Movie Makers (Jan-Dec 1953)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




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.

267 CLASSIC SCREEN PROPORTION of 4-to-3 (1.33:1) is compared in overall picture above with new aspect ratios being groomed by A wider screen is then installed to match in width the spread of this projected image. But, since the aim is not simply a larger screen, the spread in height created by the wide angle lens is masked off, top and bottom, at the projector gate. To this pictorial result there would then be added some form of stereophonic sound, and — presto! — you have a "new" picture. Screening their backlog of films through cropped projector apertures, the major studios found that, with few exceptions, they could get away with this process. Scenes in future films, of course, could be composed for the new frame, or even on a "double standard" — that is, a conventional 1.33:1 frame could be composed with enough space above and below important action to allow for cropping the vertical dimension. Undoubtedly guided by the number of actors' heads which were chopped off in the backlog screenings, each studio has established its own new aspect ratio, and the array of figures which has resulted is enough to make any exhibitor go into the grocery business. Here is the way they stack up: Paramount 1.66:1 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 1.75:1 Universal International 1.85:1 20th Century-Fox (CinemaScope) 2.66:1 Warner Brothers and RKO, although primarily entrenched in stereo, have expressed their preferences for 2.00:1 and 1.70:1, respectively. WILL THE PUBLIC BUY? Entirely aside from the utter panic which this state of affairs must generate in the average theatre manager is the vital consideration of whether wide-screen projection will entice more people into movie houses — or whether, for that matter, the public will even accept it. 1.33:1 Hollywood for wide-screen shows. Amateur can duplicate effect by using wide angle projector lens and masking projector aperture. Audiences have, after all, been conditioned by three generations of frequenting nickelodeons, presentation houses and picture palaces to the classic 3 by 4 rectangle (1.33:1). True, wide screen has cropped up spasmodically since 1897, when the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight was photographed in Carson City, Nevada, with an aspect ratio of 2:1. It was 20th Century-Fox, who, in 1929, brought out the short-lived 70mm. film process called Grandeur. And, even during the dark depression years, many big city theatres boasted a Magnascope Panoramic Screen, which they used in conjunction with a wide angle projection lens to create spectacles out of sports events and other special subjects. I recall seeing a full-length feature, The Warriors Husband, on such a screen at St. Louis' Fox Theatre in 1933. But, with few exceptions, motion picture screens (and television screens too for that matter) have observed the 1.33:1 aspect ratio first established by Thomas Edison back in 1888. In defense of wider aspect ratios, Time has cited Pythagoras' "Golden Rule" which, applied to a rectangle, decrees that 1.61:1 is the most pleasing frame. The International Projectionist, a theatrical operators' journal, has amended its former preference of 2:1 and is now stumping for a screen somewhere between 1.66:1 and 1.85:1. Many critics, however, have leveled a finger at the "ribbon effect" of CinemaScope (2.66:1) and there is no question but that composing a frame longer than a dollar bill (2.35:1) will take lots of artistic ingenuity. Hollywood's state of confusion on this point is pretty obvious from the studio double talk already quoted by Movie Makers in its challenging August editorial: "Closeups are possible and tremendously effective, but are seldom needed." My own feeling is that the esthetics of frame proportion are secondary to such con [Continued on page 277]