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>>So, as you guys were busy clowning on me like I didn't know
>>WHY there are black bars, everyone (except maybe RJCC)
>missed
>>the point.
>>
>>"They're shooting for movie screens"
>>
>>Dumbass, my TV is a movie screen. It's the screen that your
>>movie is going to be playing on for 99% of its useful life.
>>So quit designing your shit for the 10 weeks it will be in
>>theaters and start thinking about how it's going to look for
>>the next 100 years.
>
>Your TV is not a movie screen. It's only within the last
>twenty years that revenue from home-video, TV, and cable
>broadcasts have been more than theatrical grosses (remember
>that home video itself has only been a viable market for
>twenty-five to thirty years, and films switched to widescreen
>over fifty- years ago)
Directors can't adjust to a phenomenon that is 20 years old? I feel like that's just not a good excuse. These guys need to know where their bread gets butterred.
>
>Be that as it may, most movies shot since the 1980s are shot
>either open-matte or in Super 35, for the purposes of making
>4:3 TV versions easier to make without extreme
>pan-and-scanning like you'd see in a TV version of "The 3
>Musketeers" or "West Side Story". I won't go into detail about
>either; you can read about those shooting methods yourself on
>the Widescreen Advocacy website.
>
>>Could somebody please point me to an instance where some
>shit
>>that was vital to the plot would not have been viewable
>>without the black bars?
>
>These films were made in anamorphic widescreen:
>http://www.widescreen.org/examples/labyrinth/index.shtml
>http://www.widescreen.org/examples/lord_rings_rotk/index.shtml
>http://www.widescreen.org/examples/sound_of_music/index.shtml
>http://www.widescreen.org/examples/stfc/index.shtml
Every example you posted here...no necessary information was missing in the standard view screen. I'll take the lord of the rings one as an example:
(1) I don't need to see Frodo in that scene. Frodo does nothing, all he's doing is looking at the other two. I can look at the other two with my own two eyes. His reaction to what the two are doing is not unique in this scene, and can easily be inferred from what's going on at the time.
(2) I don't need to see the back of Golem's head. I know there is a back to his head. I know it's there. I don't need to see the whole thing in order to realize that he's talking into a pool of water, because in the standard view I can already see his ear and shoulder.
(3) I don't need to see Gandalf on his horse. I can assume from the context that he's there. The dude who plays Gandalf might be a great actor, but I doubt he's doing any spectacular acting while riding his horse.
(4) Apparently, Rivendell has a waterfall on its very outskirts. However, knowing this does not change affect anything in the movie. Also, we get a better look at Rivendell in many other scenes, some of which might include that waterfall that's way off in the distance (not that it matters).
(5) Ok, so that castle is big. We already knew that (or will know in the near future) because they show it plenty of times. Everything that I'm missing from the widescreen shot is either known to be there or can be assumed to be there.
(6) This is the only scene where anything even remotely informative is not shown in the standard shot. Unfortunately for the widescreen lovers, we know immediately after this shot that Aragorn is chilling there waiting to see that fire. Furthermore, if the director wasn't a douchebag he could have moved the camera angle for this scene so that the fire and Aragorn were viewable at the same time on a standard view.
(7) The purpose of this scene is to get an idea of the size of the army marching into Gondor. Whether or not there is a big turret over Gandalf's right shoulder is irrelevant. Oh, and he's holding his staff (which by the context of the movie you would assume he was doing anyway).
I'm gonna stop, but you get the point - directors don't have to spoon feed the audience everything. We have brains. We know what's going on in your movie. I don't need to see every single minute detail of a scene in order to know what's going on in that scene.
ALSO NOTE the bias of the pictures those guys are showing. Note that the widescreen images, to appear that large, would be shown on a TV nearly twice the size of the standard TV they use as comparison. Of course their shit looks better, it's on a way bigger TV. How about scrunching that shit down and showing us the black bars like we would see IN REAL LIFE. I'm not saying widescreen is bad...I'm saying fit that shit to my widescreen TV becasue I hate black bars. Of course when you show me widescreen without the black bars it will look better!
>http://stlewis.blogspot.com/2007/02/widescreen-vs-full-screen.html
>http://www.geocities.com/obsessivetougafan/grease.html
>
>As a director, point your camera at
>>the most important part of the scene.
>
>And this is why you're not a director.
>
> Here's a quote from one
>>of these dumbass directors from that wisescreen.org:
>>
>>""When you watch a movie on your television screen, you're
>not
>>necessarily seeing it the way it was originally intended. As
>a
>>director, when I set up a shot and say that there are two
>>people in the frame, with the wide screen I can hold both
>with
>>one person on each end of the frame. When that shot is
>>condensed to fit on your TV tube, you can't hold both
>>..and the intent of the scene is sometimes changed
>as
>>a result."
>>-- Leonard Nimoy, Commentary for the Director's Edition of
>>Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home"
>>
>>So, because this douchebag wanted to have two guys in his
>>scene stand 6 feet apart instead of 4 feet apart, I have to
>>spend the rest of my time watching his movie with black bars
>>across half the screen. Thank you so much, I'm so glad I
>>could see the 6ft spacing that you truly intended.
>>
>>Directors are getting self-important ideas about "their
>>vision". Listen up, fuckers...your "vision" would look a
>lot
>>better if I didn't have to stare at some black bars for 2
>>hours. So maybe you should start thinking about home
>theater
>>viewers instead of movie theaters.
>>
>>Just because something has been a certain way for years
>>doesn't mean it's right.
>>
>>
>>EDIT: http://www.widescreen.org/widescreen.shtml
>>
>>Look at the picture of the 3 Musketeers scene in the link.
>>This is exactly the shit I'm talking about. What vital
>>information did I miss because I can't see the two other
>dudes
>>holding their swords? As a viewer with a brain, I
>understand
>>that they're there. You're going to put some black bars on
>>the screen just so I can see something I already knew was
>>there???
>
>You're looking at this in a very simple-minded way.
>
>The point directors and cinematographers try to make about
>widescreen is that their films are designed and composed for
>those big widescreens in the theater. It's not just about
>keeping whoever or whatever in frame; it's about the
>composition of the image; where things are placed, how they
>move across the screen, and other creative and practical
>considerations that go hand-in-hand with showing visual
>information.
>
>It's not about the directors being "self-important": aspect
>ratio and film format are usually committee decisions anyways,
>with the director and the DP having final say.
>There's a reason most comedies and romantic films are 1.85:1
>(easier to do close-ups, more intimacy with the audience,
>usually smaller casts), and why most action films and epics
>are 2.39:1 (sweeping wide screen allows for more dynamic
>compositions, more subjects all in screen at once). If Nimoy
>has Spock and Kirk stand on opposite sides of a full 2.35:1
>widescreen, it isn't just an arbitrary descion; there's a
>reason behind it (visual depiction of emotional distance,
>disagreement, etc)
>
>Do you not see how cramped and non-dynamic the
>panned-and-scanned version of that "3 Musketeers" shot was.
>There's probably a reason why the director has all four dudes
>in the shot; I haven't seen the film, but I'm willing to bet
>that one or the other of the unseen guys has dialogue, and the
>4:3 TV version has to pan over to show them (see also
>"Ghostbusters", "West Side Story", etc)
>
But just because he had dialogue doesn't mean we have to see him (I don't remember if he does, btw. But it was definitely the guy in the center who had the line for that shot). That's the thing about the people in here advocating wide screen - the fact that I get to see some loser on the side of the screen say his relatively meaningless line does not justify me having to watch 2 huge black bars for the rest of the movie.
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and other cinema ratios, that we could pull out whenever fuckers started bitching about black bars.
