2.5.3 35mm Anamorphic (standard `wide screen' theatrical frame) (Motion Picture Formats - original cinematography)
Description
This article is from the rec.arts.movies.tech FAQ, by Scott E. Norwood snorwood@nyx.nyx.net with numerous contributions by others.
2.5.3 35mm Anamorphic (standard `wide screen' theatrical frame) (Motion Picture Formats - original cinematography)
As mentioned above, during the late 1950's and early 1960's, in order
to compete with television, the motion picture industry developed a
number of systems to achieve a wider aspect ratio than previously
used; the idea was to provide a `larger than life' movie experience,
combining huge, curved screens, with improved sound quality. Besides
simply cropping off the top and bottom of the frame, the most
successful such system was `anamorphic cinematography,' initially
introduced as `CinemaScope (tm) ' with The Robe, in 1953. This process
involves photographing a film with a lens which has an anamorphic
element in it. This element `squeezes' the image horizontally by a
factor of 2x. The `squeezed' image fills a large space on the
negative, but, when `unsqueezed' upon projection, yields an image with
a wide aspect ratio. This ratio actually varies slightly depending
upon the exact projector mask which is used, as well as the sound
format.
The disadvantage to shooting in anamorphic is usually that the lenses
used introduce weird types of distortion and lack the depth of field
(front to rear sharpness) of standard `spherical' lenses. For example,
a night scene in a film might contain out-of-focus points of light in
the background; if they were filmed with spherical lenses, the lights
would appear to be circular, but would appear to be vertical ellipses
if they were filmed with anamorphic lenses.
Anamorphic cinematography is still in common usage for major
theatrical films, and is often indicated by the phrase `filmed in
Panavision (tm) ' (if the lenses/cameras were made by Panavision (tm)
), which has displaced `CinemaScope (tm) ' as the usual term for this
process, although many people still refer to anamorphic films as
`scope' films. It is worth noting, though, that companies other than
Panavision (tm) manufacture, rent, and sell anamorphic camera lenses.
Also, the phrase `filmed with Panavision (tm) cameras and lenses'
indicates that Panavision (tm) gear was used, but the film is not in
anamorphic (they rent spherical [non-anamorphic] lenses, too).
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