Kaylee ,'Out Of Gas'
A place to talk about movies--Old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
Any chance Jessica, Fiona or one of the other people who actually work in this industry could take a look at that forum and translate it into non-tech?
This post seems to be the clearest post on the matter.
Knowing this is all probably bullshit is a HUGE relief.
Thanks, Jess.
gives Bull Durham et al. little loving pats and puts them back on the DVD shelf
they're not defective, they're open matte....it is technically accurate that the cases for the discs were labelled in a misleading way. They indicate, wrongly, that there is more picture on either side when, as you know, this would not be the case with open matte movies.
Um. What does that mean? I don't know what "open matte" is.
Basically, MGM's fullscreen versions aren't pan-n-scan, so they show the entire width of the film, plus the bits that were supposed to be matted out by the projectionist.
That makes me feel a bit better.
Because with the number of times I've seen TPB in theatres, and my carping about cuts in scenes that not only have no dialog -- they also have no actors -- to not notice the framing would have been even worse than, you know, believing I'd not noticed the framing.
Doesn't open matte lead to lots of boom mics and stuff in the frames?
Yay us! for figuring this out. (For values of 'us' me.)
I wonder if the slashdot folks figured this out before us? Pro'lly, as there are only about a thousand times more of them....
Doesn't open matte lead to lots of boom mics and stuff in the frames?
Not all the time, but yes, which is why most fullscreen DVDs/videos are pan-n-scan or cropped. It depends on how much the director/dp trusts the projectionists.
Because with the number of times I've seen TPB in theatres, and my carping about cuts in scenes that not only have no dialog -- they also have no actors -- to not notice the framing would have been even worse than, you know, believing I'd not noticed the framing.
I was thinking this too. I'm a total aspect ratio snob -- it would be pretty devastating to think I just hadn't noticed!
Here's another [link] with some examples.
I'm still really confused by "open matte".
(1) Are "open matte" and "soft matte" the same?
(2) Is "open matte" the same as widescreen?
Soft matte refers to how the film was shot (the entire film area exposed, with the intention to crop out the top and/or bottom in projection). Open matte refers to how the video transfer was done (the entire exposed film area instead of cropped edges).
In theory, it's better than pan-n-scan because it shows the whole frame, but in practice, you're still throwing off the composition of the frame by adding space the director/dp didn't intend for you to see.
The fullscreen version of Finding Nemo was a faux-open matte -- they animated extra backgrounds to extend the top and bottom of the frame.