Film

Film Movies

Here we discuss film, as used by American Movie-Makers for cinema's. Film is shot at 24 frames per second. As the filmstrip runs through the projector, a light is flashed through each "cell", or frame of the film, and it illuminates the screen. As the filmstrip moves, the light must shut off temporarily while the next frame goes into position. This causes "flicker", but it is minimized by projecting 3 images per frame.

WideScreen

Most movies are shot and projected on 35mm film, although sometimes 70mm film is used for spectacular projects, such as Lawrence of Arabia, and Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. TV has an aspect ratio of 1 to 1.33.

Old movies used approximately the same aspect ratio as television, at 1 to 1.34, known as the "Academy Aperture. This is roughly the the shape of a frame of 35mm film, as well as a standard video monitor, so virtually no picture information is lost when a film shot in 1:1.34 is shown on a TV screen. This was the format in which all movies (with very few exceptions) were shot prior to 1953 and transition to video poses no problems.

Modern movies typically use widescreen aspect ratios of 1.85 to 1 or 2.35 to 1, so they are wider and shorter that television. Widescreen began with a movie called "The Robe". It gives a wonderful, full panoramic effect when viewing them You become immersed in the film. When these movies are put on videotape, they either will have black bars at the top and bottom, or they are "reformatted" to fit your TV screen properly.

Flicker Removal

At 24 fps, a short black frame is introduced between the frames. This causes a very noticeable flicker !! So, what they do is to have the shutter open and close 3 times per frame, for a flicker rate of 72 fps. This is not very noticeable, and even if one could notice it, the perceptive eye/brain functions will quickly meld the frames seamlessly together. In other words, your visual system "wants to" remove flicker, and does a good job of it for you if the flicker is minimized.

The Projector

The projector os a complex piece of equipment. It uses a "gate" to temporarily hold each frame in place, as the shutter sends 3 images to the creen (flicker removal). This means the mechanism must pull film off the reel, and have a "holding" area where slack is built up, then then removed - the slack is needed so that the sound can be read at a constant velocity, and the frames can be projected using a staggered velocity.

In the slack area, the film can be read continuously for sound. In the gated area, the film can be stopped and started for the images.

Sound

There are now several formats for sound - too complex to fully describe here:

Dolby Digital (5.1 channels)
THX (51, for Cinema - but 6.1 or 7.1 channels are possible - see http://www.thx.com/mod/techLib/index.html )
Cinemascope (4-channel)
70mm Todd-AO format (6-channel)

Traditional cinema sound info is included on the filmstrip, and is 18 frames away from where the corresponding video is. This is because the projector reads the sound data in a different place than where it projects the frames onto the screen.

There are two types of sound in film: diegetic and non-diegetic. Diegetic sound is sound that occurs in the world that the characters of the film occupy -- gun shots, dialog, explosions, etc. Non-diegetic sound occurs outside of that world (i.e., they can't hear it). Music from the score is often used to enhance the mood of a scene, and this music is often non-diagetic. Voice-over narration is most often non-diagetic. Internal monologues are considered diagetic.

Diegetic sound is often source sound, meaning that a sound is coming from an object apparent to the viewer and the character, such as the music coming from a car stereo.

The movie houses spend months, tweaking the actual recorded sound, and adding their own sound. The final film typically has Dolby Digital, surround sound, with a 5 channels for the main speakers surrounding the cinema, and one channel for the subwoofer LFE (Low Frequency Effects).

Getting Film onto a TV Screen

Film is widescreen, and does not fit neatly onto your TV screen, with uses 4:3 aspect ratio. There are two basic solutions to this problem.

Pan and Scan - a 4:3 rectangle is used for cropping, and it moves around the original screen, following the action as closely as possible. The movements must be done by a human being, manually, who watches the movie and tracks the important sections - moving the rectangle around on special software that tracks all the movements - and then applies the cuts. If the actors move to the left of a room, the manual adjustment will pan to the left slightly - however, not too much, since the movie should still portray the actors as moving to the left. The main idea is that you do not want anyone cut off. So, a manual pan and scan could be done with either accenting the action in mind, or simply to avoid cutting off any important areas of the screen.

Letterbox - shows the entire rectangular image across the center of the video screen, with black areas above and below. The only hitch is that the picture is now smaller than a full-screen "cropped" version, but the film is now complete as photographed. Some people hate letterboxing, and can never get used to the black bars.

The Formats of Film

Cinerama *apprx. 2.60:1 aspect ratio*	This method of filming actually used three cameras, after which the three images were interlocked together. Any transfer to video would be from a 35mm anamorphic reduction print and therefore have a 2.35:1 ratio. Several movies were filmed in Cinerama, including "How the West Was Won", "The Wonderful World of The Brothers Grimm", and "Seven Wonders of the World". Cinerama also required the screen onto which the image was projected to be deeply curved or else the resulting picture would suffer gross distortion. Therefore, it is not really possible to make a "widescreen" version of a Cinerama film suitable for viewing on a television unless some form of corrections to eliminate the distortion are applied.
CinemaScope 2.66:1 aspect ratio 2.55:1 aspect ratio 2.35:1 aspect ratio	This was once the most commonly used method of filming movies because its only major requirement was a special CinemaScope projector lens. This lens was and still is available at virtually every movie theatre. CinemaScope was originally created by 20th Century Fox, but it is no longer in use in its original format. The 2.55:1 ratio was pretty much dead by 1957 when the last holdout, Fox, adopted magoptical over mag only prints. From that point until the early 1970s a standard of 2.35:1 was used; however, there is usually slight matting in theatres which results in a theatrical aspect ratio closer to 2.40:1. All of the "Star Wars" movies and even the 1997 animated version of "Anastasia" were filmed in CinemaScope, as were classics like "The Robe" and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."
Super Panavision 70 *2.20:1 aspect ratio*	Super Panavision 70 was a 70mm version of the Panavision process meant to compete directly with the 70mm Todd-AO process. Super Panavision 70 has also been known as Panavision 70, Super Panavision, Panavision, and Panavision Super 70. With an anamorphic lens, SP70 movies could have a final aspect ratio of 2.76:1. Famous movies that were filmed in Super Panavision 70 are "My Fair Lady", "2001: A Space Odyssey", and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang".
Ultra Panavision 70 2.76:1 aspect ratio (65/70mm prints) 2:35:1 aspect ratio (35mm prints)	Ultra Panavision 70, created by MGM, was created to compensate a shortcoming with the original CinemaScope format called "CinemaScope mumps" where close-up images in the center of the screen did not get compressed properly. UP70 used anamorphic lenses and a consistent frame rate of 24 frames per second, which was not yet a standard among the various film formats. This was done with a camera that MGM called the "MGM Camera 65". UP70 was used to film some of the most popular movies in movie history, like "Ben Hur", "Mutiny on the Bounty", and "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World".
Panavision 2.40:1 aspect ratio (anamorphic) various aspect ratios (flat)	The Panavision company is now the most successful maker and distributor of lenses and filming equipment. In the 1970s their Panavision lenses became the "standard" for widescreen and non-widescreen movies. Panavision still makes or sells the lenses for most of the major studio productions today, including lenses for films made with matting as opposed to true widescreen. These matted films are not necessarily 2.40:1, but are most likely 1.85:1. Because Panavision now represents the manufacturer and distributor more than the filming process, it is not uncommon to see that many television shows are filmed with Panavision lenses. Therefore, it is important to note that "Filmed with Panavision cameras and lenses" does not automatically constitute a widescreen process.
VistaVision 1.66:1 aspect ratio 1.85:1 aspect ratio 2.0:1 aspect ratio	This system was a lot looser than others, allowing for a bit more fudging. But Paramount's specs always referenced a preferred A/R of 1.85:1. All VV prints were hard matted to around 1.66:1 to allow some flexibility in framing. VistaVision movies were filmed with a specially designed camera which was mounted on its side. This special filming method required a special projector, but its image quality was better than standard 35mm. Movies that are shot in VistaVision were photographed on a double width frame of 35mm running right to left horizontally. The films were generally "reduction printed" to 35mm 4-perforated (four sprocket holes per frame) in dye-transfer Techniclor and projected with a 1.85:1 ratio. The image area was extracted optically from the full frame. For some special venues the double-frame 35mm film was cropped to 1.85:1 during projection. VistaVision movies include "Vertigo", "North By Northwest", and "White Christmas".
Todd-AO 2.2:1 aspect ratio (during filming) 2.35:1 aspect ratio (final 35mm print)	This process uses a 65mm negative printed onto 70mm film, with a six-track soundtrack, producing a very high quality picture. The original filming was done in an aspect ratio of 2.2:1; however, during the printing to 70mm film, the aspect ratio ended up being closer to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The original Todd-AO format also was shot at 30 frames per second, as opposed to the current standard of 24 frames per second. Many of the great epics and musicals of the 50s and 60s used this format.
Technirama 2.2:1 aspect ratio (70mm prints) 2.35:1 aspect ratio (35mm prints)	This process was developed by the Technicolor Corporation, as a way to continue using its three-strip Technicolor cameras. It required both a specially developed camera to run the film sideways (like VistaVision) with a widescreen lens (like CinemaScope). Technirama was shot with VistaVision cameras and an anamorphic lens squeezing the image by 25%. The entire 1.5:1 image area was then either optically unsqueezed to 70mm yielding a 2.21:1 aspect ratio, or given an additional squeeze to 35mm 2.35:1 4-perforated (four sprocket holes per frame) Panavision. For purposes of video transfer only an A/R of 2.35:1 would apply since there was never a 65/70mm negative involved in the process.
Academy 1.33:1 aspect ratio (current) 1.37:1 aspect ratio (original)	The old Academy ratio (1.37:1 before a soundtrack was incorporated onto the film) was the primary original aspect ratio. Most movies (if not all) that were released before "The Robe" (the first movie to be shown in widescreen) were shown in this ratio. When televisions first came on the scene, they were (and still are) designed with an aspect ratio matching the Academy ratio so that movies would be shown in the same way as in the theatres. Movies that were filmed in an Academy ratio will not have a "widescreen" version because they fit perfectly on the TV. Such movies include "The Wizard of Oz", "Casablanca", "Citizen Kane", and many, many others.
Super 35	This process does not involve widescreen lenses, but rather it involves framing the picture to fit the ratio of the screen. The top and bottom of the frame are "matted" out and removed from the picture completely, resulting in a rectangular picture. Super35 movies are filmed using flat lenses. Using an optical printer, the "interpositive" image is then contact-printed to produce an "internegative" anamorphic release print. As a result, an anamorphic image from a Super35 original tends to have a "gritty but sharp" look that is "harder" in a way than an anamorphic image, which has a "smooth" look. Many movies made in Super35 are transferred to video with the top and bottom of the frame restored, so that you actually see more of the picture on video than you did in the theater. However, scenes which include special effects in them are almost always filmed hard-matted in the appropriate widescreen ratio and therefore must be subjected to the pan-and-scan process. The image above is from James Cameron's Terminator 2. The red area represents what you see in the theatrical version. The blue represents the "pan-and-scan" version, although as you can see there is no panning or scanning.
Open Matte variable aspect ratio (usually 1.66:1 or 1.85:1)	Open matte is similar to Super 35 in that it involves matting out the top and bottom of the frame for the theatrical release and removing the mattes for the home video release. Most open matte films are filmed directly on the entire 1.33:1 frame. This can dramatically increase the potential for unexpected material such as boom mikes to appear in the home video version. In fact, some directors simply placed cardboard on the monitors to simulate the matted theatrical version. This would have made them unaware during filming if the boom mikes and so forth were actually on the frame because the cardboard was blocking that part out.

History

Cinerama

Cinerama changed all that by introducing a spectacular, three-panel wide system (nearly three regular movie screens in width projected on a deeply curved screen) that would be set up in Cinerama theatres and would then present any Cinerama production that the company released. The public loved this visual treat, even though the first few films that were shot in the Cinerama process were not true feature films but elaborate travelogues that allowed the Cinerama camera to capture exotic sights.

Unfortunately, the process was fraught with technical problems....the three projectors which were used to project the massive image had to kept synchronized or interlocked, otherwise the picture would not meet properly at the two ever-present seams that were at best, slightly visible, but at worst, were so conspicuous as to undermine the feeling of a panoramic view. Often the two seams running from top to bottom of the screen gave the viewer the feeling being behind large window frames, rather than being outside the window in the midst of the scene.

New, multichannel magnetic stereophonic sound was added to the Cinerama format. This was a monumental leap forward in sound technology from the mono/optical sound process found on conventional 35mm film that had been around since the first talkies. The magnetic sound was truly "high fidelity" compared to what patrons had been used to hearing in theatres. Coincidentally, poor quality, low fidelity mono sound was all that television offered, making the movie experience that much more impressive.

In Cinerama, a magnetic sound filmstrip which contained 7 soundtracks, as well as the three picture film strips were all on separate pieces of 35mm film and all had to be interlocked to each other. If any one element went out of synchronization, everything had to be stopped, appropriate frames for all for filmstrips had to be found and re-started again from a single, in-sync starting point. The system even had a fifth, standard "non-sync" projector located in the center booth which was always on stand-by with a 15 min short that explained the complexities of the Cinerama process. This film could be run during a breakdown to pacify the audience....it was needed more than the designers, theatre owners or patrons would have liked.

All this high tech and very expensive operational costs made Cinerama installations profitable in only the largest markets. But the public in those markets were so enamoured of the Cinerama process that Hollywood set about looking for a copycat wind screen system that was relatively inexpensive to install and simple to operate and which could be used in even the smallest neighborhood theatres. Twentieth Century Fox found the answer in a single filmstrip, single lens optical system which produced a picture that, although not as wide as Cinerama nor as high definition, was still more than double the width of the standard "Academy" ratio screen that people had been looking at for 30 years. In addition to providing a dramatically wide image, the process also provided substantially improved, high fidelity sound by borrowing the same idea of multichannel magnetic, stereophonic sound (with a surround channel) from Cinerama. To say the least, it was a very impressive system indeed. Hollywood, as we know, never ever says the least when it has the opportunity to say more. The system was called CinemaScope. And it was, quite frankly, a revolution.

Cinemascope

        Fox's publicity department heralded its first CinemaScope production of THE ROBE with the usual Hollywood conservative understatement ... "more spectacular than the eye has ever seen...the greatest achievement in the history of motion pictures....the miracle that you see without glasses (the last quote appeared on every THE ROBE poster; its intent being to make people believe that the process was a type of 3D that could be seen without glasses, which, of course it wasn't...it was wide, it just wasn't 3D).

        Theatres across the country closed for a week for the installation of the CinemaScope system, which consisted of a new, wider and curved CinemaScope screen (CinemaScope's screen used a mild curve, not nearly as deep as Cinerama's but still very effective in making the viewer feel that he/she was being immersed in the picture). The sound system employed three channels of behind-the-screen speakers for the stereophonic soundtrack and wall speakers for the surround channel. The psychological impact alone of theatres all over the country closing their doors made the anticipated first night opening of THE ROBE take on the quality of a major, national event. [Ed. note: To a young boy who loved movies to begin with, seeing "closed for the installation of CinemaScope" on every theatre marquee in town, cause it to take on the scale of a magical, mystical event of monumental proportions....to try to understand its impact, one must translate it into an analogous situation today: it would be as if every television station went off the air for a week to switch over to a new broadcasting technique. You can imagine the anticipation that kind of thing would generate].

        Even though Fox had tested the CinemaScope process thoroughly, no one was quite sure that everything would work the way it did on paper and THE ROBE was simultaneously shot in standard 35mm as well as with the new CinemaScope system....just in case. Once the Fox technicians saw how impressive were the first rushes, they abandoned the second camera unit that was filming non-anamorphic..

        The CinemaScope system utilizes the standard 35mm film strip, with its conventional, nearly square frame; but a special anamorphic lens is placed in front of the camera lens which "sees" a picture that is twice as wide as it is high and then compresses it by a factor of two. It is this compressed or "squeezed" picture which is then photographed onto the standard 35mm film. The process is reversed in the projector; a decompressing anamorphic lens is used to "stretch out" the compressed image and project it onto the curved CinemaScope screen. The film handling in all stages of the process was no different than standard 35mm film, making the system very cost effective and user-friendly. The projectionist (in smaller towns and in second run theatres, usually the least technically competent of anyone in the film chain) needed only to change lenses and aperture plates to correctly run CinemaScope films. See pictures of the actual film.

The addition of the magnetic stereo sound tracks became a slight stumbling block because it required more technically astute expertise in setup, running and maintenance, all of which always means more cost to the theatre owner. Additionally, in 1953, there was no stereo FM and no stereo records, no stereo cassettes or 8 tracks. Theatre owners constantly complained that audiences didn't even know what stereophonic sound was, so why should they have to spend money to install it and maintain it?

Fox reluctantly began releasing standard mono versions of their CinemaScope films with standard mono/optical (instead of magnetic stereo) soundtracks. But despite slight readjustments in the system, CinemaScope and THE ROBE were a phenomenal success. In 1955, only two years later, over half of Hollywood's movie output was shot with the CinemaScope lenses. Although many of the other studios would have liked to have their own wide screen system become the industry standard, Fox was first and CinemaScope dominated. Fox even let other studios use the CinemaScope logo. As the dust settled, Paramount remained the only holdout, trying desperately to perfect their VistaVision process, which although wider than the "Academy" ratio that preceeded it, was no match for the 2.55:1 aspect ratio of Fox's process. VistaVision did not carry magnetic Stereophonic sound either. So while Paramount was tinkering, everyone else was releasing CinemaScope after CinemaScope titles.

Panavision

Today, Cinemascope has been dropped, and replaced by Panavision.

However, it is more of a name change than anything else. The anamorphic system of compressing and then decompressing the image to produce a wide screen presentation remains essentially the same as the original CinemaScope specifications. The Panavision process perform exactly the same compression and decompression of the film image as did the original CinemaScope lenses - the system being identical in every other respect.