Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1953)

266 HOLLYWOOD'S NEW ASPECT JACK E. GIECK, ACL An analysis of the "new" wide-screen projection systems . . . and what might be done to improve them SINCE 1946 some 5000 U. S. movie theatres have nailed up their doors. And every day, on the average, three more marquees glumly spell out the familiar "Closed Until Further Notice." Justifiably alarmed over the steady encroachment of television, Hollywood is clutching desperately at anything that looks like sure box-office. After the phenomenal success of Bwana Devil, for example, there began a major 3-D stampede, despite the limitations of the medium (see Stereo Movies, Movie Makers, May 1953). House of Wax, Man in the Dark, A Day in the Country, Fort Ti and Sangaree have already made their appearance, and at least ten more stereo films are scheduled for early release. Meanwhile, with Cinerama selling out every performance, it was obvious to the movie moguls that the great curved screen had much popular appeal (see / Saw Cinerama, MM, January 1953). Indeed, Cinerama seemed to achieve the illusion of depth without the use of stereo and produced an unparalleled "sense of participation" which set audiences screaming and squirming in their seats. Meanwhile, in another theatre a few blocks away, patrons of Bwana Devil sat trying to get their glasses on straight. Ergo, Hollywood en masse got to work on wide-screen projection. CINEMASCOPE PIONEERS WIDE SCREEN 20th Century-Fox shortly scooped the industry with CinemaScope, a process which employs a cylindrical anamorphic lens on the camera to compress an extra-wide picture onto standard 35mm. film, and then spreads it out again onto a mammoth curved screen by means of a similar auxiliary lens on the projector (see Cinerama vs. Cinemascope, MM, July 1953). It was stated originally that the resulting CinemaScope screen had an aspect ratio of 2.66:1, which is to say that it was 2.66 times as wide as it was high, in comparison with the standard frame proportion of 1.33:1 — or, inverting the order, 3 Photographs by Tony Spina f: to 4. This seemed reasonable, since Fox uses a 2x anamorphic lens and 2 x 1.33 equals 2.66. 2.66 ASPECT SHRINKS TO 2.55 Currently, however, the boys on the Fox technical team (as, for example, in their writings for New Screen Techniques, a recent and presumably authoritative book on the subject) give the figure as 2.55:1. Could this mean that Fox felt 2.66:1 was just too attenuated for public acceptance, with the resulting screen image looking like a piece of ribbon? In any case, the technicians have arrived at the 2.55:1 figure as the result of a new frame size for CinemaScope — .715 x .912 inches as opposed to the established camera aperture of .631 x .868. Since, however, the aperture plate on each exhibitor's projector determines the final screen format, this change of frame proportion (from 1.33 to 1.275:1) would seem thus far to be purely academic. Nevertheless, Fox, confident that its broad, cycloramic picture is the answer to the industry's financial woes, has announced that all of its future productions will be filmed in CinemaScope; furthermore, it has offered to license the process to other studios at $25,000 per production. At least one studio, M-G-M, has already signed up. SHORTER LENS EQUALS WIDE PICTURE But Fox's panacea lent no comfort to the producers of some $330,000,000 worth of pictures already "in the can" and awaiting release. Paramount, in particular, has a $42,000,000 backlog. To save this backlog, and to avoid the expense of renting CinemaScope for future productions, the major studios cast about for a means of achieving wide-screen projection with films produced by standard methods. The solution proved to be ridiculously simple: by employing a projector lens of wider angle (shorter focal length) than was normal for the 1.33:1 screen, the projected image is spread over a larger area than normal. HEMISPHERICAL LENS, covering 140° in both directions, is shown on projector by Jam Handy technicians. Curved screen corrects distortion seen left.