We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
RECTANGLE PROPORTIONS IN PICTORIAL COMPOSITION*
LOYD A. JONES
Since the birth of the motion picture some thirty years ago there have been discussions from time to time concerning the most satisfactory shape of the picture area. In the early stages of development several different shapes and sizes were proposed and tried experimentally. Using the ratio of .width to height as a specification of the shape of the rectangle, we find among the very early productions values of this ratio varying all the way from 1.25 up to 2.0. Practice finally crystallized, however, and a rectangle having a width of four units and a height of three units (R = 1.33) was adopted as standard. This continued as almost universal practice until the advent of sound which, in the case of sound-on-film positives, necessitated the narrowing of the available picture area in order to provide space for the photographic sound record. If the height of the positive image is maintained at its old value, that is, four perforations less the necessary allowance for frame line, the resultant positive picture area has a ratio of approximately 1.15.
Even under the old conditions where the 4 to 3 ratio (R = 1.33) obtained, many individuals, including motion picture directors, art directors, scenario writers, camera men, etc., felt that the resultant picture was too "fat," that is, too narrow relative to its height, for most pleasing and satisfactory results. The subtraction of the area required for the sound track has served to make available picture area on the positive film even more nearly square. It is almost universally agreed among those who have given this problem careful consideration that this change in shape of the projected picture is in the wrong direction and gives an area of which the proportions are extremely unsatisfactory from the standpoint of both pictorial composition and practical utility. This situation has served, therefore to focus attention again on the question of picture shape, and
* Communication No. 410 from the Kodak Research Laboratories. 32