Rarely do you get so good a unit of measurement as the suspect lineup is, due to the measurements written in the background! But first, let's look at the first step in video formatting, turning moving pictures on film into moving pictures on video. To give you an idea of what pan and scan ultimately does, and why it posed such a problem for directors, take a look at the video below. Widescreen is obviously the intended format. The worst-affected scenes are those which have panoramic shots. … This makes for some problems since up to 55% of the image can disappear into the great beyond. So how can you break put from the pack and get your idea onto the small screen? With Sydney Pollack. Not every channel or service does this, but enough of them do, especially major network channels or popular cable networks. As the early 2000s roared along, the popularity of VHS was on the decline. Offering freeze-frame comparisons of the widescreen and non-widescreen versions of three movies originally shown in theaters in widescreen, this web page makes two points clear: Do you remember what pan and scan is? The court ruled that so-called “pan and scan” (cropped) versions of widescreen movies are eligible for copyright protection as separate, derivative works. He also shows some shots from the film in their correct ratio and in cropped versions. Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown in fullscreen proportions of a standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects. Some examples: This is a funny one to watch in P&S.... not only do our heroes shoot at nothing, but afterwards a pair of feet appear as the invisible victim dies. Many who grew up with pan and scan wouldn’t even know anything was wrong, but from the outset, filmmakers didn’t like the process. Most people still have 4x3 TV's, however, and many consumers prefer the cut off sides of a Pan&Scan movie because it fills the whole screen vertically instead of - as with widescreen movies - merely stretching across the center and filling in the difference with those black bars (also called "letterboxing"). A visual medium requires visual methods. A popular transfer technique sometimes used involves removing the widescreen matting of a film that is shot on a larger scale (like Super35). Full Frame vs. Widescreen Explained . with confidence. Rafael Abreu received his B.A. Luke says something to the effect of "There are two Banthas down there, but I don't see any sand people.... wait a sec, I see one of them now." His chief weapon was surprise. There are alternatives. In more common nomenclature, it was the process of making a “widescreen” picture into a “fullscreen” one. And even as DVD technology improved and more films were being presented in their original ratios, pan and scan was “still a threat.”. Reframing is a technique used on most of Disney/Pixar's home releases of its earliest films, seperate from the original widescreen release. Be the first to contribute! The issue remains the same: people want their entire widescreen set filled with images, not black spaces. Apparently, the legacy of pan and scan is still not relegated to the history of "what not to do with movies on home video.". If you want to read reviews on the films above... we got them .... Ghostbusters One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest The Good, The Bad, And the Ugly A Bug's Life The Hudsucker Proxy Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery The Usual Suspects. Pan and scan is the process of fitting a widescreen film into the confines of a 4:3 frame. This pan and scan issue ultimately comes down to aspect ratio, the dimensions of a film's image. Nuff said. DVD has an anamorphic widescreen mode, which is the innovation that killed Pan and Scan. Pan and Scan DVDs exist, but were only made in the early days of the format. To fully understand the pan and scan process, let's remind ourselves of how aspect ratio works. -- Kevin Archibald was once a member of the infamous Widescreen Inquisition. Laserdisc allowed movies to be presented in their original theatrical aspect ratios. Okay, I was 23 at the time. The way it works is that a movie can letterboxed to 16:9 instead of 4:3, which provides more pixels to the movie and fewer to the letterbox. Certainly, widescreen got the shot in the arm it needed from DVD, but the likes of Warner Bros, Disney and more were either offering pan and scan releases, or … The removal of visual information from a film, which can vary from 45% to 75%. Movie Sound — A Filmmaker’s Guide to Sound Effect Techniques, How to Become a Script Reader — Duties, Salary, and Resources. Fast forward a few years where movies are being shown on 4:3 TVs. A fair question since it’s mostly an outdated process. If you put on the widescreen version of the film, you see that Obi-Wan Kenobi is at C … However, you see Luke looks at someone to the left of the frame and you hear someone’s voice that isn’t visible. There are a number of solutions... one is to PAN & SCAN, which involves just picking part of the picture and letting it take up the entire TV screen. What ends up happening is an evolution of the original pan and scan dilemma: channels want the movie to fill the whole screen and some audiences, now so used to 16:9, get confused whenever it doesn’t. We'll also look at why televisions and theatrical movies have different aspect ratios in the first place and explore the "widescreen vs. pan and scan" debate. DVDs provided a more consumer-friendly disc option that could let consumers choose between a film’s aspect ratio. It is called "pan-and-scan" because the video operator who does it can "pan" or move across the widescreen image to (presumably) follow the action. The reverse issue came about later when 16:9 televisions became the norm and 4:3 movies and TV shows were retrofitted. Streaming sites like Netflix and Hulu, along with channels like HBO, were susceptible to showing films in this way in the late 2000s and early 2010s. DVD has an anamorphic widescreen mode, which is the innovation that killed Pan and Scan. Pan and Scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown within the proportions of an ordinary TV screen, by cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image. People want their entire widescreen set filled with images, not black spaces between a film ’ s reviews. 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