of the proposed standards retained the 35mm film, but reduced the frame width to make room for the track, reducing the A.R to around 1.1 something. This almost square picture was not liked, and so the height of the frame soon tended to be reduced to bring it back close to the old silent frame
The 1.1 sound-on-film picture was usually referred to as the Movietone format.
It was not liked because it had to share the screen with the full-frame formats, & was a technical nightmare in the days before standardization of moveable masking in theaters running a mix of full-frame (silent & sound on disc) & 1.1 sound-on-film. The optical centers were different for sound on film and SOF & silent, theaters had all sorts of contraptions switching lenses, moving lenses, & changing aperture plates, & most theaters were just cutting off the top of the sound-on-film movies to fit them on the screen. As a result, cameramen then had to compose in a safe area:
From the 4/1/1932 Motion Picture Herald article "NEW FRAME SIZE FOR PROJECTORS TO BECOME EFFECTIVE MMEDIATELY":
quote:
The uniform aperture practice study had its inception in 1929, with a survey of new practices in projection that had developed as a result of the placing of the sound track on motion picture film.
This survey revealed that immediate coordination of practice was necessary, though there was still so much full frame disc release that it was too early to attempt standardization.
As a temporary measure the Academy established a "Recommended Practice," specifying that in photographic composition all vital action be kept within a rectangle marked on the camera glasses, of such size that the picture would not suffer when projected through a reduced proportional aperture.
This practice was adopted by the studios and for the past two years cameramen have thus had to fill about 20 per cent of' their frame -- the 10 per cent of sound track area, plus 5 per cent at the top and 5 per cent at the bottom -- with unessential views of the set.
Preliminary work was done by Bell & Howell, then the studios & cameramen worked on it, then it was turned over to the projection engineers who finalized it to accommodate "projection angle, keystone, vertical and sidewise picture distortion and other factors".
The new standard was from AMPAS, went into effect 2/15/1932 for production, and the educational campaign to have theatres change their methods was begun almost immediately afterwards.
quote:
New product already is being released with the uniform picture frame size, which is the same for all types of prints; movietone, disc and silent. The new releases can be recognized by the fact that the frame lines are about four times as wide as previously. No changes have been made in the sprocket holes or sound track. An initial minor adjustment of aperture plates
and projection screen masks will be necessary to show the new product to best advantage and give to the audience the full value' of the picture photographed by the studio. When this adjustment has been made, all prints may be run with the uniform aperture.
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..Yeppers, it is. Based ours from the REG's list (that I remembered when I was with them and the one that I have with EDW's...) with some revisions/additions/subtractions from these two lists to fit to our operations in a more simpler, understandable form ....
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