Cropping 4:3 to be 16:9 >: (

[samsonlonghair]

I'd have to dig up the article, but while we're talking about being shot on film, thought it was relevant to bring up the early digital age.

When 4k BD came out I was reading reviews. The technical reviewer brought up some movies shot in the early 2000s were shot in 1080 digital. There's really no way to go back to those, pull out more, and make a true 4K release or remaster. It will always be a touch up and resolution upscale. Weird some releases, even movies, aren't really able to progress to the "next generation"... similar to those 4:3 tapes..

Yeah, that's just stupid. Apparently Star Wars Episode II and III were both shot in digital 1080p. A funny argument I've heard though is that since so much of those movies are CG, they can just re-render the CG in a higher resolution and very little has to be upscaled.

That always seemed like the dumbest thing to me though. A TV show I can understand. That would be the equivalent of all the TV shows that were recorded on tape instead of film. But shooting a movie capped at 1080p, especially something huge like Star Wars, just seems dumb.

Relevant video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVpABCxiDaU

One weird example of screen ratios is Babylon 5. The show was filmed widescreen and then cropped for broadcast, but the CG was all done 4x3 (cheaper to do at a time when CG was expensive and basic). So when it came to DVD you could see most scenes widescreen, but any time there was CG it would be cropped (or barred, I don’t remember).

The above video I linked to explains that Star Trek The Next Generation was shot on film which is why the current remaster looks awesome. Voyager was apparently shot on film but immediately converted to tape, and all the editing and special effects were done on tape.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Voyager. It's actually my favorite Trek. I wish they would go through the process of remastering the whole series from film and re-render all the CG elements with today's technology. I'm doubtful this would ever happen because it wouldn't really make financial sense to pay someone to re-edit 172 episodes over 7 seasons. Maybe someday when ai is better we can have a bot that goes through and finds the right bit of film for each scene.

Did you know that Kubrick shot The Shining in 1.37:1 "academy ratio (similar to 4:3 ratio)? There's a bunch of aspect ratio talk amongst Kubrick fans. He used similar aspect ratios in a lot of his movies.

[isiolia]

Did you know that Kubrick shot The Shining in 1.37:1 "academy ratio (similar to 4:3 ratio)? There's a bunch of aspect ratio talk amongst Kubrick fans. He used similar aspect ratios in a lot of his movies.

Yeah, that was a frequent mention for Open Matte films. In some cases, it's literally just that the film itself is that ratio, so the raw footage is a different aspect. The matted image is the director's intent, but using something larger can let them include the entire frame (and then some) into TV/VHS/etc versions. It doesn't mean it's the framing they wanted.

I think it's also not necessarily a given for all of the footage in a movie. Special effects may be done on a matted version, and in turn end up cropped on a 4:3 copy.

Still, it's something I wasn't as aware of until searching around due to this thread, so hey, learned something

[Ziggy]

Everything has so many versions these days. A lot of times if I'm going to watch something for the first time I have to do research first to see which version I should watch.