What movies actually reveal more of the image in their full-screen DVD format compared to widescreen?
shareThose shot on Super 35 which allow for expanded full screen versions.
Kubrick and Cameron used those lenses, and several raunchy comedies show more nipples/bush in their full-screen versions, eg Bachelor Party, See No Evil Hear No Evil.
Diane Lane’s tits (Unfaithful) and Lea Thompson’s bush (All The Right Moves) are only visible in full-screen.
Terminator 3 (2003). The full frame version shows Kristanna Loken's boobs when she walks toward the car after arriving from the future whereas they're cropped off in the widescreen version.
There are actually tons of them (easily thousands), but Terminator 3 is the one I know of off the top of my head that has something interesting in the additional picture content.
Any movie that was framed for 1.85:1 but protected for 4:3 will show quite a bit of additional content on top and bottom, and a little less content on the sides. Here is a comparison between 4:3 and 1.85:1 from one of countless movies that was protected for 4:3 during filming (Revenge of the Ninja [1983]):
https://i.imgur.com/c0EVxVy.png
Protecting for 4:3 used to be very common when all TVs were 4:3, because it allowed for very easy transfers to 4:3 home video and 4:3 TV broadcasts, i.e., no pan & scan required. Pan & scan is a big job and it alters the original cinematography by adding simulated camera pans and cuts that were never in the original.
Pan & scan is needed for making a 4:3 version of a 2.35:1 movie that was filmed with an anamorphic lens. In that case you lose a lot of picture off the sides and gain none on the top and bottom. The reason that happens is because a frame of 35mm film, 4-perf, is 4:3, and an anamorphic lens is used to squeeze a 2.35:1 image into the entire 4:3 frame (and another anamorphic lens to unsqueeze it back to 2.35:1 when projected at the theater). That gives the best possible resolution because the image takes up the entire frame, but it also means the only way to make a 4:3 version is to crop off the sides, because there's nothing extra on the top and bottom to work with.
In short, if the movie's theatrical aspect ratio is 1.85:1 and it was made before widescreen TVs were the norm, then it's very likely that a 4:3 home video version of it has additional content on top and bottom. It's not guaranteed though, because not all of them were protected for 4:3 during filming.
Good info! What about 3-perf Super 35? Would those films also be like the rest of movies shot in Super 35?
shareGood info! What about 3-perf Super 35? Would those films also be like the rest of movies shot in Super 35?
share3-perf is 16:9 (which is close to 1.85:1, and 3-perf movies were usually slightly matted to 1.85:1 for theatrical presentation), so to modify a 3-perf movie to 4:3 you'd have to remove content from the sides, and there would be either no extra content on the top and bottom, or only a tiny amount of extra content (depending on whether or not the theatrical release was matted to 1.85:1).
2-perf 35mm was a method of getting a ~2.35:1 aspect ratio (or wider; up to ~2.67:1) on the cheap and was commonly used for shooting "spaghetti westerns." Instead of using an anamorphic lens with 4-perf 35mm, they used a normal (spherical) lens with a 2-perf camera mechanism which cut film usage in half. It also cut resolution in half, so they don't have as good of picture quality as a "CinemaScope" movie. The same thing applies to 2-perf movies as applies to CinemaScope movies though, i.e., modifying one to 4:3 results in a lot of missing content on the sides and no extra content on the top and bottom.