Widescreen Advocacy Page
(or why Pan & Scan sucks)
The general public has a very bad perception of widescreen. This is due mostly to misunderstanding and a lack of education about widescreen. Some people are so miss informed they believe widescreen movies actually show less of the picture then the pan & scan version and think movie studios are cutting off part of the picture.
To understand the difference between widescreen and pan & scan we first have to talk about aspect ratio. The aspect ratio is the difference between how wide a screen is to how tall it is. A standard TV screen has an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 meaning the TV is 1.33 inches wide for every 1 inch tall. In contrast a movie theater typically has an aspect ratio of either 1.85:1 or 2.35:1. Meaning the screen is 1.85 inches (or 2.35 inches) wide for every 1 inch tall.
So how does a movie that is 1.85:1 fit onto a 1.33:1 screen? The most common method is to chop of the sides of the film to get an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. This is called Pan & Scan, but is also incorrectly referred to as Full Screen. This method removes up to 47% of the picture. But there is also a way to fit a 1.85:1 film onto a 1.33:1 screen, it's called letterboxing. When a film is shown in letterbox black bars are added to the top and bottom of the screen preserving all the content of the film. This method does reduce the amount of the TV screen used to display the picture but is the only way to preserve the films content on a standard TV screen.
A fairly new technique called a soft matte involves shooting the film on a standard 35mm film which has an aspect ratio of 1.35:1 and adding black bars to get the desired aspect ratio. A movie filmed with a soft matte can be transferred to video buy removing the black bars and exposing the top and bottom of the film. This is also bad because it exposes certain things the director may not have intended you to see like microphones, excessive dead space, etc. This is a much better way to view a film than pan & scan since most of the films content is more or less preserved.
Here's a few examples of what is lost when cropping a movie to fit a standard TV. The widescreen is on the right and the pan & scan is on the left.
In this scene from Demolition Man we are completely missing a whole character in the pan & scan version on the left.
Again in this scene from The Mummy we are once again completely missing a character in the pan & scan version.
In this scene from Mars Attacks we see Michel J Fox in both the pan & scan and widescreen versions, but only see Sarah Jessica Parkers feet in the pan & scan version.
In this scene in the movie Black Hole the don't get to see the true size of the the bridge of the space in the pan & scan version of the film.
In the scene from A Few Good Men you don't get to see the the entire court room in the pan & scan version of the film.