It's not news, exactly, but the outcome is gratifying, especially to those of us who were into widescreen before widescreen was cool. (and who repeatedly got "the blank stare" from VHS lovers)

I quit going to Blockbuster video more than a year ago because of this very thing... I sometimes couldn't get a widescreen DVD. Hollywood Video got on the ball a lot quicker, and I've never had that problem there.

When I worked for Hollywood, my manager and I were *big* crusaders for the WS format. We won many folks over. Every now and then Hollywood drops the ball and just gets the "full screen". But mostly it's widescreen.

It's true, and it's happening very quickly at Blockbuster Canada, where I work. In fact, a few months ago (Jan.) we still recieved a lot of comedies and such in Pan-and-Scan (I hate the term Full Screen, because it's such a misnomer). But recently we get everything in Widescreen, which is great, but has caused me to have to spend the time to educate some customers on why Widescreen is better. In fact, this weekend, everytime someone brought up the Pan-and-Scan Return of the King, I asked "Are you sure you want Full Screen?" and most often the question I would get is "Why? What's wrong?" After I explain it, fully 90% of the people opted to get the Widescreen versions, and a few who were cautious I assured that if they really, really hated it I would let them come back and exchange it, but urged them to try it.

Just doing my part to spread the gospel

I ran into the same thing when I worked at Blockbuster. Very few people understand the difference between pan and scan and widescreen, and therefore just don't want "those black bars" at the top as they figure it's chopping the top off their picture.

I actually once was at Blockbuster (before I worked there), with the intention of renting About A Boy and all they had was full-screen. I asked the manager if another location in town might have it in widescreen, and he just stared at me, then patronizingly told me that it didn't matter because "it's not like it's an action movie or something." I smiled and left.

When I managed the Blockbuster at Riverside Avenue in Sherman Oaks, I took great pride in amassing the largest WS section in Los Angeles. The regional manager only allowed me to have it because a.) we made the most profit in all of LA and b.) I proved I could move widescreen titles, per single rental, more frequently than any other single rental in the store--something that came as quite a shocker.

I made a list of a few of my favorite customer complaints about the format, published here now for your enjoyment:

"What good is it for anyone who don't have a special TV?"

"I hate it because the black bars cover stuff up."

"It's stupid--it just adds more cost to making the video."

"I don't like it because it shrinks everything just so it'll fit."

And my favorite:

"This is the third time I've tried to rent this and it keeps messing my TV up. None of the other [Pan/Scan] ones do, just this one."



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Bethany wrote:
: Very few people understand the difference between pan and scan and widescreen . . .

And even fewer understand the difference between fullscreen and pan-and-scan!

Yes, there IS a difference. Virtually ALL films are shot in a format whereby the frame on the strip of film is bigger than the frame on the screen in the theatre -- that is, the theatre's projector is showing only PART of the frame on the screen.

Now, SOME films are shot in a hard-matted widescreen format, whereby there are black bars on the top and bottom of the film frame, so the only way to make a video version of these films that fills a standard TV screen is to chop off the sides of the actual image. But OTHER films are shot in a soft-matted widescreen format, whereby there is image content in the film frame that is never seen in theatres -- and sometimes, to make a video version of these films that fills a standard TV screen, all you have to do is show the entire frame as it was filmed.

I believe Trainspotting is an example of the latter -- I could be wrong about this, but in the scene where Ewan McGregor is standing naked in the hallway and we see him in silhouette, I do not believe we saw the outline of his penis in the theatre, but we definitely see it, near the bottom of the frame, on the fullscreen video.

And sometimes films mix these formats. One of the wackiest experiences I ever had in a theatre was when I saw The Piano Teacher -- the idiot projectionist had screwed things up so badly that we in the audience could actually see the full film frame, and SOME of the time it was a hard-matted image with black bars on top and bottom, while at OTHER times it was a soft-matted image that filled the frame and we saw boom mics at the top of the frame.

Another example is Titanic. The film was mainly shot in that soft-matted format, however, because special effects are expensive, they tend to be done in a hard-matted format -- no point in creating effects that will never be seen in theatres! So when Titanic came out on video in a fullscreen edition, the special-effects shots were panned-and-scanned and thus had LESS image content than they did in the theatre, while all the other shots had MORE image content -- "more hats and shoes" was how the studio described it, as I recall.

And then there are people like Stanley Kubrick, who shot his last three films -- The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) -- in a fullscreen format and allowed them to be shown in a widescreen format in theatres. For those films, it is the fullscreen edition, and not the widescreen edition (which doesn't exist on video anyway), that expresses the artist's vision.

I actually did know about the differences in filming and cutting down for television/theatres/video you're describing, Peter, but I didn't realize that "pan and scan" and "fullscreen" referred to different processes. You learn something new everyday, I guess!

SZPT wrote:
: Then the U.S. followed Europe by adopting the widescreen format?

It's a little more complicated than that, I think -- I believe the European standard is 1.66:1 while the American standard is 1.85:1 (with occasional forays into 2.35:1 and beyond).

Improved? By making microwaveable frozen pizza?

SZPT (any relation to Mr. Myxzptlk?), I think I see what you're saying now -- you're asking whether America copied the widescreen format from Europe, yes? To that, I can only say I don't know the answer right now, but I suspect not. The widescreen format emerged in the 1950s (CinemaScope debuted in 1953 with The Robe, I'm not sure about the other widescreen formats) to counterbalance the surging popularity of television, and I suspect the American economy was in a much better place than the European economy at that time, and thus more likely to be the place where such forms of competition and innovation transpired. But I could be wrong.