{"id":32870,"date":"2013-07-02T15:43:06","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T22:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/?p=32870"},"modified":"2013-07-02T15:43:06","modified_gmt":"2013-07-02T22:43:06","slug":"watch-this-the-history-of-aspect-ratio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/watch-this-the-history-of-aspect-ratio\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch This: The History of Aspect Ratio"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/68830569\" width=\"600\" height=\"339\" frameborder=\"0\" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"firstletter\">I<\/span> still remember the first time I became aware of aspect ratio and the purpose of letterboxing. I was watching AMC (back when they actually played classic movies, you know), and they ran a little short piece between movies showing comparisons of <em>The King and I<\/em>, <em>Lawrence of Arabia<\/em>, and others in both pan and scan and letterboxed versions. I was floored by how much picture you lost when cutting the frame for pan and scan.<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to aspect ratio. I knew there were a bunch of different widescreen formats in the 1950s and later, but didn&#8217;t know the technical specs or reasons for each one&#8217;s introduction, or even the way that 16&#215;9 became the standard for HDTVs. Now I know all that and much more, thanks to this comprehensive and comprehensible video from Filmmaker IQ. It&#8217;s long, but it&#8217;s great stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I still remember the first time I became aware of aspect ratio and the purpose of letterboxing. I was watching AMC (back when they actually played classic movies, you know), and they ran a little short piece between movies showing comparisons of The King and I, Lawrence of Arabia, and others in both pan and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32873,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/20130702-174705.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1542,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/touch-of-evil-aspect-ratio-outcry\/","url_meta":{"origin":32870,"position":0},"title":"Touch of Evil Aspect Ratio Outcry","author":"Jandy","date":"October 16, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't really have anything to add to this discussion, but I have to love the fact that cinephiles are up in arms over the the new Universal edition of Touch of Evil, which has three different cuts of the film (the 1958 studio-cut theatrical version, a pre-studio-interference preview version,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Film&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/687uvb.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":25522,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/50dmc-19-a-movie-im-surprised-i-enjoyed\/","url_meta":{"origin":32870,"position":1},"title":"50DMC #19: A Movie I&#8217;m Surprised I Enjoyed","author":"Jandy","date":"July 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The 50 Day Movie Challenge asks one question every day, to be answered by a few paragraphs and a clip, if possible. Click here for the full list of questions. Today's prompt: What's a movie you're surprised you enjoyed? There are quite a lot of these, actually, as I've been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Film&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/Nashville.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1801,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/new-release-review-australia\/","url_meta":{"origin":32870,"position":2},"title":"New Release Review: Australia","author":"Jandy","date":"January 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"directed by Baz Lurhmann starring: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman Australia\/USA 2008; screened 29 November 2008 at AMC Theatres I admit that I haven't read many reviews of Australia in toto, but the snippets I have read and the general critical feeling indicates that most critics didn't think it was very\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Film&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"australiapic8","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/01\/australiapic8.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":37049,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/i-did-it-started-a-substack\/","url_meta":{"origin":32870,"position":3},"title":"I did it&#8230;started a Substack","author":"Jandy","date":"February 4, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"I mentioned in my year-end recap post that I was thinking of starting a Substack, and I did just that last week. I now have two posts up, and if you've appreciated what I've written here in the past, I'd love to have you follow me there! I'll be writing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Elsewhere&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Elsewhere","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/elsewhere\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Useless-Matters-square.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Useless-Matters-square.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Useless-Matters-square.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":33,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/obsession\/","url_meta":{"origin":32870,"position":4},"title":"Obsession","author":"Jandy","date":"May 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Hi, I'm Jandy, and I have an obsessive personality. Or something like it. I get incredibly obsessed incredibly easily, and when I get obsessed with something, I go all the way. When I was little, it was horses. I had an imaginary stable. But this wasn't just \"oh, sometimes I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Personal&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Personal","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/personal\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":20996,"url":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/100-reasons-i-love-the-movies\/","url_meta":{"origin":32870,"position":5},"title":"100 Reasons I Love the Movies","author":"Jandy","date":"May 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"A few people I know have done this ambitious meme that highlights not your top 100 films, but 100 things you love about film. I've mostly interpreted that as \"100 moments or scenes that I love\", but it varies from a single shot to whole films to certain tropes or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Film&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/100-reasons-featured.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32870"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-frame.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}