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This topic comprises 3 pages: 1 2 3
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Topic: Ghostbusters (2016) Aspect Ratio
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 07-14-2016 11:30 AM
Pillar boxing can look pretty bad, even on a HDTV screen at home. I don't think there is any excuse for it at a movie theater that has movable masking. I can forgive flat trailers, TV commercials and pre-show content being pillar boxed, but doing that with the main feature is just garbage. If I see a flat feature pillar-boxed on a 'scope ratio screen I'll figure the theater staff doesn't care about details in showmanship.
By the way, Aron, the pillar-boxing you describe happens on a common height screen. A movie in 'scope format is going to be the biggest image on a common height screen -which is how it should be. Common width screens, which are unfortunately very common in stadium seated theaters, make a flat 1.85:1 movie bigger than a 'scope movie. That arrangement is backwards since the big epic movies are made small and the smaller budget dramas and comedies one would expect in flat format are made bigger.
Pillar-boxing is hard to avoid on HDTV sets at home. Any decent HDTV will have a variety of zoom and stretch options, but IMHO that just makes things even worse. I'd rather watch an old movie or TV show in its original aspect ratio instead of cropping the image to fill the screen or distorting into a fun house mirror appearance. Sometimes cable TV networks will apply their own zooming and stretching, which absolutely sucks. And then they'll have TV commercials that are pillar-boxed anyway. I laugh at window-boxing. That's where a TV network shows a commercial or something else originally made in HD, but it got converted to SD and letter-boxed and then that spot gets aired as is on the HD channel pillar-boxed and letter-boxed. Absolute, utter garbage.
Window-boxing is why I haven't watched my DVD copies of True Lies and The Abyss in years. Non-anamorphic 'scope DVD might have been OK on a square TV set 20 years ago. It's like watching a low res YouTube video now. Painful. James Cameron is too busy deep sea diving and dreaming up umpteen Avatar sequels to bother with making a proper Blu-ray version of those classic films.
quote: Aron Toplitsky
On the topic of aspect ratios, so if most theaters are not bothering to mask the scope films and if HDTV at home is 16:9, why not just shoot more movies in 1.85?
The anamorphic 'scope format is enjoying an enduring fad. Lots of movies are videotaped using anamorphic lenses, regardless of the fact film is just about dead and there is no functional reason at all for them to be using such lenses. The whole thing is about style. That bled into the anamorphic look being co-opted by music videos, commercials and some TV shows.
I think there is a business side to it: a lot fewer pixels to render since we're now dealing with a bullshit version of 'scope. The 'scope image is smaller, not bigger like it was in the past. The lower pixel count speeds up production time and lowers cost.
Back in the late 1980's when the home video industry was enjoying its huge boom movie studios put a great deal of stress on making their movies more geometrically friendly to square TV sets of that age. That's why we had a lot of big epic movies, such as Total Recall shot flat and still have 70mm blow-up prints.
I don't see the movie industry reviving a 1.85:1 flat production trend anytime soon, not even with all the valid reasons why flat would work better.
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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002
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posted 07-19-2016 04:36 PM
quote: Aron Toplitsky
Question for Martin Brooks, so the Dolby Cinema theater at Empire 25 does have masking?
No. 2.39 movies take up the whole screen. 1.85 is common height. There's no masking on the sides.
As per the above post, Dolby may think that they don't need masking, but IMO, they do, although I will confess that I haven't sat through a 1.85 movie there yet. I've only seen 1.85 trailers within the 2.39 frame with the house lights partially on. My understanding was that the original intention was to get rid of lit EXIT signs and the like, but the NYC Fire Department won't let you do that and I suspect that building regulations across most, if not all of the U.S. are similar.
On the other hand, due to the nature of films that are encoded for Dolby Cinema, there might not be very many 1.85 films playing on that screen. But I will give Dolby props for showing 2.39 at full screen and not at reduced height at this theater. I've heard reports from other AMC Dolby Cinema theaters and that apparently is not the case everywhere, which is strange to me - you'd think they all would have been built the same.
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