Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2023 February 21

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February 21

Films switching aspect ratio

Top Gun: Maverick switches its aspect ratio in the home release multiple times between Cinemascope 2.39:1 and IMAX 1.90:1, causing change between letterboxing, pillarboxing and/or fullscreen, depending on the actual screen of the viewer. The same footage may also have been used in both formats, depending on the scene or sub-scene it was used - so it did not only depend on the shooting camera. Two questions: 1. Did this switch materialize in any theater screening, or did they just fill the theater screens as good as possible? 2. Which other films show such a switching? I have learned about Tron: Legacy already, made by the same team (Kosinski/Miranda). Are there other formats, or even more than two, to be switched between them? --KnightMove (talk) 06:57, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Not exactly what you're looking for, but Babylon 5 was filmed widescreen with CGI effects added later. The original TV broadcast in the 1990s was essentially a pan-and-scan of the "true" film which was widescreen. But the studio decided to nickel and dime them on the postproduction budget, and to save money they only rendered the CGI shots in 4:3 (since the show was broadcast in 4:3 anyways). The wide version of the CGI shots was never finished, and doesn't exist today.

So when you watch the show now on VOD, most shots are the "original" widescreen, but every effects shot was originally 4:3, so it has to be zoomed up and cropped vertically to fit a modern widescreen TV. This looks terrible and is jarring when it happens, but there's really nothing else they can do about it at this point. Staecker (talk) 11:32, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Could they not simply redo the effects, like was done with Star Trek:TNG? When they got released on Blu-Ray, all the effects were redone from scratch. Matt Deres (talk) 16:32, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

The show's creator has often discussed this. There is nobody willing to put up the money. Star Trek has a bit more of a brand to uphold- I think B5 as a media property is mostly viewed as a bit of a dead end. (Though there is a reboot in development.) Staecker (talk) 20:56, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

It's my impression that the software for B5's digital scenes, i.e. the ship models and so on, is lost. —Tamfang (talk) 05:21, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Aspect ratio (image) mentions Active Format Description as a way to signal the proper aspect. I think that documentaries using old archive footage solve it by adding bands as needed. There is some film that I don't remember where the image area transitions to a wider aspect to signal a change of period or something similar. --Error (talk) 14:26, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Guardians of the Galaxy (film): Gunn also revealed that the IMAX 3D version would include shifting aspect ratios, to make the viewing experience "even fuller and more encompassing. I've personally chosen all the places where the changes occur ... The changing aspect ratios in this case are actually a part of the storytelling

Riceboy Sleeps (film): The changing aspect ratios (Canadian sequences are shot in 4:3) also reflect the confinement and openness of the different countries.

--Error (talk) 14:32, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Very interesting, thank you all. --KnightMove (talk) 10:12, 23 February 2023 (UTC)