International projectionist (Jan 1963-June 1965)

INTERNATIONAL PROJECTIONIST Volume 38 October 1963 lumber 10 GLAMOURIZING THE SCREEN PART 2 Masking The Modern Wide Screen By ROBERT A. MITCHELL Even though this writer personally favors the black-masked screen, there is much to be said for the "ultramodern" maskless screen and for the psychovisual principles on which it is based. Such screens, including those fitted with illuminated borders, have been the subjects of experiment for many years; and at least some of the psychovisual principles underlying the maskless screen were well known and utilized photographically in the long-ago days of silent pictures. The type of screen favored by the noted theatre architect Ben Schlanger, for instance, "dissolves" and extends the boundaries of the projected picture by being set into a close-fitting, bent-wall alcove painted white like the screen to reflect a pattern of light which blends softly with the edge of the picture. So instead of being bounded sharply by black masking, as is usual, the Schlanger screen provides an indefinite boundary of light which fades off into darkness in an everchanging manner. Vignetting by Photography The device of vignetting the picture by means of a mash in front of the camera lens was frequently used in the days of silent films. This provided a soft, out-offocus boundary to the picture photographed on the film, but without the varying light effects produced by the Schlanger screen setup. Also, the camera-vignetted image restricted the total area of the frame and resulted in a slightly smaller picture on the screen. The Schlanger screen, on the other hand, does not take any area away from the frame and gives, in addition, the impression of a larger screen. The foregoing is not meant to imply that silentfilm cameramen did a bad job with the tools at hand. Quite the contrary, they were an ingeniously "arty" lot, and succeeded admirably in their compositional aims. The purpose of camera vignetting was not to fool the eye into seeing a larger screen than was actually present, but to focus the attention of the audience upon the dramatic action at the center of the screen. The circular mask was often used for the same purpose in the earliest days of the moviemaking art; and the "iris-in," "iris-out" beginnings and ending of scenes found in certain old movies suggested by 4 expansion and contraction of the frame that the drama is spotlighted in the middle of the screen. Other old-time picture-vignetting tricks included the use of lenses having severe spherical aberration to soften detail near the edges, and diffusing lenses to cast an ethereal, luminous mist over the irrelevant detail surrounding the middle of the picture. The psychovisual suggestiveness of these devices was extremely effective. There is rarely anything similar to them in panoramic CinemaScope pictures, the chief shortcoming of which seems to be their inability to focus dramatic interest and involve the spectator in the picture emotionally. The characters depicted on the CinemaScope screen are often too "remote," and their dramatic conflicts too static, to affect the feelings of the audience the way the old-time movies did with apparent ease. Black Screen Masking Desirable Despite the invention of maskless screens of various types, we believe that black velour screen masking will continue to be used in 99 per cent of all theatres. Black masking has much to commend it. There is a visual neatness to the straight, sharp picture-framing boundaries it provides. Brought an inch or two into the picture area, it conceals aperture irregularities caused by small deposits of film dust. The straight vertical sides conceal the keystoning caused by steep projection angles. Very important, the sharply defined black edges raise apparent picture brightness at the sides of the screen where, actually, it is somewhat lower than at the center of the screen. This gives an impression of uniform screen brightness, a very desirable condition. Until about 1953, motion-picture screens had a widthheight ratio of 4:3 (an aspect ratio of 1.333/1). This ratio was established in the first place by the early Edison-Dickson 35-mm film specifications;* and considering that the movies began to flower commercially by the turn of the century, the 4:3-proportioned screen enjoyed universal use for more than half a century. When the soundtrack was added to the film in 1928. the incursion of the track by about a tenth of an "The 35-mm silent-film frame was approximately one inch wide and three-quarters of an inch high. International Projectionist October, 1963