Underman's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY - 30 YEARS ON
Tom Brown's WIDESCREEN SYSTEMS

2001: A Space Odyssey - 30 Years On

Mr Kubrick's masterpiece, in retrospect
Widescreen systems by Tom Brown

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Contents

Click on any subject header to go to the appropriate section. Click on any section header to return here.

I. Introduction A. Non wide screen B. Widescreen
II. Cinerama III. Anamorphic wide screen A. Cinemascope
B. Panavision IV. Flat widescreen V. Large film processes
(A) Vistavision (B) Technirama (C) Cinemascope 55
VI. 70mm filming A. Todd AO B. 70mm Panavision
(1) M-G-M Camera 65 (2) Super Panavision 70 C. Super Technirama 70
D. Single lens Cinerama or 70mm Super Cinerama VII. Blow ups and widescreen today VIII Large negative today
IX. Aspect ratios and TV/home video End of page

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I. Introduction

Ever since the early 1950s movie fans have been beset by all sorts of different shape screens and different trade names followed by terms such as "scope" or "rama". Even movies that didn't have one of those names tended to look wider than they had before. The situation was compounded when movies began to appear on TV and, later home video. The image appearing on the home screen was usually much less than the full movie screen, but, occasionally one would see more on TV than in the theater. There have been literally hundreds of different widescreen systems. What follows is a brief overview of the best known ones.

Anyone interested in more detail should read Carr and Hayes' Widescreen Movies: A History and Filmography of Wide Gauge Filmmaking, McFarland, 1988 and Widescreen Cinema by John Belton, Harvard, 1992. The Carr and Hayes book attempts to be completely encyclopedic, but Hayes has admitted a number of failings and inaccuracies, in various articles for Widescreen Review. Hayes blames these failings on massive editing by people with little understanding or interest in the subject. Belton, is a far more careful historical work, but less comprehensive. Dan J. Sherlock has prepared a masterful 60-page page by page correction of the Carr &;Hayes book.

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A. Non wide screen

In the 1890s various film types and screen shapes gave way to the use of 35mm filming, thanks primarily to the efforts of Thomas Edison, in the United States and the Lumiere brothers in France. From the time that the basic system was standardized, movies have been filmed on 35mm film which was pulled down through the camera and projector 4 sprocket holes at a time. This resulted in an image which was 4 wide by 3 high or an "aspect ratio" of 1.33:1 (meaning that the image was 1/3 wider than it was high). In the silent days the image went all the way out to the edge of the sprocket holes.

With the introduction of sound in the late 20's (after a brief period of sound on record) an optical sound track was placed down one side of the print, reducing the area into which the image could be printed and resulting in the "Movietone square", named after one of the early sound systems, which had an almost square aspect ratio of 1.17:1. People didn't like this narrower image and the recently formed Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences changed the aperture slightly to approximately restore the 1.33:1 shape to the screen (actually the image was now slightly less than the full frame high in order to accomplish this (the ratio was actually 1.37:1, but is still usually called a 1.33:1, or Academy Ratio)). With a few experiments notwithstanding, this was standard until the 1950's.

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B. Widescreen

There were a number of experiments with widescreen in the period before the 50's, most notably Abel Gance's Polyvision, a 3 film process (sometimes referred to as a Triptych) developed for the conclusion of his film Napoleon, and Hypergonar, an anamorphic process (see below) developed by Henri Chretein. There was also Magnascope which was simply a large enlargement of the entire 35mm image. During the late 1920s and early '30s several of the studios experimented with large negative systems, the best known of which were the 70mm Fox Grandeur and M-G-M Realife processes, which projected a wide image at approximately 2.0:1. A number of factors including, the reluctance of theaters to adopt the expensive new equipment on the heels of costly sound installations, the lack of standardization, the lackluster nature of the movies made in these processes, and the beginning of the Great Depression, kept these processes from succeeding.

In the early 50's the introduction of TV was one of several factors (explored in detail in Chapter 4 of Belton's book) which made the movie companies look for new ways of drawing people into the theaters, and the most successful of these was a widespread adoption of widescreen processes beginning with: Cinerama.

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II. Cinerama

True Cinerama was developed by Fred Waller from a process called Vitarama which had been developed for a never-built exhibit for the 1939 World's Fair.

Vitarama used eleven 16mm projectors to fill a huge curved screen and overhead dome. A simplified version of this process, using five 35mm projectors was used as an aerial gunnery trainer during WW2.

Introduced in 1952, Cinerama filmed an enormous image 146 degrees wide with a camera which was "three cameras in one" with three lenses shooting in a criss cross pattern through a single rotary shutter onto three 35 mm films (the left lens shot the right part of the picture, the right lens shot the left part of the picture, and the center lens shot straight ahead). The film advanced 6 sprocket holes at a time rather than the standard 4 and shot the entire frame, without room being left for the soundtrack, resulting in a larger than usual image with superior low grain quality. Cinerama was filmed at 26 frames per second (fps) rather than the standard sound speed of 24 frames per second resulting in less 'strobing' of the image.

In the theater, three projectors projected this image onto a deeply curved screen which was made of at least 1100 inch-wide vertical strips of perforated tape, which were aligned so that light wouldn't reflect from one side to the other and ruin the image. The join lines between the 3 Cinerama panels were blurred by small vibrating combs in the projectors nicknamed 'gigolos'. Six and later seven track stereophonic sound was separately synchronized on a 35mm magnetic film and played back through 5 speakers behind the screen and a number of speakers in the theater for a surround effect. The sound was directed between the surround speakers by an engineer in the theater.

The characteristics of true Cinerama were a very wide angle of view, close to the human field of vision, and very deep focus. If the screen had been flattened out its aspect ratio would have been between 2.59:1 and 2.76:1 depending on the installation.. The process created a sensation, but was so expensive that only a comparatively few theaters in world's largest cities were adapted to show Cinerama. The films made in the process were spectacular travelogures: This is Cinerama(1952), Cinerama Holiday (1955), Seven Wonders of the World (1956), Search for Paradise (1957) and Cinerama's South Seas Adventure (1958).

In 1958 a short-lived 'copycat' process called Cinemiracle was introduced with the film Windjammer. In this process, mirrors were used during photography and projection, so that all three projectors could be located in the same booth (the join lines between the images were also, supposedly less visible than in Cinerama). Cinemiracle was enough of a success, so that Cinerama quickly bought out the process and adopted some of its improvements in later Cinerama installations.

In the early 1960s Cinerama was modified to shoot and project at 24 fps, under the somewhat misleading name 'Super Cinerama' (so that single film prints could be made for general release, after the Cinerama run ended).

Two story movies, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962) and How the West Was Won (1963), were released in this process for M-G-M. By the time of the M-G-M shows, approximately 60 theaters could show Cinerama worldwide.

Thanks to the successful use of 70mm photography (see below) for a few sequences in How the West Was Won (divided onto 3 films for projection), further plans for three film movies were abandoned, and future 'Cinerama' releases were shot and projected in the more economical but less enveloping '70mm Super Cinerama' process (see below).

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III. Anamorphic wide screen

A. Cinemascope

The first process to introduce widescreen in a large number of theaters was CinemaScope which debuted in 1953 with the Robe. This process was originally developed by 20th Century Fox and was based on the anamorphic lens which had been invented in the 1920s by French inventor Henri Chretian, under the name Hypergonar (most of the first three CinemaScope films were shot with antique Hypergonar lenses, until Bosch and Lomb geared up production).

The anamorphic lens would distort the image by squeezing it horizontally so that an almost double width image could fit on a single width 1.33:1 film frame. During projection another anamorphic lens would unsqueeze the image onto a large slightly curved metalized screen. Sound was played back from 4 thin magnetic tracks on either side of the sprocket holes of the film providing a sound for 3 speakers behind the screen (right, center, left) and one "effects" track in the auditorium. The much smaller than usual sound track was coupled with smaller than usual sprocket holes to achieve an almost double width image with an aspect ratio of 2.55:1.

Many smaller theaters couldn't afford the expensive magnetic stereo equipment, or the special screens. Fox therefore began to release films with monophonic optical soundtracks on the film and normal sprocket holes were used, reducing the area into which the image could be recorded, and resulting in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Fox also eliminated the requirement for special metalized 'Miracle Mirror' screens. A few movies featured dual sound tracks with both magnetic and optical tracks available, but the expensive magnetic tracks were soon dropped. Most 'scope films used mono sound until the introduction of Dolby Stereo (see below) in the 1970s. As a result of these changes, CinemaScope, and similar anamorphic processes became widespread, but ceased to seem special to the public. Belton notes that CinemaScope had gone from being "A poor man's Cinerama" to being "A poor man's CinemaScope" visible in just about every small theater.

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B. Panavision

An advanced anamorphic process called PANAVISION was introduced by the lens manufacturer of the same name in the late 1950s. Panavision reduced some of the image distortion inherent in the CinemaScope lens, and gradually superseded the older process. Although a large number of other "Scope" processes were tried in the '50s and '60s, Panavision remains the best known and one of the widest used Anamorphic process (Carr and Hayes state that J-D-C Scope is actually becoming more popular than Panavision). In the 70s the aperture was changed slightly, changing the aspect ratio to 2.40:1 in order to hide splices.

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IV. Flat widescreen

This is a way of creating a widescreen look without using anamorphic lenses. It first received wide use by '50s by filmmakers who couldn't afford expensive true widescreen processes, didn't like the distortion inherent in 'scope, or had films already 'in the can' at 1.33 which they wanted to 'convert' to widescreen.

Basically, the movie is shot onto regular 1.33:1 film through regular lenses (which are sharper and have a greater depth of field (focus) than anamorphic lenses). During projection, an aperture plate in the projector chops a strip off of the top and bottom of the picture. This results in a wide look, and the film can then be enlarged onto a wide screen by shortening the focal length of the projection lens. Because the film could be projected 'full frame' (as is sometimes done in TV and video showings), revealing things the filmmaker didn't want to be shown, some films are shot with the aperture plate in the camera, permanently masking the frame as the picture as it is shot. This is known as a "hard matte"

Because a large image is projected from a smaller than usual area of film the image tends to be grainy and dimmer than that projected from a full frame. Modern lenses, projection lamps and film stock have helped compensate for this and the process is used in many major films today.

Although projection ratios usually vary from theater to theater, in Europe flat widescreen movies are generally masked to 1.66:1 (hardly wide at all) or sometimes 1.76:1 (preferred by Disney in some films). In the US the standard ratio for this type of projection is 1.85:1. Some film makers will "protect" the image with a 1.66:1 hard matte, even though they intend it to be projected at 1.85:1. This is done to allow directors of photography to get microphones and lights closer to the action without the chance that they will appear on the screen if the film is shown without a mask (for example in video, see below). (It should be noted that, today, the Panavision company makes both anamorphic lenses, used in the anamorphic Panavison process (see above), and spherical lenses used for 'flat' filming, which is sometimes called "Spherical Panavision". Credits indicating a film was made with spherical lenses by Panavision, rather than anamorphic lenses, usually state "lenses by Panavision". "Filmed in Panavision" usually refers to the anamorphic process. An easy way to determine if a film is anamorphic or "spherical" is to look at the reel change marks, which appear at the upper corner of the screen. These are circular in spherical films and oval in anamorphic films).

A reduced size negative is also used in TECHNISCOPE which moves the film through the camera only 2 sprocket holes at a time, creating a sliver of an image which happens to have an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. This is then blown up and anamorphically squeezed into a full frame anamorphic print and is then projected like Panavision or CinemaScope. This process can also be printed as a flat 1.85:1 print.

SUPERSCOPE achieved a 2.0:1 image by shooting on a full frame 'flat 35mm frame, but masking the top and bottom off of the frame, blowing the picture up, and squeezing it into a full frame anamorphic for projection. Although the SuperScope process is no longer used, the similar Super 35, or Super Techniscope process (see below) is used by several leading filmmakers (this process was originally called Super Scope 235).

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V. Large film processes

Many of the major releases in the 50s and 60s were filmed and projected from large negative film. These images could then be printed onto large format projection film (usually 70mm), squeezed down onto 35mm anamorphic, or reduced without squeezing onto 'flat prints. Because of the larger negative size, even the 35mm prints tended to produce better images than could be achieved by filming directly in 35mm anamorphic. The large print projection produced by far the best image, but was limited to large "roadshow" presentations. The primary large negative processes were VistaVision, Technirama and Cinemascope 55.

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(A) Vistavision

In this process 35mm film was moved sideways through the camera like a still camera, and was pulled "across" 8 sprocket holes at a time for a negative area twice as great as that used in regular 35mm photography. Special VistaVision projectors projected the image in the same manner. Full frame, the image would have had an aspect ratio of approximately 1.5:1 but the image was usually masked to 1.85:1 for projection. Movies made in this process include Ten Commandments and White Christmas, along with several Hitchcock films. Because of the cost of the projection equipment, only a few VistaVision projection installments existed, but special anamorphic prints (with a lesser squeeze than 'Scope'), or 'flat 35mm prints produced a high quality, low grain image thanks to the large negative size. In some later re-releases of films such as The Ten Commandments, the film was squeezed onto a 'scope print, or blown up onto 70mm film, but a great deal of the top and bottom of the image was lost when this was done.

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(B) Technirama

This was developed to use the old Technicolor cameras, which were modified to shoot one film running horizontally 8 sprocket holes at a time, for a VistaVision style double area frame (see VistaVision above). Technirama combined this format with an anamorphic lens so that a full 2.35:1 scope wide could be recorded, without any loss of image area along the top and bottom of the frame as would have happened with VistaVision. The release prints of plain Technirama were squeezed further into a standard 35mm 'scope style frame, which produced a superior image to that of Panavision or CinemaScope. Technirama never made many headlines, although it was used for a few successful films, including Gypsy. It was later used as the source for 70 mm prints under the name "Super Technirama 70" (see below).

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(C) Cinemascope 55

This process was developed by 20th Century Fox in an attempt to update CinemaScope in competition to the 70mm Todd AO process(see below). It achieved a superior image by shooting onto a 55mm 8 sprocket hole high frame using an anamorphic lens (at 4 times the image area of a 35mm film frame CinemaScope 55 actually had a larger negative than "70mm" processes). Although a few special 55mm projectors were used for trade show purposes, the films shot in CinemaScope 55 were theatrically released in standard 35mm 'scope prints. Because of the large negative, however, the 'scope prints were of vastly superior quality to standard CinemaScope.

Unfortunately, the process didn't capture the headlines of the spectacular 70mm processes, and only two films, Carousel, and The King and I were released, before Fox converted to Todd AO for its major films.

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VI. 70mm FILMING

A. Todd AO

This was developed for Michael Todd, an entrepreneur and showman, who had been an early investor in the Cinerama process. Todd wanted to develop a process which would be "Cinerama outta one hole". The process itself was developed by Brian O'Brien of the American Optical Company (thus the AO).

Todd, knowing that this expensive process could not compete in number of installations with the much less expensive 'scope processes, pioneered the use of the 'reserved seat roadshow', in which the film was shown in exclusive engagements in large theaters in big cities, at expensive reserved seat prices. This became standard for most of the big films of the late 50s through the end of the 60s, and suited the super spectacular epics then being made.

The Todd AO process itself, shot onto 65mm film frame which was 5 sprocket holes high and had 3.5 times the image area of a standard 35mm frame. The process used high quality spherical lenses, the keystone of which was a 120 degree 'bug eye' lens which could come close to the 146 degree Cinerama field of vision. Other lenses allowed medium and close up shots (something Cinerama could not do). The film was projected from 70mm prints, which included two 2.5mm magnetic strips 'outboard' of the sprocket holes (each carrying 2 tracks), and 2 strips to the inner edge of the sprocket holes (each carrying one soundtrack). These strips carried a total of 6 tracks of sound, so that 5 tracks would be played back behind the screen (similar to the Cinerama arrangement), and the remaining track would play back through the 'effects' (surround) speakers in the theater.

In some installations, the effects track may have been encoded with Perspecta sound which would direct it between 3 different locations in the theater (Perspecta encoding had been used in some single track CinemaScope films to allow a 3 track stereo effect). The image was projected onto an enormous deeply curved screen, which had small 'lenticles' (lens-like facets) to reflect the picture to the audience. The image quality was further enhanced by shooting and projecting the image at 30 frames per second, rather than the standard sound speed of 24 fps. The picture was a grain free, superbly detailed image, which achieved much of the panoramic Cinerama feel.

The first two films shot in the process were also shot in 24 fps systems so that they could be shown in 35mm theaters after the Todd AO run was ended. Oklahoma! was double filmed in CinemaScope, while Around the World in 80 Days was shot by two sets of Todd AO equipment, one shooting at 30 fps for 70mm prints, and one shooting at 24 fps. The latter allowed 35mm prints in a special process called Cinestage which had the same aspect ratio as Todd AO (see note on 70mm aspect ratios below).

After the release of '80 Days' Todd was killed in a plane crash, and 20th Century Fox bought the process, and shot most of their big films for the next decade in Todd AO (a few other studios licensed the use of Todd AO as well). The Fox films, however, were all shot at 24 fps only, and both 70mm prints and 35mm prints were made from the same source negative. The deeply curved screen was also dropped. It should be noted that 70mm prints were all made from the original camera negative, during the 50s and 60s, which enhanced image quality even more.

A note on 70mm aspect ratios

Some sources claim that the proper projection ratio of Todd AO and similar processes was 2.05:1, but this has been proven to be a mistake made by the writers of the Carr & Hayes book, and has been extensively and convincingly refuted by DJ Sherlock in his excellent 60 page list of corrections to that volume. The correct ratio for Todd AO, along with other "flat" 70mm processes, is 2.21:1, and this is accepted by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SEMPTE) and the British Kinematograph, Sound and Televison Society (BKSTS).

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B. 70mm Panavision

Robert Gotshalk's Panavision company became the premier producer of widescreen systems during late 50s and 60s, developing 35mm Panavision which superseded CinemaScope (see above), and a series of 70mm processes which competed with Todd AO, and even Cinerama. These processes were M-G-M Camera 65 and Super Panavision 70.

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(1) M-G-M Camera 65

This process was developed for M-G-M in reaction to Todd AO, and also shot onto 65mm , 5 sprocket hole high film frame, and usually projected from a 70mm frame with 6 track magnetic sound. The difference between Todd AO and Camera 65 was that this process used a slight 1.25 anamorphic squeeze during photography and a similar lens to unsqueeze the image during projection. This allowed a 2.76:1 Cinerama wide image to be projected (on a much flatter screen than true Cinerama), although many theaters could not accommodate the enormously wide screen , and the films ended up being cropped on the sides. The process was used for only two films, Raintree County and the 1959 Ben Hur, before it was re-named Ultra Panavison 70 and was used to shoot a number of epics such as Mutiny on the Bounty and The Fall of the Roman Empire. It was also one of the processes used to make films released in single lens or "70mm Super Cinerama" (see below). (Carr and Hayes have claimed that the Camera 65 lens was adjustable from a 1.33 squeeze to a 1.25 squeeze, but a recent article by Marty Hart in Wide Gauge newsletter puts this to rest. Camera 65 and Ultra Panavision, according to Mr. Hart, were the same process and both used a 1.25 compression).

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(2) Super Panavision 70

This was the Panavision company's version of Todd AO, and was likewise shot and projected with high quality spherical lenses. It was filmed at 24 fps, and created an image of similar quality to the 24 fps version of Todd AO. This process was used for many of the major releases during the 60s, including West Side Story, Lawrence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The latter was one of several films shot in Super Panavision, and initially released in 70mm Super Cinerama (See Below). With the exception of the Soviet process Sovscope 70, the vast majority of 65/70mm films were shot in either Todd AO or Super Panavision.

All of the 70mm processes mentioned up to this point could be anamorphically squeezed onto 35mm 'scope style film for projection in regular theaters at 2.35:1. Films shot in Todd AO and Super Panavison lost some of the top and bottom of the image when transferred to 35mm 'scope. Films shot in Camera 65 and Ultra Panavision usually had their sides cropped to fit the 2.35:1 frame (the one exception being Ben Hur, which was actually letterboxed on the 35mm print to allow the full width of the film to fit onto the 35mm 'scope screen).

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C. Super Technirama 70

During this period of time, a few films were released in a process called Super Technirama 70. This was a process developed by the Technicolor company from its 35mm Technirama process (see above).

The Super Technirama 70 process took the squeezed horizontal Technirama negative, and unsqueezed it onto 70mm film (with some image lost on the sides). Thanks to the double area negative, the 70mm image was of very high quality, although it did not approach the quality of the 65mm processes (which shot onto a negative with close to 4 times the normal 35mm negative area).

Super Technirama was used as a slightly less expensive alternative to 65mm processes, in films such as Spartacus and Zulu. Once again, it was one of the processes used to make 70mm Super Cinerama films.

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D. Single lens Cinerama or 70mm Super Cinerama

This, so called, process replaced true Cinerama and Super Cinerama (see above) with the 1963 release of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. This film was shot in Ultra Panavision 70 (see above) and special 'rectified' prints were made, with the center printed flat, and the side thirds compressed. The deep curve of the Cinerama screen would unsqueeze the compressed sides of the film. Although this process was cheaper than 3 film Cinerama, and eliminated the infamous 'join lines' between the frames, it did not have the enormous angle of view of true Cinerama, nor the high quality deep focused image. The Ultra Panavision films released in Cinerama were It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World, Battle of the Bulge, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Hallelujah Trail and Khartoum.

Several films shot in Super Panavision and Super Technirama 70 were shown in Cinerama, some 'rectified' and others not. The Super Panavision films were Grand Prix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ice Station Zebra and Krakatoa East of Java (note Krakatoa is West of Java). Some sources claim that Song of Norway was also shown in Cinerama. The Super Technirama films presented in Cinerama were Circus World, The Golden Head (never released in the US in any format) and Custer of the West.

The "rectified" prints of Ultra Panavision films were projected at approximately 2.6:1, while the Super Panavision and Super Technirama films projected at the standard 70mm ratio of 2.21:1. The deeply curved 'louvered' Cinerama screen (made of vertical strips of material) was apparently dropped in later 70mm Cinerama theaters, in favor of a solid screen. By now, however, with the exception of the curve, Cinerama was little different from other 70mm processes and was riding on its name alone.

Somewhat similar to 70mm Super Cinerama was D-150, or Dimension 150, a process similar to Todd AO, which could be projected on either a deeply curved screen or a flat screen, depending on the venue. The process, although of high quality, came too late for the widescreen fad, and only 2 movies, The Bible and Patton, were made in this process.

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VII. Blow ups and Widescreen today

Despite the many famous, and very successful, films shot in 65/70mm processes, the expensive and bulky processes didn't guarantee success, as Cleopatra, Dr. Dolittle, Star! and Hello Dolly proved. Even such seemingly successful films as Spartacus and My Fair Lady didn't break even at the box office, and filmmakers began to look for ways of holding down costs in their roadshow films.

In the early to mid 1960s a number of films were released in a process with the misleading name of PANAVISION 70 (or sometimes "70mm Panavision"). These films, including such spectacular offerings as The Cardinal, Beckett, Dr. Zhivago, Hawaii, and many others, were actually shot in 35mm Panavision (see above) and were blown up onto 70 mm prints for roadshow projection. The image quality could not approach that of films shot in 65mm or Technirama, but the large print looked brighter and sharper than projection from a 35mm print, and spectacular 6 track stereo sound continued to make these showings special. The name Panavision 70 was misleading because most patrons presumed that the films were shot in '70mm' (really 65mm), and because a few early Super Panavision 70 films, such as Exodus, and West Side Story, were credited as being filmed in Panavision 70.

By the early 70s, continued flops of films like Ryan's Daughter (shot in Super Panavision), Tora Tora Tora and Nicholas and Alexandra (both Panavision 70 blow-ups), killed the 70mm roadshow. In place of the big spectacles, the youth oriented audiences of the day flocked to see low budget 'relevant' films like Easy Rider, most of which were shot in 35mm and simply masked for widescreen presentation. Although by the mid to late 70s the multi million dollar blockbuster had re-established itself, the roadshow was never re-established, and films like The Godfather, Jaws, Star Wars and Close Encounters were widely released in local theaters, drawing huge revenues. Beginning with films like Star Wars, many of the most spectacular films were released both in 35mm versions, and in 70mm blow-up, at the same time.

The importance of the 70mm presentation began to decrease, however, with the introduction of Dolby Stereo, with Star Wars. Dolby Stereo allows 4 track stereophonic sound to be matrix encoded into two small optical soundtracks printed into the same space as the old mono optical soundtrack. Although the 6 track magnetic sound (now directed to 3 locations behind the screen, with two tracks for stereo 'surround' and 1 track for the deep bass subwoofer, the so called 5.1 system) continues to be used today in a few 70mm releases, the introduction of 5.1 track digital sound for 35mm presentations in systems such as Dolby Digital, the CD ROM based DTS system used in Jurassic Park, and the Sony SDDS system, make the survival of 70mm blow-ups seem problematic.

Today most films are 35mm matted 'flat' widescreen films (even spectaculars like Jurassic Park) which, thanks to improved lenses and filmstock, produce a very high quality image. A number of other major releases continued to be made in 35mm anamorphic processes, such as Panavision and J-D-C Scope.

A few filmmakers, especially James Cameron, favor the Super 35 or Super Techniscope process (initially known as Super Scope 235, see above). This process shoots onto the full 1.33 frame with no room being left for the soundtrack (which is recorded separately in all films). The frame is then masked at 2.35:1 and this strip of an image is blown up, and squeezed onto a 'scope style frame, making room for the soundtrack in the process (the masking is usually close to the top of the frame, allowing a 'common topline' to be used for video releases). This allows a Panavision style projection with the deeper focus and sharper image of a 'flat' film (the camera is also less bulky without the anamorphic optics, and requires less light, especially important for night photography). If the filmmaker wished, he could change his mind after principal photography and make a 1.85:1 or even 1.66:1 print from the same material by merely lowering the bottom of the frame when the release prints were being extracted from the negative. James Cameron is a great supporter of this process, and his films The Abyss and Terminator 2 were made using Super 35 for principal photography.

One important advantage to the Super 35 process is that the top and bottom of the picture, masked off for the theatrical print, are still present on the negative, allowing 'flat' prints to be made with different aspect ratios. This is especially important for the making of 'panned and scanned' videos.

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VIII Large negative today

As has been said above, large negative photography was generally abandoned for principal photography in the early 70s. This was not the case with special effects, however. 65mm and VistaVision photography have continued to be used in effects shots because the superior image quality of large negative film helps make up for the extensive loss of image quality caused by the duping of images in special effects processes such as traveling mattes. The highly processed special effects image, when filmed on large negative film, ends up having similar quality to the original 35mm photography used in the rest of the film, so there is no decrease in image quality when an effects scene comes on the screen.

In 1992 Ron Howard's film Far and Away became the first film in 20 years to have principal photography done in 65mm. The process created by the Panavision company was an updated version of Super Panavision 70 using special lightweight cameras, advanced lenses, and new film stock and re-named Panavision Super 70. Sadly, Far and Away was not successful at the box office, and there were some complaints that even those few theaters which could show 70mm prints didn't produce the expected image quality. A recent magazine article suggests that the projection lenses, while acceptable for showing 70mm blow-ups from 35mm film, do not have adequate resolution to project the amount of detail in the 65mm /70mm format. Whether further films will be made in this process remains to be seen. It would not be acceptable for films with extensive special effects, for reasons suggested above. Barakka, more recently, was shot using antique Todd AO equipment, for the highest quality image possible.

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IX. Aspect ratios and TV/home video

Widescreen movies were originally created as a response to the competition of TV in the early 50s. As such, they were designed to be incompatible with the TV tube which had been developed in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio. When movies began to appear on TV, the broadcasters adopted the process of 'cropping' their pictures in order that the screen would be filled. This involved focusing on a small area of the movie frame with the telecine movie to video transfer machine. In films made in true widescreen processes, such as CinemaScope or Todd AO, close to half of the image would be lost, and it would be necessary to have a technician 'pan and scan' the image to follow the important parts of the image. Artificial cuts were also introduced from one part of the widescreen image to another. With home video, including videocassettes (originally Beta and VHS, today mainly VHS) and video discs (originally CED and laser, today only laser) this practice was continued. Sometimes the process worked well, but many widescreen spectacles, musicals, and war films were badly compromised.

Finally, in the late 1980s, letterboxing (reducing the image size so that the sides of the widescreen image equal the sides of the TV screen, with black bars stripped into the blank space above and below the image area), which had been pioneered by the Japanese laser disc industry, became standard with laser discs released by the Voyager Company in its Criterion Collection.
Since then an increasing number of video companies have been adopting the process in laser disc releases. A number of people do not like the reduced size image, or the black bands at the top and bottom of the screen, but most movie lovers appreciate having the entire widescreen image of epics such as Lawrence of Arabia, Ben Hur or 2001. This process is far less common on videocassettes, at least partially because the low image resolution of VHS tape results in an unacceptable loss of image detail when the image size is reduced by the letterbox process.

A different situation occurs in movies made in masked 35mm or Super 35. In these processes, there is more image on the film than was shown in the theater, sometimes a full 1.33:1 image, or a 1.66:1 hard matted image. It is possible to show this extra image and fill the TV screen (with a little lost on the sides of a 1.66 hard matted film) although this may extensively change what the filmmaker intended (an intense close up of a face will become a head and shoulder shot with empty space visible over the head). On rare occasions, when no attempt was made to 'protect' the TV screen area, microphones and lights may show up when the film is shown full frame. A number of laser disc manufacturers will electronically strip in matting to simulate the theatrical mask. Even movies made in masked 35mm may have trouble with special effects, seeing that these are sometimes made in large negative true widescreen processes (see above), meaning that these scenes must be panned and scanned even if the rest of the film is shown full frame. The same is true in films using considerable computer graphics, which are usually not rendered full frame to save money.

The increased number of people who first see films on home video has led to a reduction in the use of widescreen. This situation may change if widescreen TV and HDTV catch on (the issue of the ratio adopted by this process 16:9 (approximately 1.77:1) creates a number of interesting issues in itself).

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This page: Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998 by Underman
The paper "Widescreen Systems": Copyright © 1996 by Tom Brown: reproduced with kind permission of the author

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