A Brief Guide to Aspect Ratios

This piece was originally written to help sort out some confusion friends were having about anamorphic DVDs and aspect ratios. I thought it'd be cool to throw it here as well.

The world of aspect ratios in movies can be really confusing. Why are some movies wider than others? Is widescreen always a good thing? What's it mean when a DVD is "16x9 enhanced"? Why is it that when I play my older DVDs on my new widescreen television, they have black bars on the sides as well as the top and bottom?

1. What IS an Aspect Ratio?

In simple terms, an aspect ratio is an expression of the relation between an image's width and its height. There are two ways of expressing them -- with whole numbers and with decimals.

Media (movies, television shows) ratios are usually expressed with decimals -- a movie with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 will be 1.78 times wider than it is tall. The higher the first number, the wider the picture.

Marketing text on displays (computer monitors and televisions) will use whole numbers, which are easier for the consumer to digest, but actually make the math a bit more ridiculous. A television with a 16x9 display (the norm for widescreen sets) is 16 times wider than nine times its height. Really, 16x9 is just 1.78:1, but in terms that look good on a weekly electronics flyer.

For the rest of this piece, I'll express the ratio in terms of [decimal]:1 (1.33:1, etc.).

2. A little bit of history

Image 2A
Frame from 1.19:1 movie
Fritz Lang's M (1931)


Image 2B
Frame from 1.37:1 movie
Cropped to 1.33:1 on DVD
Edgar G. Ulmer's The Black Cat (1934)

In the silent era, films were presented in 1.33:1 or 4:3 ratio -- roughly the shape of a non-widescreen television. When sound films came in, additional space was needed on the film strip for the optical soundtrack. Initially, this caused movies to be reduced to 1.19:1 (see Image 2A), which many people found disorienting.

Eventually, a standard was established which reduced the height of the image to compensate for the loss of width. Known at the Academy Ratio, 1.37:1 is how most older films are meant to be viewed. Not that you will -- when films are released to television and DVD, the studios (every last one of them) figure that the difference between the Academy Ratio and the 1.33:1 ratio of standard televisions is so slight that they crop out a small part of the picture. The screencap provided in Image 2B, therefore, is not a completely accurate representation of Edgar Ulmer's The Black Cat and it's certainly not a good representation of the Academy Ratio.

But I digress.

As television threatened to steal customers from movie theaters, the studios fought back by moving to more color productions and by adding another element -- widescreen. There were multiple widescreen standards. One of the earliest (and widest) was Cinerama, which involved shooting a movie with three cameras simultaneously, then projecting it from three carefully placed projectors onto a curved screen. The aspect ratio was, roughly, 2.65:1.

A more common practice was to film at Academy ratio and then matte (or block) out part of the picture when the film is projected. Directors and cinematographers using this method would usually have guides on the lens to let them know what was and wasn't part of the composition. Ratios for this method include 1.66:1 and 1.85:1, with many 1.85:1 films being reformatted to 1.78:1 for DVD (see Images 2C-2E).


Images 2C-2E: Various matted aspect ratios. From left to right, Mario Bava's Black Sunday (1960, 1.66:1), Black Sabbath (1963, originally 1.85:1, reformatted to 1.78:1), and Shock (1977, 1.85:1)

However, making the image any wider reduced the amount of space you used in the 35mm frame drastically, resulting in a loss in quality. The solution for this was an anamorphic lens, which filled the whole 35mm frame with the rectangular widescreen image by horizontally compressing the image. When exhibited, the film would then be uncompressed by another anamorphic lens on the projector (see Images 2F-2G).




Images 2F-2G: The anamorphic process. Top image: a still from Mario Bava's Knives of the Avenger (1966, 2.35:1). Bottom image: The same still altered to approximate its appearance as a 35mm frame.

There are other methods and techniques, including using 70mm and Super35mm film, but I've covered the biggies.

3. How this all works on DVD

Like a 35mm film frame, a standard DVD has limited resolution. In this case, it's 720x480 pixels (don't do the math there -- the pixels are non-square. The square pixel resolution actually works out to about 640x480 or 1.33:1).

Early DVDs simply handled widescreen images by slapping black bars on the actual image (Image 3A).

Image 3A. Matted widescreen. From Mario Bava's Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970, 1.66:1).

Note even here, in the least wide of the widescreen formats, there is a loss of a good 19% of the possible image resolution to black bars. Worse, because the image itself is 1.33:1, it will appear on a widescreen (16:9) television as either matted on the sides as well as the top and bottom or it will be stretched to fill the screen, distorting the picture horizontally.

Later, anamorphic enhancement was developed. It follows the same basic principle of anamorphic film -- the image is squeezed horizontally and then pulled back out. The difference in DVD terms is that it can be used for any aspect ratio that is as wide as or wider than 1.78:1. On 4:3 TV, the film will display with black bars (rendered by the player), while on a widescreen television, a 1.78:1 film will fill every available pixel (higher ratios will have bars on the top and bottom, but to a much lesser degree).

In cases where the image is 1.66:1, studios like Warner Bros. will (much to my consternation) crop the image vertically until it is 1.78:1 (or even 1.85:1), so it will fit on widescreen televisions without needing to present the film in a "windowbox" (with bars along the left and right sides). Curse of Frankenstein, I'm looking at you. Other companies like Criterion Collection will preserve the original aspect ratio. Go Criterion.

I'm ignoring the whole full-frame/pan'n'scan/standard thing right now. Anybody who prefers that over widescreen loses 33% of the image and I'm not going to waste more time (than I already have) nagging them about it.

However, there's a weird flipside to it, which is companies turning films that were originally exhibited in Academy Ratio into widescreen movies. The most egregious example of this (mostly because it was done with the filmmaker's blessing but without any real artistic rationale to back it) is Anchor Bay's special "Book of the Dead" edition of Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead. The original was filmed on 16mm in 1982 and, up until the BotD, had always been exhibited at 1.37:1. Anchor Bay worked with star/producer Bruce Campbell to put it into widescreen format (I think because "widescreen" had become a buzzword at that point). The result is that whole sections of valuable visual information are completely sliced out of the top and bottom of the frame. Thankfully, when Anchor Bay came out with their Ultimate Edition of The Evil Dead, they provided both widescreen and 1.33:1 options.

4. Conclusion

I know what you're asking now. Why are most of Nate's examples from Mario Bava movies?

You're missing the more pertinent question -- just how awesome is Bava? I mean really?

Moving Movies

Not movies that move you, but movies to watch while you're in the middle of a move, or more specifically, when you're in the middle of packing. It's not as arbitrary or as simple as you'd think. DVDs are amongst the first things I pack, simply because they're easy to get into boxes and by packing them together, I reduce risk of damaging the cases. I also have more of them than pretty much anything, including clothes and books.

So, during my last move, it became a question of which films to leave on the shelf. I have pretty specific criteria when it comes to this situation. Since I would likely be packing as I watched, the films in question had to be familiar, so I didn't get distracted or miss key plot points because I was seeking out the elusive end of the tape roll. While not necessary, it helped if a movie didn't have a particularly complex plot or if it hung on an episodic structure, so that I would feel more comfortable popping in and out. Some of the movies had to be talky or heavy on music so that I could enjoy them while I wasn't able to see the television.

Below is the list of some of my selections. If they occasionally seem to contradict my criteria, well... that's that, I guess. Films I actually watched during the move are marked with an asterisk.

His Girl Friday / Bringing Up Baby
The brilliant thing about a good Howard Hawks comedy is that you can miss half the dialogue and still get double what other films typically have.

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring*
This would be even more perfect if I didn't have to switch discs halfway through, but we cannot have everything. I also made a point to watch all the easter eggs on all of the trilogy discs.

Zombie Apocalypse*
"I could kill you now, but I'm determined to have your brain!" I probably like this movie more than it has any right to be liked, as it's a pretty threadbare merging of the zombie and cannibal subgenres, both of which were en vogue in Italy at the time this was made.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog* / Firefly: The Complete Series* / Serenity*
Technically, my girlfriend watched Firefly on my Mac and I hovered during packing breaks. And I didn't so much watch Dr. Horrible as I did listen to MP3s of Commentary! The Musical, a fairly ingenious creation of Whedon and Company where they perform an entire plotted musical as a commentary track (and which, incidentally, has more songs than Dr. Horrible itself).

Stop Making Sense*
I watched this four times while packing. Can you blame me? The way this concert moves, the way it progresses -- it fills me with joy. Somehow they take something intricately choreographed and planned (nay, plotted) and make it seem so spontaneous. One of my favorite moments happens during a song transition, although I forget which one. David Byrne, who's sweating profusely, starts a meandering jog around the microphone as he loosens his collar. Except he's not meandering. He's circling. It takes a little time for that fact to kick in, but this is not a random "shake off the tired" motion, but a planned move. Each revolution becomes tighter and clearer, picking up the beat of the next song as it goes. It's at that moment when it becomes clear that this isn't just a well-planned concert. It's a work of genius and we're all lucky that Jonathan Demme was on hand to capture it for posterity.

Singin' in the Rain / The Muppet Movie / The Court Jester*
Joy on a digital platter. Like a warm, musical, dorky blanket.

5 Dolls for an August Moon
Mario Bava's variation on Ten Little Indians was a project he didn't want to direct and didn't really care for. From my Classic-Horror.com review: The resulting film is a whodunit that doesn’t care who did it, a thriller lacking in actual thrills. It is also a strangely affecting experience that improves upon repeated viewings. By de-emphasizing all that we would expect emphasized in a thriller, especially since the status quo for a good director with a bad script is for style to run amok over substance, Bava forces us to consider the film almost as free jazz, randomly weaving in and out of a set template and letting the audience find their own points of interest. If you just relax, go with the flow, disregard silly things like plot, and soak up the masterful cinematography by Bava and long-time DP Antonio Rinaldi, you’ll find a lot worth revisiting.

North by Northwest
I know the rhythms of this movie like I know the beats of my favorite songs. The pinnacle of Hitchcock's action-thrillers.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail*
"Ni!"

Josie and the Pussycats*
I love this movie so much. Sure it's glossy and bubble-gum, but it's also kinda subversive. Massively underseen upon its release (probably because of an extremely misleading advertising campaign), this deserves to be rediscovered. It has rock'n'roll, broad satire, and more plot than you'd expect from a movie based on an Archie comic. Earlier this year, I made a fanvid for this movie, which I've embedded below:



Ocean's Eleven (2001)
I love listening to the actor's commentary on this, because Brad Pitt's sardonic wit runs rampant. He says early on that he's doing it as sort of a "Mystery Science Theater 3000" thing and while he's never tears the film apart, his general sense of humor is in the same vein. Matt Damon is on hand for more serious recollections of the production and Andy Garcia occasionally chimes in to remind us that he's there.

A Pavlovian Response at Midnight

Tuesday night: I'm sitting on my laptop, working on my review for Al Adamson's Dracula vs. Frankenstein, when a familiar chirp emanated from my pants -- a new text message. LC, a friend who I hadn't seen in months, wanted to know whether I wanted to see the new Harry Potter film at a midnight screening. Well, actually, she didn't want to know whether I wanted to specifically -- it was a mass message, sent to many people.

Despite the fact that I had work the next day, that Harry Potter movies run about two and a half hours each, that I didn't have any actual interest in seeing the film, I immediately texted back, "Yes, if I can get a ride" (I don't own a car, for reasons that I explain are environmental but are mostly to do with not caring very much). Arrangements were made and within an hour, I was sitting shotgun in LC's car, on my way to extremely reduced sleep.

Why did I do this? Why do I do this every time someone asks the magic question, "Midnight screening?" Sure, there are perks. I get to see the movie before anybody. I get to join in with other movie fans who are also willing to sacrifice their beloved REM for the same bragging rights. I'm guaranteed a full house of fans, which adds very much to the overall cinema-going experience when the movie is very good indeed.

At the same time, you have to arrive at the theater hours in advance to ensure a decent seat (although with the advent of online ticketing, that's the only reason to show early). You have to sit in line with very little in the way of entertainment (an irony, of course, given that you're inside a multiplex, an institution dedicated to the art of entertainment). If you're like me and do a lot of work online in the evenings, your productivity takes a major hit, even if you do bring along your laptop.

And oh, heaven help you if the movie isn't R-rated. We were finally let into the theater an hour before the movie was due to begin and found ourselves beset at all sides by teenyboppers. Yelling, gabbing, jostling, immature teenyboppers. One rather annoying kid of no more than thirteen spent a good portion of the hour antagonizing/flirting with some older girls in my row -- and doing it rather badly. Eventually faux-banished from sitting next to them, he plopped down next to me and decided that he was fascinated with the game of Zuma I had running on my laptop. I resisted the urge to tell him to butt out, but only because I deduced from his other interactions that it would only encourage him.

Eventually the trailers began (the theater descended into a war of "Yays" and "Boos" when the New Moon preview played) and then the movie. I'm sorry to say that, while I enjoyed it, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was not worth the loss of sleep that I am still feeling two days later. I had a feeling that vast swaths of necessary plot were either compacted or ignored. For instance, the central mystery implied in the title is brought up twice in the course of the film and then dismissed at the end without any context as to why it was really that important in the first place. A little research into the book (which I haven't read) confirmed that there was a lot more to the "Half-Blood Prince" moniker than the film revealed. Additionally, a rather menacing dark wizard shows up with only a name, Fenrir Greyback, and an uncouth look about him. Again, the Internet told me that, apparently, he's a werewolf and a nasty one at that.

Director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves decided to follow the awkward teenage development of Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends for the most part, which I do not fault them for because their handling of it is rather brilliant. Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) gets an overbearing girlfriend who loves making out and Harry begins to see Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright) in a new, sexy light. Both boys experiment with drugs in a PG-rating-friendly way. Ron eats some cookies laced with a love potion (read: pot brownies) and Harry has to drag him to Professor Horace Slughorn (the always delightful Jim Broadbent) to bring him down. Later, Harry has his own altered experience thanks to a Luck Potion. I have to say, Radcliffe is brilliant in this sequence, with a real sense of comedic delivery. He's has always had the unenviable task of playing the David Copperfield of the Potter series -- the wide-eyed everyman who must be stoic and decent in the face of mounting adversity. It's not an easy part, because you're always going to come off as slightly more dull than the wacky characters around you, so it's a pleasure to see Radcliffe get a chance to be the funny one.

Still, this is the penultimate chapter in a seven-part epic (well, if you discount the fact that they're splitting Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into two parts) and, from conversations with friends after the movie, Yates and Kloves have put themselves into a difficult position by not introducing certain key elements in this film that will pay off in Deathly Hallows. One wonders if they'll simply work around the omissions or if they'll do as Peter Jackson did with the Lord of the Rings trilogy and shift parts of the story around.

If there's a major problem with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as a film (and not, say, as an adaptation), it's the same one that plagued the last two movies as well. The writing clearly means for Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ron to end up together, but the chemistry on-screen between Watson and Radcliffe makes that very difficult to accept. The two simply spark. There's something warm, inviting -- something homey about their interactions, like Harry and Hermione just belong together, plotting how to save the world and each other. It's utterly distracting because it flies in the face of everything the script would have us believe. As a director, Yates should have recognized this problem and reduced the screentime that Watson and Radcliffe share in the editing booth, but I can understand why he wouldn't. Those moments between the two are some of the most touching and heartfelt in the movie and sometimes killing your darlings is too painful.

Intermission

Check out what I just posted on the wall of my bedroom:


When there's no more room on the walls, the posters shall walk the Earth