When I worked at a video library many years ago (the days of VHS), I would have to try to explain, on many occasions, to customers that they were actually losing a lot of the film when they rented movies. I was always pushing for that cinema experience. VHS (or DVD today even) is a way of catching up with missed movies or to see movies again or a way of catching up with movies that went straight to video, it was not a replacement for the cinema.
On VHS they started to release certain titles in widescreen (or letterboxed) format and I always pushed my customers to try these editions over the standard fullscreen (or pan & scanned) versions, usually the customer took the standard version because they believed that they were losing parts of the movie under the black bars. Luckily, DVD and 16:9 TVs have done a lot to educate people to the joys of movies in their original formats. However, distributors still insist on releasing some DVDs in both standard and widescreen formats, and worst of all, there are a couple of small distributors who still insist on releasing only panned & scanned DVDs!! They actually use it in their marketing, they say something like ‘get the whole picture’ or some such garbage.
I won’t buy a DVD if it is in Panned and Scanned format, period. I am a self confessed aspect ratio nazi!
So, why do I bring this up? /Film just found this wonderful little video from a few years ago that explains why you should watch widescreen over panned and scanned. I had a little demo that tried to explain it in the video library, but this is a gem and if I had this back then, I think I could have converted everyone. Enjoy the video and if you buy panned and scanned (fullscreen) DVDs, hopefully this will convert you.
2 comments
Always preferred widescreen format but to be honest I had no idea just how much was really being edited out in panned/scanned flicks. What a HUGE difference! Guess who's going to have to re watch a whole stack of movies…
This was brought home on a “Siskel & Ebert” episode by cutting back and forth between a wide screen “Blade Runner” and a full screen version. (and that was in the VCR days.) Although I do have to toss a roll of the eyes when directors start talking about how films are “violated”, but I do agree that there's more enjoyment to be had with the widescreen (letterbox) versions, which is why a lot of DVD's don't get bought (by me) at Wal-mart when they only have the fullscreen versions of a movies (like the Harry Potter films).