Pan & Scan makes babies cry.

Watching any of those movies in anything but widescreen... well, it hurts my soul.

That .jpg you posted is stretched quite a bit.

Matt Singer tweet inspired I presume?

Even as a little kid I hated the 4x3 pan and scan crops.

The number of arguments I had with my brother when DVD first landed. He constantly felt like he was missing out on parts because the black bars on the top and bottom crop the footage... he just never understood. Might have to show him this video. Oh, and thank goodness for widescreen televisions!

There's only one movie that I believe is better in pan & scan then letterbox:

Ghostbusters

Anyone who doesnt believe me, watch it on VHS sometime.

Do you have a vendetta against Egon? He's cut out of several scenes due to the cropping. Most notably the Hotel entrance.

Interesting video, nice to see those big guys talk about it.

You only need to see half the clip though, they keep on repeating the same message in different ways!

yea, but some people need it driven into their skull before they understand it though, so it's as it should be.

I worked at Blockbuster for about 3 years, and this was one of the most frustrating situations I would run into on an almost daily basis:

Customer: "Do you have this in Full-Screen"

Me: "Actually, we only carry Widescreen versions of films"

Customer: "So does that mean I have there's gonna be those gay lines at the top and bottom of the screen?"

Me: "To be honest, widescreen is the preferred method of video transfer among all Hollywood studios. This way, you get to see the entire film"

Customer: [Pause] ...."So, since it's cut off at the top and bottom...shouldn't that mean its cheaper?"

Me: "No"

Customer: "Well, that's fuckin' gay. Do you carry any Dane Cook DVDs?"

Me: "Somehow I knew you'd be a Dane Cook fan."

That was funny.

hahaha, very nice story.

oh my god...trying to explain widescreen vs fullscreen to customers...I think this may have given me an ulcer and taken a good 10 years off my life.

me: you get the full picture with widescreen

customer: no its called "full screen" because its the full picture

me: *explains how movies are shot; shows side by side comparison using a still from Ben Hur*

customer: *points at widescreen image* yeah, thats full screen. I don't want no stupid bars, how can it be the FULL image if it doesn't fill my tv?

me: ...*takes up smoking*

Perfect point. I mean my god people, how hard is it to understand. The studios should just stop putting out Full Screen and be done with it. With the sales of widescreen TV's going up, Full Screen is starting to look even more awful than it already is. Even some cable channels have stopped showing movies in Pan n Scan.

Now how about cropping a movie to 16x9 as is being done on most cable networks instead of keeping the original scope. For? Against?

Cropping for 16x9 is the same as "full screen" in my eyes. If you're changing the aspect ratio to fit a tv screen then you're changing the aspect ratio to fit a tv screen. It doesn't matter if that screen is 4x3 or 16x9.

No cropping whatsoever should ever happen.

Could'nt agree more, it would have been great to show everyone who kept insisting the the P&S versions were fine... Thankfully those days are almost behind us, though some people still crop their widescreen films to a 16:9 screen when watching at home, though its not AS bad as P&S - its still a shame...

That Last Supper example is excellent.

Unfortunately there are still many people who believe that widescreen cuts the top and the bottom of the picture...

The Last Supper painting analogy is a great one. As much as I've tried to convert others from their sinful Pan and Scan ways, I've noticed the same thing: Unless one truly cares about films, they are more likely to just want the picture to fill the screen and to get rid of those "annoying black bars." *Sigh*

Pan & Scan... Lawrence of Arabia?

That's just so wrong.

Frankly watching it on anything but a movie screen is just wrong.

WOW, I never realized how bad pan & scan was on classic movies.

Thankfully I think most people are far more comfortable with letterboxing nowadays then they were when that video was made (which I remember from at least 6 or 7 years ago).

What I think is just as important to discuss these days is the practice on HD channels of stretching 4x3 programming to fit 16x9 aspect ratios. The Biography Channel is particularly egregious about this, but many of the newer HD channels do it all the time.

I've noticed IFC's HD channel does this now and then, but more often (and more inexplicably) will play a letterboxed film stretched on their HD channel. This has the dual effect of squishing the frame vertically and stretching it horizontally. For me, it makes the film unwatchable, and I find it particularly bizarre for a channel supposedly geared towards film fans to be so lackadaisical about how they show films.

Thankfully TCM programs their new HD channel as they all should: 4x3 programs and films are shown "pillared" with black lines on the left and right, whereas widescreen films are shown full frame with letterboxing only used for aspect ratios wider then 16x9. My hope is that TCM (or someone) will make a PSA similar to the one above but discussing pillaring, which in the world of HD is the new letterboxing.

Dear god I knew full screen cut off a little bit, but damn, that's like half the frame! I usually watch in widescreen, but I recoil in horror as I think of classics I might've loved had I seen them in widescreen.

Gotta watch it in original aspect ratio, I've been doing it since I can remember watching movies. But I still have arguments with friends about why it's better than that full screen crap. Definitely be posting this on facebook so all those idiots have the chance to see the light.

Edit: Oops... now they might see my comment... oh well.

This is making me regret buying full-screen movies for the past decade.

There's another video on the same subject on Youtube featuring only Sidney Pollack using The Interpreter as an example, which is also very good. It's a lot less flashy and Sidney Pollack takes the time to painstakingly explain and demonstrate again and again why you should respect a filmmaker's vision.

Ugh, my dad and I still argue about watching certain movies together. He has an older SD big screen TV, and wants the picture to fill it. I, on the other hand, want to view things without missing out on what's happening on either side.

Also, Late Night with Conan was in widescreen during its last years. And now I find that The Tonight Show with Conan is cropping out the sides, which ruins a bunch of his bits. D:<

From a very young age, my dad has instilled in me the importance of watching films in Widescreen. Well, he technically never told me why it was important, he would just always say to me, "Get the widescreen one instead." So now that's all I watch, but now I know why it's so much better. When I was showing my friends Evil Dead II, one of them chose to watch the Fullscreen version, and I made her go back and change it much to her chagrin. I'll have to show people this video if they give me anymore shit when I tell them to watch Widescreen instead.

Of course, some fantastic films have been shot in full screen anyway, such as Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

Then, I saw that one particular DVD release of that had actually ruined it and cropped it to wide screen. The reverse of what we are talking about!

I used to be a full screen only guy, until my sophomore year in high school. We were watching Far and Away in my history class, and we had the VHS at home so I decided to finish the movie over the weekend because I liked it so much. My dad only bought movies in widescreen, but I watched it anyway.

When we returned to class on Monday to finish the movie, which was the full screen version, we got to the scene at the end where everyone's rushing into the Oklahoma territory to claim land. The huge initial shot of everyone on the "starting line" and then rushing into the territory was so cropped in full screen that I literally felt that I and my classmates were being robbed of one of the film's most impressive shots.

Since then I've bought all my movies in widescreen. Slowly but surely I worked my mom into buying and renting in widescreen as well, though occasionally she doesn't check and rents something in full screen.