Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> 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.
>

There's also the 'historical' reason: When TV transmission in the 1950s began
affecting movie theater attendance (and thus movie industry profits), the big
film studios started scambling to find ways to keep the theaters full. Thus
widescreen was born (or re-born, actually.) Along came CinemaScope,
VistaVision, MGM's Camera-65, Cinerama, Panavision, etc., as ways to give
audiences a more thrilling experience. And that legacy--a good one, IMO--has
been with us ever since.

With such a multitude of different widescreen formats--*including* different
aspect ratio versions of some of these--it's no wonder that *some* kind of
single standard had to be adopted for modern, digital TV transmission and
viewing. The resulting 16:9 ratio is a kind of trade-off.

I wonder how the 're-mastered' version of the Cinemama 3-strip film "HOW THE
WEST WAS WON" will show up on a modern widescreen montior or TV? (The film was
digitally altered to combine the 3-strips into a seamless ultra-widescreen
version--a new technique.)

KW

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