Question for you.

[andrewducker]

Widescreen monitors are now most definitely in.  But does anyone know _why_?

I can understand them on laptops.  And clearly widescreen TVs are better for films.  But why monitors?

Comments

[nmg.livejournal.com]

wrong on most counts. the original aspect ratio for silent film was a consequence of the width of a film strip between the sprocket holes, and the height of for sprocket holes [the academy format]. widescreen didn't come along until considerably later.

[andrewducker]

Aha! Thank you. I've clearly been listening to urban myths.

So - why _did_ widescreen come about?

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Not entirely clear, in short.

The introduction of sound possibly started it with the first change from the silent aspect ratio; the sound track for conventional full-frame sound-on-film 35mm film (Academy format) lies between the perforations and the picture, which gives a more square picture (1.37:1) than the original silent format (1.33:1).

This stayed the standard until the introduction of Cinerama in 1952. Cinerama used three 35mm projectors (projecting separately the left, centre and right of a wide picture - 2.59:1) and a modified fourth projector containing a fully coated 35mm magnetic film for the sound (seven tracks - five behind the screen and two surround tracks).

Cinerama was a gimmick - as Fritz Lang would later say of Cinemascope "it's only good for funerals and snakes". However, it effectively stirred the studios into innovating in widescreen in the same way that the introduction of affordable synchronised sound post WWI (with Phonofilm) spurred a wave of improvements (Movietone, Vitaphone, Photophone, etc).

The chief drawback of Cinerama was that it required three (plus one) expensive, special purpose projectors, a curved screen, and three times as many cans of film for a feature. The format was also notoriously hard to configure (alignment on screen between the three images had to be near-perfect), and sensitive to damage (all three film strips had to be the same length - damage a section of one strip, and you need to remove the corresponding sections of the other strips to keep all three images in sync).

The alternatives to Cinerama all opted for a single projector system that could also screen Academy prints. Each studio backed a different aspect ratio (acheived by matting out part of the image area of each 35mm frame - effectively sacrificing resolution for image width). In 1953, Paramount went for 1.66:1, MGM for 1.75:1 and Universal for 1.85:1 (the latter two are still common, and projectionist error in selecting the wrong aperture plate is probably the cause of most of the boom shots you're likely to see in the cinema).

Fox went in a different direction, however. They used the full Academy frame, but compressed the image horizontally on the film (so objects look thinner and taller) and then projected through a special lens (an anamorphic) to expand the image on screen. This was Cinemascope (2.55:1, later 2.35:1). Again, you could use your existing projector. You could also use your existing lenses, provided you could fit an anamorphic on the front (many projectors of the period have a swing mount for an anamorphic).

The next innovation was the move to 70mm film stock in 1955, which allowed for higher resolution images (like Cinerama) but out of one hole (like the 35mm based formats) and without an anamorphic (which could introduce chromatic aberration and other distortions). This was Todd A.O. (2.21:1), also known as Super Panavision 70. Unlike 35mm films, which had four perforations (sprocket holes) per frame, Todd A.O. had five, so giving better vertical resolution as well.

The first Todd A.O. features (Oklahoma! and Around the World in Eighty Days) both used a frame rate of 30fps (as opposed to the 24fps that had been the standard since the silent days)...but that's another ramble entirely.

[andrewducker]

Thank you, that was very interesting and informative!