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Posted by One-Shot Scot on 11/22/05 01:51
"Steve(JazzHunter)" <jazzhunter@collector.org> wrote in message
news:bft3o1tifo0agl2f7v6jtfc1vqurm7pv77@4ax.com...
<<The original double-sprocket 16mm format gave a picture area of
approximately 1.24:1. Many silent films only survive on Kodascope, using
that aspect. Also in the early talkie days the sound stripe cut directly
into the picture areas, reducing the width and leaving an aspect of about
1:19 to 1. All Paramount and Fox films until 1933 used this 1.19:1 aspect,
thus, properly formatted Marx Brothers films should be windowboxed when
transferred for DVD. Unfortunately, except for a few Image releases and the
laserdisc of "City Lights," this is rarely done. (I thought it was shocking
that the Warner DVD of "City Lights" went back to a cropped 1.33:1 aspect!
whereas the Fox DVD kept the correct Windowboxing) Warner and Fox in the
early sound days used a narrower (top to bottom) image, thus preserving the
1:33 Modified Academy ratio on most sound prints, in some cases for
Vitaphone Disc-and-Reel films transferred to optical they blew up the image
and chopped off the left, thus losing information on three sides.>>
Thanks for the explanation. I was unaware of any of the 1:19:1 and 1.24:1
aspect ratio of the early talkies.
The only Image releases that I was fortunate enough to get from the early
Paramount years were _I'm No Angel_ and _Belle of the Nineties_. Mae West
movies always seemed to have great soundtracks, but the Duke Ellington band
appearing on _Belle of the Nineties_ was sensational.
<<All the Betty Boop precode cartoons would have benefitted from
windowboxing; as it is, since cartoons use the whole frame, major parts of
the picture at the top and bottom are chopped off in all Betty Boop
releases, for example.>>
This was my big complaint about _Yellow Surbarine_ being cropped to 1.66:1.
It was a cartoon, so all of the animation cell was important. There was no
need to matte the top and bottom to make it appear widescreen, when it
really wasn't. There were no little animated boom mikes hanging down.
So where are the classic Betty Boops? Those were the best cartoons of all
time. My friends and I used to go to the UC Berkeley theater when they had
Betty Boop festivals. They called them _Cartoons That Bop_. And bop they
did.
<<The issue is not TV overscan in this case, though Postage Stamp framing is
used sometimes for Silent films where, again, they tended to use the whole
frame and information would be lost on a consumer set.>>
<<Postage Stamp framing and Windowboxing are not the same thing, they
address different issues.>>
I had seen the this type of aspect ratio justification, but I had never
heard it given a name.
... Steve ..
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