On 2/15/2020 5:11 PM, C.H.Ling wrote:
I understand the benefit of using anamorphic lenses on film movies as it can use the whole 35mm frame to give better
details and less grain
That's not really what it was about. A whole industry had developed around a format close to what we would call half
frame 35 mm film, with a 4:3 aspect ratio. It was slightly different, for the audio track. There was an enormous
investment in equipment for 35 mm film, a great deal of it by owners of independent theaters or small chains.
As film makers came to realize that wider formats simply worked better for movies, they looked for ways to do that. The
quest went two ways:
1. Anamorphic lenses allowed a wider projected images without investments in a whole new generation of equipment. For
only the investment in a couple of projection lenses, theaters could show wide screen formats. For most, a cheap, wider
screen was also used.
In the case of the few tiny, narrow theaters, like the one in which I projected movies to work my way through
University, the screens couldn't be made wider, but wide format movies could still be shown using our ancient equipment.
This was the big breakthrough; because it was so affordable, it was adopted
very quickly.
2. Various different film formats were tried for higher quality and wider formats. When I was a young man, Cinerama used
70 mm film with three cameras and three projectors to create a close to 180° visual field. Sitting in the front part of
the theater, watching a western, the bullets of a gunfight appeared to fly over one's head. I watched 2001 this way.
That was all extraordinarily expensive, and it was fussy to align and sync the projectors. Cinerama morphed into a super
wide anamorphic format on larger than 35 mm film.
but didn't understand how it do better with home digital movie unless you own
an anamorphic projection system.
Yes. Even on a 70" class TV, films such as Lawrence of Arabia and Once Upon a Time in the West, in their original, super
wide formats, look small, and lose the impact they had in large theaters. I recall the sunrise out of the desert shot in
Lawrence had a huge visual impact in a large theater. On our rather large TV, it's not nearly as impressive.
Crossover Moose
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What if the Hokey Pokey *IS* what it's all about?
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