Movie Crop

[tp4tissue]

The most common movie aspect ratios are  2.4 :1  2.35 :1  1.85 :1

Most peeps usen'  16:9 panels.

If we crop into that,  we get,  74%, 76% and 96% of the original visible screen area.


Thoughts ?   Sacrilegious ?   Anti-movie-christ ?    Do you crop or let be ?

[Coreda]

Watch ppl crop in on a ~4:3 aspect ratio film because of the dastardly BLACK BARS

[tp4tissue]

Watch ppl crop in on a ~4:3 aspect ratio film because of the dastardly BLACK BARS

What... who does that... that's clearly illegal.

[phinix]

Watch ppl crop in on a ~4:3 aspect ratio film because of the dastardly BLACK BARS

What... who does that... that's clearly illegal.

Yeah, they do that...
Those meaningless creatures that watch movies, go to pee, get a tea and chat without pausing a movie.
I've seen it, walked out the room, couldn't stand movie ignorants...
 

[chyros]

The most common movie aspect ratios are  2.4 :1  2.35 :1  1.85 :1

Most peeps usen'  16:9 panels.

If we crop into that,  we get,  85%, 86% and 96% of the original visible screen area.


Thoughts ?   Sacrilegious ?   Anti-movie-christ ?    Do you crop or let be ?

Show Image

Those are cinema format; anamorphic and standard, respectively.

Cinemas feel like they're about to go the way of the dodo, but cinematography is a highly conservative art with many highly established practices. Aspect ratios changing will have to lead to cinematographers effectively reschooling as framing scenes is incredibly important. I'm kind of a cinematography enthusiast and it has an extremely rich culture of terms, practices, standards and traditions that are deeply ingrained into filmmaking. This ranges from simple things like drinking champagne at slate 111 (irrespective of the time of day) to conventions of clamp and applebox sizes, camera angles, formats etc. Filmmaking is an extremely intense business that's been perfected and distilled into a near-universal practice. I don't think they'll want to move away from that any time soon.

tl;dr: it's easier to letterbox than reinvent camera techniques.

[suicidal_orange]

tl;dr: it's easier to letterbox than reinvent camera techniques.

If I'm doing the maths right 16:9 is 1.77:1 and I always thought of letterboxing as chopping off the top and bottom off a 4:3 to fit it on a widescreen - is this a generic industry term for any type of crop?

As to the original question I can count on one hand the number of movies I've seen in a cinema in original format as well as in 16:9 at home so can't say I've notice anything missing.  Usually you focus in the middle of the scene so whatever you loose is probably not that important, unless they want to sneak in cool stuff for true fans?

[fohat.digs]

you focus in the middle of the scene so whatever you loose is probably not that important

I disagree. I seldom go to theaters any more, but I hate what I lose on my TV.

Things coming in from the sides are sometimes just not there, and what happens when some or all of the subtitles drop off the bottom of the screen?

[tp4tissue]

you focus in the middle of the scene so whatever you loose is probably not that important

I disagree. I seldom go to theaters any more, but I hate what I lose on my TV.

Things coming in from the sides are sometimes just not there, and what happens when some or all of the subtitles drop off the bottom of the screen?

Well, mathematically, we wouldn't be losing _That_ much with 16:9.

They probably took that into account when they began selling this aspect ratio as standard televisions.

Tp4 feels the majority of scenes look _Ok_ with crop.  The benefit of blowing up the middle is it makes fine-detail much easier to take in.

[chyros]

tl;dr: it's easier to letterbox than reinvent camera techniques.

If I'm doing the maths right 16:9 is 1.77:1 and I always thought of letterboxing as chopping off the top and bottom off a 4:3 to fit it on a widescreen - is this a generic industry term for any type of crop?

It's the opposite; it's displaying black bars on the top and bottom to fit (cinema) widescreen on a 4:3 (not the other way around), but the same applies when transferring widescreen to 16:9.

[HungerMechanic]

Aspect ratios are a huge conversation.

But I'll say this: 16:9 was adopted as a 'compromise' resolution for home-theatre TVs at the beginning of the HD era.

Much cinema is filmed and displayed in a wider aspect ratio than 16:9. But, for home TVs, there is still a lot of 4:3 content [or was, at the time].

So 16:9 was adopted to give a mediocre fit to both 4:3 content and the wider aspect ratios of film.

I guess it's less-relevant now, because of disappearance of 4:3, but still a lot of home TV content was filmed in 16:9 in the past two decades.

People with the money and inclination are buying WIDE home theatre screens to accommodate films, and we're seeing more use of wide 'cinema' ratios in the production of streaming television. So that may be a direction things are going. Many TV show makers seem to consider 21:9 or whatever to be a more 'cinematic' or 'theatrical' format that elevates their material.

[pixelpusher]

Don't you know it's all going verticle, silly people.  Youtube shorts gonna blaze the trail.  9:16 verticle theaters soon.  You can fit more screens in a building.  Verticle at home means you can fit 2 or 3 screens in the normal width.  That way you can multi-watch content.  Embrace the FuTu43

[tp4tissue]

The Fu7ur3 is 2 scary.

[fohat.digs]

it's all going verticle

Vertical orientation probably makes sense in "utilizing" screen space, but as I look around using my actual eyes, my field of vision is at least 3-4 times as wide horizontally as it is tall vertically.

[Findecanor]

(Seems I missed this conversation a year ago. Having worked with online streaming and TV tech and being a movie buff, I do have some opinions on this topic ...)

With modern TV panels in people's homes going larger but without homes or viewing distance increasing, we're transcending from the problem of letterboxed movies being too small on the screen towards the problem of "content" (movies/TV shows) not having been made to be viewed with such a large field-of-view ...

I think that people should always have a choice between watching in letterbox, or in "full screen"/"pan-and-scan" or anything in-between. Sometimes a middle-ground is the best, such as when 4:3 content gets some top and bottom chopped off, and there are  narrow black bars on the left and right. (BBC has broadcast some older shows like this, and not many people noticed)
I think that movies distributed digitally should have dynamic pan-and-scan information inside the data stream that gets utilised by the movie player (but it would have to be done smart, and the result depends on the person doing the work)
BTW. My mind was once blown when I realised that the active area in 2.35:1 letterboxed in 1080p is only 460 pixels high. You could pan-and-scan this in SD 16:9 (480p) without losing vertical resolution and you would still get small black bars at the top and bottom.

[HungerMechanic]

Yea, I always felt kinda ripped off with how small a letterboxed 2.35:1 image is on a 1080p TV, given the available pixels.

[tp4tissue]

Yea, I always felt kinda ripped off with how small a letterboxed 2.35:1 image is on a 1080p TV, given the available pixels.

lol, just crop then, the calculations say you're not missing much.

12% left 12% right, guaranteed there's almost nothing worth looking at at those locations

[noisyturtle]

it always struck me as so weird how older films are shot in a wider ratio, but like 90% of the time you see the cut version. why did they even shoot it that that at all?

[HungerMechanic]

Well, one thing is that it's easier to cut away / frame / crop from a larger print. There's often things you don't want in the shot. Some TV shows were shot in 16 x 9 and then cropped down to 4 x 3. The wide shot had mic booms and stuff that would be cropped out.