By Cara Murray
Elm Staff Writer
Going to the movies has to be one of my favorite things in the world. I find a darkened theater to be incredibly inviting. Those plush seats and expensive drinks; I get excited just thinking about it. If a film has been thoughtfully made, every inch of the screen will draw me in and that immersive experience is addictive.
While I may not make it to the theater as much as I like, I still watch way too many films.And though my 15.3” laptop screen has nothing on a massive theater projection, I still feel as though I get to experience the spirit of the film. My desire to see the spirit of the film is why I get so up in arms when I see the words “full screen” in bold on a DVD cover. It has me thinking,;do people still not know of the superiority that is a widescreen film? In case you are still rocking the old “pan and scan,” let me appeal to you in this open letter detailing why widescreen is the way to go.
Dear Full Screen Fans,
First of all, why? Why are you taking an active role to diminish your movie experience by reaching for that full screen DVD? I am going to take a couple of wild guesses and say that some of your reasons would sound like, “Because it’s bigger, duh” or, “Those black bars are a nuisance” or “What’s the difference, it was the first DVD I picked up.” If any of these phrases have crossed your lips, I would like to throw some knowledge your way. To understand why there is a difference, let’s talk about how movies are made.
There are two pretty important people that work on getting those beautiful scenes on the screen. Don’t get me wrong- tons of people work on films, but I have a soft spot for the cinematographer and the director. The cinematographer, a.k.a. the art director, works on the general mood of the film through artistic and technical direction. This is the person that helps to bring the feel of the world to life. The director works as the viewer’s eyes and ears, moving you through the world and making sure you have all of the information that you need from a particular scene. With the work of these two people, the viewer should feel immersed in the film.
Now, some people may not know this, but movies are captured on rectangular film, so scenes are set up to utilize this elongated space. This is why movie theater screens are rectangular as well, to project the full image of the film. This is all well and good, as the process from making a film to projecting it in a theater is clean-cut. The problem comes in the mass production of DVDs and Blu-Rays. Back in the day, (and to some extent this is still true) televisions were created with a square screen. What did this mean? How would people convert a rectangular picture to fit a square screen? The answer was to make the frame into a square, creating full screen, also called pan and scan.
This conversion is achieved through some interesting editing. The editor will place the new, square frame over the focus of the scene: This frame then moves with the focus of the action, which creates a “pan” (the name for the natural movement of the camera horizontally or vertically). But wait, this sounds great. The editor gives us a movie that fits the whole television screen and is focused on the important bits. But remember the role of the cinematographer and the director. They have built a world for the viewer to enjoy, and pan and scan chops that world up. The viewer can lose up to half of the originally filmed scene through this hack-and -slash form of editing.
I know that the black bars can be annoying to some, but those little bars mean the difference between watching one bad guy get slapped around, and an army of bad guys getting completely ruined by the forces of good. So please, please reject the pan and “scam.” It’s your movie and you deserve to see all of it, which is completely achievable through the power of the widescreen film. It’s the natural progression of the gorgeous rectangular frame from production to theaters to DVD. With this wider screen you are able to fully enjoy the nuances of a film. That extra space allows for more movement and stunning visuals, the kind of stuff that makes you want to see a movie in the first place.
Widescreen for the win,
Cara