Klarinet Archive - Posting 000967.txt from 2003/04

From: Richard Bush <rbushidioglot@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] "The Benny Goodman Story" redux
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 00:45:03 -0400

That's just one of the reasons I don't watch Ben Hur or other Charlton=20=

Heston movies.

On Monday, April 21, 2003, at 12:08 PM, Lelia Loban wrote:

> Richard Bush wrote,
>> An old movie would be in the the ratio of the 35 mm
>> format, whatever that is. 35 mm still cameras were
>> born to use this motion picture format, the ratchet holes
>> for advancing the film in projectors along with the film
>> emulsions developed just for movies.
>
> THE BENNY GOODMAN STORY dates from 1955. (The copy of THE BENNY=20
> GOODMAN
> STORY that the Library of Congress lets readers view in the "bat cave"=20=

> is a
> privately donated 16mm dupe, BTW, which is why the LOC catalogue is no
> help.) Some of the widescreen formats used 50mm up to 70mm film=20
> stock, but
> the anamorphic lens, for making widescreen movies on 35mm film (up to=20=

> and
> including Fox's ultra-wide CinemaScope, introduced in 1953), had been
> around since Henri Chr=E9tien invented it in 1928. Widescreen =
formats,
> including Metroscope, Todd AO, Vistavision, and at least three=20
> increasingly
> wide incarnations of Panavision, were the hot lick then, all competing=20=

> with
> each other by the mid to late 1950s.
>
> Pan & Scan isn't a shooting format; it's a method of squishing a=20
> widescreen
> movie into a full screen home video or TV broadcast. The old method =
of
> trimming to fit, by just capturing the middle of each frame, can=20
> result in
> ridiculous scenes where two actors conversing with each other are=20
> visible
> to the audience only as background scenery, usually out of focus, with=20=

> a
> nose bobbing ihthe foreground on the right side of the screen and=20
> another
> nose bobbing in the foreground on the left (as happened in the first,
> nearly unwatchable VHS of "The Year of Living Dangerously," for=20
> instance).
> The improvement, Pan & Scan, means the video capture moves around each
> frame, not in jumps but in slow, panning motion, frame by frame, so=20
> that
> the person speaking, or the crucial action, is usually visible. =20
> However,
> just as much footage gets lost in each frame of Pan & Scan as gets=20
> lost in
> the earlier, cruder reformatting for TV.
>
> I think THE BENNY GOODMAN STORY was originally widescreen for two=20
> reasons:
> because it was shot in Technicolor, a process Universal reserved for=20=

> its
> higher-budget "A" features, most of them widescreen; and, more=20
> importantly,
> because there's *no reason* to release a VHS or a DVD in Pan & Scan=20
> format
> *unless* it was a widescreen movie. 1.37 : 1 movies (the typical=20
> format
> for cheaper "B" pictures in the mid-1950s) look pretty good in TV=20
> format
> 1.33 : 1 aspect ratio, losing only a little bit on the sides--usually=20=

> not a
> noticible enough difference to make re-formatting worthwhile. But=20
> mid-20th
> century musicals, in particular, were usually produced in widescreen
> format, and IMHO they lose a lot in Pan & Scan.
>
> Lelia Loban
> lelialoban@-----.net
>
>
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