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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Author
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Topic: cinamascope advance notice???
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Sheldon Hall
Film Handler
Posts: 3
From: Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Registered: Jan 2014
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posted 01-16-2014 07:05 PM
Leo, you’re missing my point that your arguments were at odds with themselves. You took John Belton’s point about ‘original artistic intent’ to mean the director’s – even though John didn’t mention directors – and used it to berate the auteurist influence and a bunch of other things that get your goat, while then arguing that as the director was involved in TV versions anyway, auteurists shouldn’t complain. But John’s point would remain valid if it were the cinematographer’s, the production designer’s, the camera operator’s or the laboratory worker’s ‘artistic intent’ that was involved. The point is that a film is designed, staged, lit, framed and edited primarily for a particular ratio; and while filmmakers (directors and others) have been willing to go along with the necessary compromises involved in envisioning what will be done with their film when it reaches another medium, it is best served aesthetically – today, in the era of large-screen, hi-def TVs – by being presented in the ratio for which it was primarily designed, etc.
As for ‘originality’, we can take ‘original’ here (the word that John actually used) to mean the first version of the work, the one that was exhibited first (or designed to be exhibited first) in theatres, rather than the compromised version designed to be seen subsequently on TV. Your use of ‘originality’ is ambiguous in that it appears to be suggesting that a particular artistic quality is at issue – the quality of freshness or innovativeness – when that is not really the point at all.
You are of course right that most TV viewers hated letterboxing in the past. Whether the ‘average consumer’ nowadays still hates it is a moot point. Certainly the size and shape of a viewer’s TV (and living room) will exercise an influence on their preference, just as it always has – hence also the demand for compromised 16:9 versions of 4:3 programmes today. But if you object to the present-day consumer preference for these, why do you not also object to their acceptance of 4:3 bastardisations of 21:9 films in the past? If you are as anti-auteurist as you say you are, the director’s involvement in preparing them should make no difference – it’s the integrity of the original work (see definition above) that is at issue, a concern which you obviously share.
As I said, I do agree with you that 16:9 corruptions of 4:3 film footage – of whatever kind, documentary or fictional, film or TV – are heinous (in complaining that others don’t you cite only ‘mainstream press’ reviews, which are hardly representative of academic opinion). Clearly the advent of widescreen TVs is just as much responsible for these as it is for the wider (sic) acceptance of letterboxing. But you give away the real source of your irritation in your concluding paragraph, which explains your overreaction to my and John’s uncontroversial (to most people) points. You’re quite right that most academics are technically ignorant and it obviously, and understandably, bugs you that your peers – you are, after all, an academic too – are more interested in theory than in technology. I’m looking forward to reading your forthcoming book, but I do hope that you don’t simply reverse the polarity by dismissing ideas altogether!
A query, if I may: you claim that alternate footage was specially shot for TV versions of ’Scope films. What is your source for this, please, and what examples can you give? As I pointed out, this information is not in the book that you cited in support of your arguments.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 01-17-2014 12:33 AM
quote: Sheldon Hall
Leo, you’re missing my point that your arguments were at odds with themselves.
And you're missing mine, which is that attaching subjective value judgments to a given version of a film is fundamentally unhelpful if you're trying to understand its significance as historical source and evidence. I'm not trying to suggest that panned and scanned is "better" than preserving a widescreen aspect ratio in non-theatrical presentation, or vice-versa: in fact, I'm suggesting that we should get away from those labels.
quote: Sheldon Hall
You took John Belton’s point about ‘original artistic intent’ to mean the director’s – even though John didn’t mention directors – and used it to berate the auteurist influence and a bunch of other things that get your goat, while then arguing that as the director was involved in TV versions anyway, auteurists shouldn’t complain.
No - I made the point very carefully that the privileging of artistic intent (i.e. attaching the "better" judgment) in the analysis of film essentially has its origins in auteurism, and that over 3-4 decades thereafter, that cultural success of that idea has resulted in its largely uncritical acceptance, even by people who are supposed to be professionally critical (in the academic sense of the word). The marketing of home video versions that attempt to communicate theatrical aspect ratios, often packaged as the "director's cut" or by some similar slogan, is just one of many manifestations of that.
You are suggesting that my arguments are at odds with themselves, I suspect, because you're not seeing that I'm rejecting that entire belief system as a way of understanding the significance of a film as historical evidence.
quote: Sheldon Hall
As for ‘originality’, we can take ‘original’ here (the word that John actually used) to mean the first version of the work, the one that was exhibited first (or designed to be exhibited first) in theatres, rather than the compromised version designed to be seen subsequently on TV. Your use of ‘originality’ is ambiguous in that it appears to be suggesting that a particular artistic quality is at issue – the quality of freshness or innovativeness – when that is not really the point at all.
Any use of "original" or "originality" is ambiguous when it comes to movies. The entire medium depends on the ability to make multiple copies of a single source for its existence. Apart, arguably, from the projection of a home movie shot on reversal stock, no audience ever sees the original artefact, as any historian trained in the analysis of provenance (e.g. Garaghan's six inquiries) would define it. Indeed, the manipulation of images and sounds during the post-production process is part and parcel of moviemaking. There simply is no "original" of a film in the same sense that there is of, say, a handwritten document or an oil painting. Therefore, you have to define originality on a case-by-case basis, based on the object of your inquiry.
For example, a theatrical screening of a 'scope print of Jaws will give the viewer an impression of what audiences at the theatrical run saw. An offair VHS of a broadcast of the film two decades later (including the ads, which would provide an interesting perspective on what sort of the viewer the broadcaster thought would be viewing the movie) would give the viewer an impression of how it was typically seen by the following generation. One is not "better" than the other, and if the object of your historical inquiry was audiences for televised feature films in the 1990s, a case could be made for regarding the the Jaws tape as original (or at least, authentic). On the other hand, if you're interested in the craft of cinematography as it existed in the 1970s, it clearly isn't.
quote: Sheldon Hall
As I said, I do agree with you that 16:9 corruptions of 4:3 film footage – of whatever kind, documentary or fictional, film or TV – are heinous (in complaining that others don’t you cite only ‘mainstream press’ reviews, which are hardly representative of academic opinion).
As far as I'm aware, there is no academic opinion - at least, not in print. Even among the journals that do occasionally carry technically knowledgable articles, I haven't seen a single essay or DVD/BD review which discusses the practice at all. As I say, I suspect that a big part of the reason for this is precisely the tendency to "artistic intent" value judgment identified above. Newsreels, government, industrial and other non-fiction films are not regarded by the intelligentsia as works of art (apart from a tiny number of pretentious documentaries), and therefore hacking the image about (and colourising it) doesn't matter. But if you tried to pan and scan Casablanca to 16:9, or colourise M ... well, you'd attract less criticism (in the non-academic sense of the word) for sodomising your first born child!
quote: Sheldon Hall
A query, if I may: you claim that alternate footage was specially shot for TV versions of ’Scope films. What is your source for this, please, and what examples can you give? As I pointed out, this information is not in the book that you cited in support of your arguments.
I would have to go back over notes made over a decade ago (when researching Moving Image Technology, and which are currently in transatlantic shipping to give you the chapter and verse (and furthermore, I don't feel the need to follow academic citation conventions on an informal Internet chat board: if I'm going to go to the hassle of assembling those, it'll be for a REF-able publication); but from memory, I came across an SMPTE Journal piece from the '70s recounting how several shots in Chinatown were done in two versions, because Polanski wanted to show Jack Nicholson and John Huston exchange dialogue without a cut, and this couldn't be done in the 'scope setup without obvious and repeated pans across the frame between the two actors (in fact, the film was shot in 'scope against Polanski's wishes: due to a dispute with the producer, a cinematogapher was imposed on Polanski who he didn't want, and who insisted on shooting in 'scope. And just to prove that I'm not a total philistine when it comes to artistic intent, I agree with Polanski: that film has a wonderful script and some amazing acting, but is marred by consistently awkward framing and visuals). And while this was a spherical widescreen rather than a 'scope example, one of the shots in the Psycho shower scene was done in two versions, because Janet Leigh's cleavage would have been visible in the full frame with the shot as storyboarded framed for 1.85 (described in Rebello's book, if I recall correctly).
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Sheldon Hall
Film Handler
Posts: 3
From: Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Registered: Jan 2014
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posted 01-21-2014 05:02 PM
Of course I agree, as a historian, that the value of an artefact for research purposes is directly related to the object of one's enquiry; in such investigations, expressions of personal preference are irrelevant. So for my current research into films on TV, an off-air VHS recording of JAWS, panned and scanned and with the commercial breaks intact, would be of more use than a letterboxed DVD. But the use-value of artefacts for research purposes was not the subject of the questions John and I were asked. You may have forgotten them in all this excitement, so let's go back to them:
Should ’Scope films continue to be letterboxed for their ancillary-market releases? Is a 16:9 pan-and-scan acceptable?
The questions clearly ask for a value judgement or statement of preference, though they do not state on what basis they should be made; neither, in our naivete, did John and I spell this out in our answers. Therein lies our mistake! So to spell it out: I cannot, in the age of HD, widescreen and large-screen televisions, see any good reason why a film should be released for general consumption on home video formats in a version other than the one for which it was primarily designed (cinema or TV, fiction or non-). A case could be made for saying that, if there is a market for one, a 4:3 or 16:9 transfer of a 21:9 feature film (or, conversely, a 16:9 transfer of a 4:3 film or TV show; or a colourised version of a monochrome film or TV show) would be acceptable; where a market has been established, such items have indeed been provided. If we are studying the market as historians or economists then clearly the existence of them is of interest and they may be studied accordingly, irrespective of our personal preferences. But John and I were asked to state a preference, and that is what we did.
Re. the request for the source of info, I wasn't expecting a list of footnotes, but simply a clue as to where you came by the information. It interests me and I'd like to check it out for myself. I can certainly recall credits sequences being prepared differently for the 4:3 versions of 'scope theatrical films (i.e. remade, not just squeezed or scanned), but I can't name any specific titles for the moment. For the PSYCHO example, however, I can tell you that the shots of Janet Leigh au naturel (or more likely with appropriate covering) were not shot twice. They were the only shots in the film photographed with hard-matte masking in the camera to crop off the bottom of the frame. The rest of the film was shot open-matte. I have confirmed this with both 16mm prints screened in classes and a 35mm print seen in a cinema, projected in Academy ratio instead of the 1.85:1 ratio it was designed for (because the projectionist assumed that the mainly open-matte print was meant to be shown that way). This was about 20 years ago. I should have protested or walked out, but I did neither - fortunately, as staying allowed me to make this observation.
On the other hand, I did walk out only last Sunday from a screening of a 1952 Academy-ratio film (THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL) which a professional arthouse cinema was projecting in 1.85:1. And yes, I would have done so even if it had been a war documentary, not just a film by Minnelli!
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Jack Theakston
Master Film Handler
Posts: 411
From: New York, USA
Registered: Sep 2007
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posted 01-22-2014 11:12 AM
quote: Leo Enticknap
but from memory, I came across an SMPTE Journal piece from the '70s recounting how several shots in Chinatown were done in two versions, because Polanski wanted to show Jack Nicholson and John Huston exchange dialogue without a cut, and this couldn't be done in the 'scope setup without obvious and repeated pans across the frame between the two actors (in fact, the film was shot in 'scope against Polanski's wishes: due to a dispute with the producer, a cinematogapher was imposed on Polanski who he didn't want, and who insisted on shooting in 'scope. And just to prove that I'm not a total philistine when it comes to artistic intent, I agree with Polanski: that film has a wonderful script and some amazing acting, but is marred by consistently awkward framing and visuals).
This wasn't what happened. In "ROMAN by Polanski," Polanski specifically says he wanted Panavision and color from the start. They hired Stanley Cortez, who hadn't worked in a few years, and was not giving them what they wanted—he was taking forever to light sets and set-ups were taking far too long. Ten days into it, POLANSKI fired Cortez and brought in John Alonzo.
quote: Leo Enticknap
And while this was a spherical widescreen rather than a 'scope example, one of the shots in the Psycho shower scene was done in two versions, because Janet Leigh's cleavage would have been visible in the full frame with the shot as storyboarded framed for 1.85 (described in Rebello's book, if I recall correctly).
To quote Simon Oakland: not exactly. The hard matte was added optically AFTER the fact "just in case" (I have the actual memo from Paramount when this happened.) It was shot once, and the 16mm prints were extracted from the hard-matted optical.
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