Chuck(G)
25k Member
Okay, so the answer to the topic obviously is "to watch movies made in wide-screen format", right?
But why are movies made that way? My field of vision is not a mailbox-sized rectangle. In fact, a little simple experimentation seems to indicate that it's roughly circular. That is, I can see the floor and ceiling of this room as well as the walls without shifting my vision.
I can understand Cinemascope--in my youthful days, I spent some time picking up cash as a projectionist in a drive-in theater. I'm familiar with changing lamp carbons, striking and regulating arcs, threading up film, doing changeovers (and marking them), etc. All skills of absolutely no value today.
And I do remember the big heavy Cinemascope anamorphic lenses--and the hilarious results if you forgot to change them. But Cinemascope was a simple way for a theater owner to expand his viewing area by simply adding "wings" to the projection screen. After the wider screen, the only other investment was a set of lenses to "stretch" the image, at a sacrifice in brightness (often, a theater would upgrade their "cans" at the same time they moved to wide-screen).
It wasn't practical to expand the screen in the vertical direction, obviously, as indoors, you're limited by where the floor and ceiling are as well as needing a certain amount of elevation to clear the top of the audience. Outdoors, you'd be looking at an expensive structural engineering nightmare.
But today's home viewing experience isn't limited by this. So why are there no 60-inch wide and high TVs? And why is the broadcast format still the old 16:9 aspect ratio? It seems silly to me.
This topic came up to me as I was tossing out some old Electronic Design magazines and happened to run across an exposition of that special-effects-laden-but-lousy-writing spectacle Prometheus. The talent was expensive, the equipment cost must have been astronomical and you wind up with a 2-star rated (they don't give zero stars) disaster.
But why are movies made that way? My field of vision is not a mailbox-sized rectangle. In fact, a little simple experimentation seems to indicate that it's roughly circular. That is, I can see the floor and ceiling of this room as well as the walls without shifting my vision.
I can understand Cinemascope--in my youthful days, I spent some time picking up cash as a projectionist in a drive-in theater. I'm familiar with changing lamp carbons, striking and regulating arcs, threading up film, doing changeovers (and marking them), etc. All skills of absolutely no value today.
And I do remember the big heavy Cinemascope anamorphic lenses--and the hilarious results if you forgot to change them. But Cinemascope was a simple way for a theater owner to expand his viewing area by simply adding "wings" to the projection screen. After the wider screen, the only other investment was a set of lenses to "stretch" the image, at a sacrifice in brightness (often, a theater would upgrade their "cans" at the same time they moved to wide-screen).
It wasn't practical to expand the screen in the vertical direction, obviously, as indoors, you're limited by where the floor and ceiling are as well as needing a certain amount of elevation to clear the top of the audience. Outdoors, you'd be looking at an expensive structural engineering nightmare.
But today's home viewing experience isn't limited by this. So why are there no 60-inch wide and high TVs? And why is the broadcast format still the old 16:9 aspect ratio? It seems silly to me.
This topic came up to me as I was tossing out some old Electronic Design magazines and happened to run across an exposition of that special-effects-laden-but-lousy-writing spectacle Prometheus. The talent was expensive, the equipment cost must have been astronomical and you wind up with a 2-star rated (they don't give zero stars) disaster.