Question about Modified Aspect Ratios

[stevepaur]

Hi Roger:

I’d be really interested in your thoughts on how filling a screen (in theaters or on a TV) often seems to take precedence over preserving a film’s original aspect ratio.

For example, The Odyssey was of course shot entirely on IMAX 70mm. But the only theaters that will screen the film with a 1.43:1 aspect ratio are the ones with IMAX 70mm projectors or dual-laser digital projectors. All other formats — the vast majority of screens — will (according to the film’s own marketing) involve some amount of image cropping.

I really don’t understand this. It’s actually kind of insane to me that they would go to all that trouble and spend all that money, only to crop out almost half of the total visual information (at least in the case of 2.39:1) for the vast majority of theaters that can’t project a 1.43 image that fills the screen.

The message this sends (to me, anyway) is: “Meh, the stuff that gets cropped out — including all of that expensive production design — wasn’t that important, anyway.” But then why even shoot in that ultra-large-format aspect ratio in the first place? Doesn’t pervasive cropping kind of undermine the whole IMAX argument?

I can’t help but wonder: Why not keep the 1:43 aspect ratio for all screens and formats? Would that really be so bad? I’d much rather have less total square footage of imagery on the screen if it means I’m not getting an implicit “the following film has been modified from its original version.”

What’s more important for you when having one of your films screened — keeping the original aspect ratio, or using the whole width of the screen?

(Greig Fraser got asked this question in an interview about Project Hail Mary, and he said that, for him, the more of the screen that gets used, the better, even if it means the 1.43:1 IMAX sequences that he shot have to get cropped so they can fill a 16:9 TV screen. I was kind of surprised by this answer!)

Thanks,
Stephen

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[dmullenasc]

Normally I’d agree that there should just be one aspect ratio for a movie — I don’t recommend, for example, showing an old 1.37 Academy movie in any other aspect ratio.

This is a bit different for a couple of reasons — first is that IMAX traditionally (I’m talking about the original 15-perf 65mm format projected in special theaters) was always designed to be composed with an excess 1/3 space at the top, extra headroom, because the theater is designed for your eye to go to the middle of the very large and tall 1.43 screen. To some degree, the area at the top of the screen is like the sky above your head, extending to the edges of your vision unless you sit way back in the theater. Not that Nolan seems to compose his IMAX photography with that much headroom but on the other hand he composes with enough headroom that the blu-ray versions of “Oppenheimer”, “Dunkirk”, etc. show the IMAX scenes in full 1.78 : 1 HD cropped from 1.43 and the headroom looks fine.

Second, the Digital IMAX screens are 1.90 : 1, not 1.43 : 1 and more people are going to see that version rather than the 15P 70mm prints.

Third, Nolan likes to release also in 5-perf 70mm 2.20 : 1 and 4-perf 35mm 2.39 : 1 prints.

Clearly he is fine with shifting aspect ratios in the past although this movie was only shot in IMAX, not a mix, so he could have simplified things a bit and picked 1.85 for his non-1.43 IMAX showings as a second aspect ratio rather than 1.43, 1.90, 2.20, and 2.39 in this case. 1.85 is very close to 1.78 which is what the HD blu-ray versions would be anyway. The 5-perf 70mm could have been side-masked to 1.85. But I think he’s being a bit of a showman wanting to make each version special in the theaters and he seems fine with the reframing.

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