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The Importance of Widescreen
The frame functions as the basis of composition in a movie image. Unlike the painter or still photographer, however, the filmmaker fits not the frame to the compo-painter, but the compositions to a single-sized frame. The ratio of the frame’s horizontal and vertical dimensions—known as the aspect ratio—remains constant throughout the movie. Screens come in a variety of aspect ratios, especially since the introduction of widescreen in the early 1950s. Before this time, most movies were shot in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, though even in the silent era filmmakers were constantly experimenting with different-sized screens (1).
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1. Napoléon (France, 1927), directed by Abel Gance. Napoléon is the most famous widescreen experiment of the silent era. Its triptych sequences—such as the French army's march into Italy (pictured)—were shot in what Gance called "Poly-vision." The process involved the coordination of three cameras so as to photograph a 160° panorama—three times wider than the conventional aspect ratio. (Universal Pictures) |
Today, most movies are projected in one of two aspect ratios: the 1.85:1 (standard) and the 2.35:1 (widescreen) (2). Some films originally photographed in widescreen are cropped down to a conventional aspect ratio after their theatrical release, when they are shown on television or transferred to [fullscreen] video. The more imaginatively the widescreen is used, the more a movie is likely to suffer its aspect ratio is violated in this manner.
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2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (USA/Great Britain, 1968), directed by Stanley Kubrick. The widescreen is particularly suited to capturing
the vastness of a locale. If this image were cropped to a conventional
aspect ratio (b) much of the feel of the infinity of space would
be sacrificed. (MGM) |
Generally, at least a third of the image is hacked away by lopping off the edges of the frame. This kind of cropping can result in many visual absurdities: A speaker at the edge of the frame might be totally absent in the "revised" composition, or an actor might react in horror at something that never even comes into view. When shown on television—which has an aspect ratio of approximately 1.33:1—some of the greatest widescreen films can actually seem clumsy and poorly composed (3). The emergence of DVDs (which usually, but not always, present films in their original aspect ratios) and widescreen televisions is changing this situation, enabling home viewers to experience the film as the filmmakers intended.
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3. Lawrence of Arabia (Great Britain, 1962), with Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole, directed by David Lean. The widescreen aspect ratio provides some big problems
when transferred to a [fullscreen] format. There are several solutions,
but all of them have drawbacks. The crudest solution is simply to
slice off the edges of the film image and concentrate on the middle,
the assumption being that the centre is where the dominant focus
is likely to be. This shot would just barely contain the faces of
the two characters and nothing past the centre of their heads—an
uncomfortably tight squeeze. A second solution is called "pan
and scan" in which a TV camera scans the scene, panning to
one or the other character as each speaks—like watching a
tennis match on rough seas. A similar approach is to re-edit the
scene by cutting to each character, thus isolating them into their
own separate space cubicles. But the essence of the shot demands
that we see both characters at the same time—the drama lies
in the subtle interactions of the characters. This interaction would
be lost by editing. (Columbia Pictures) |