Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Is there a reason why movies are filmed this way?

  Artistic image composition is easier on a widescreen image than on a
narrow image.

  Nature is very horizontal. This is fundamentally due to gravity: Everything
tends to level up on a horizontal plane due to gravity. Landscapes are vast
horizontal fields, and the vast majority of elements are located on this
surface. On the big scale everything is very flat, level and horizontal.

  The same goes for typical artificial constructs such as living quarters:
Rooms tend to be more spacious horizontally than vertically. Again, this
is due to gravity: People need to move horizontally, which means that people
need a lot more space horizontally than vertically.

  It's no wonder that a widescreen image is much more suitable for image
composition than a narrow image. In any typical scene you can fit a lot
more content in a widescreen image than on a narrow one. For example two
people standing on the ground are usually going to be separated horizontally
from each other, not vertically. Even a great separation can be captured
more easily on a widescreen image.

  The narrower the image is, the more "empty space" there will going to
be. For example, if you film a vast landscape using a very narrow aspect
ratio, a really big portion of the image will be empty sky which does not
bring anything to the image. A widescreen image, however, allows showing
more detail of the lanscape with less useless empty space.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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