Lots of things go around in circles over time. You could cite so many examples of your own, that I'm not even going to bother quoting any. Television of course became popular long after cinema had become commercially established, so it made sense that the original aspect ratio of the former was based on the prevalent ratio of the latter. By aspect ratio I am of course talking about the width to height ratio, but you knew that otherwise you wouldn't be reading this. Right? You can read the slightly dry Wikipedia-type of technical histories or you I can give you a slightly simplified overview. So as I said, telly intentionally aped a common cinema format known as Academy, so that movies would look good when shown on the telly, the ratios of which were pretty constant until widescreen took off.
When cinema attendances started to go down in the late 40s & 50s, film studios freaked and started to look for ways to differentiate the cinema-going experience from television in order not to lose custom to it. They experimented with things like ultra-wide ratios (of which there were a huge variety) and, er, 3D. If you're not sure, then yes, this is the point where you're supposed to think "Hang on a minute!" as we could very well be talking about today. Anyway, two basic ratios survived from that era, which are commonly albeit technically incorrectly referred to as Standard and the much wider (Cinema)Scope. [Before the pedants get at me, I do know much of the detail and I'm picking my language very, very carefully in order to simplify this story as much as possible.] Here's another point where we go in circles: with the rise of home video in the 80s & 90s, studios encouraged their filmmakers to shot in Standard so that the resulting movie would look better on home video without all that pan-and-scanning (a good example being Jurassic Park). Then of course widescreen TVs came out, so we'd get much smaller versions of those annoying black bars when watching movies in the right ratio.
Recently, cinema's felt threatened by the home cinema experience (as well as piracy of course) so again the film industry is trying to differentiate the experience on the big screen to that at home. Hence we have, um, 3D and more use of Scope than previously. Oh, and special Imax sequences.
So why the history lesson? I just finished watching Andrea Arnold's new and absolutely superb take on Wuthering Heights at my local multiplex. Artistically, the film was outstanding and will almost certainly be the subject of other posts. But one of the must curious attributes of the movie was its shooting ratio; it looked like it was filmed in Academy. Yes - that really, really old, squarish, upright format. When the film started I wondered if it would move into one of the wider ratios as the story jumped forward through time, a little like Pedro Almodovar's 'Bad Education' (not that it did). And I could see straight away that the framing would allow for a lot more intimacy than a wider ratio, a promise that the film more than lived up to - the love story was absolutely beautiful. But what I hadn't counted on was just how good the moors would look and how epic the film would feel, at least partially as a result. The framing (which got broken continuously, adding to the sense of repressed feelings bursting out everywhere) seemed to extend the visual scope vertically. The only thing I can liken it to are the tremendous Imax sequences in The Dark Knight; my favourite of those were the epic, Michael Mann-inspired cityscapes. It doesn't take a genius to work out that although the frames in those were huge, their ratio was of course almost square. Strange then that the most striking new movies in some ways resemble some of our oldest movies, just bigger. As Elektra King pointed in 'The World is Not Enough', "We ignore the old ways at our peril".
When cinema attendances started to go down in the late 40s & 50s, film studios freaked and started to look for ways to differentiate the cinema-going experience from television in order not to lose custom to it. They experimented with things like ultra-wide ratios (of which there were a huge variety) and, er, 3D. If you're not sure, then yes, this is the point where you're supposed to think "Hang on a minute!" as we could very well be talking about today. Anyway, two basic ratios survived from that era, which are commonly albeit technically incorrectly referred to as Standard and the much wider (Cinema)Scope. [Before the pedants get at me, I do know much of the detail and I'm picking my language very, very carefully in order to simplify this story as much as possible.] Here's another point where we go in circles: with the rise of home video in the 80s & 90s, studios encouraged their filmmakers to shot in Standard so that the resulting movie would look better on home video without all that pan-and-scanning (a good example being Jurassic Park). Then of course widescreen TVs came out, so we'd get much smaller versions of those annoying black bars when watching movies in the right ratio.
Recently, cinema's felt threatened by the home cinema experience (as well as piracy of course) so again the film industry is trying to differentiate the experience on the big screen to that at home. Hence we have, um, 3D and more use of Scope than previously. Oh, and special Imax sequences.
So why the history lesson? I just finished watching Andrea Arnold's new and absolutely superb take on Wuthering Heights at my local multiplex. Artistically, the film was outstanding and will almost certainly be the subject of other posts. But one of the must curious attributes of the movie was its shooting ratio; it looked like it was filmed in Academy. Yes - that really, really old, squarish, upright format. When the film started I wondered if it would move into one of the wider ratios as the story jumped forward through time, a little like Pedro Almodovar's 'Bad Education' (not that it did). And I could see straight away that the framing would allow for a lot more intimacy than a wider ratio, a promise that the film more than lived up to - the love story was absolutely beautiful. But what I hadn't counted on was just how good the moors would look and how epic the film would feel, at least partially as a result. The framing (which got broken continuously, adding to the sense of repressed feelings bursting out everywhere) seemed to extend the visual scope vertically. The only thing I can liken it to are the tremendous Imax sequences in The Dark Knight; my favourite of those were the epic, Michael Mann-inspired cityscapes. It doesn't take a genius to work out that although the frames in those were huge, their ratio was of course almost square. Strange then that the most striking new movies in some ways resemble some of our oldest movies, just bigger. As Elektra King pointed in 'The World is Not Enough', "We ignore the old ways at our peril".
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