Wide screen?
Does anyone know if this was originally in wide screen? The new DVD is sort of letterboxed but some of the closeups look like the top and bottom are cut off.
shareYeah, framing in closeups seems a little tight. I wonder since a lot of real low budget films probably couldn't afford widescreen and besides if filmmakers had actually invested in widescreen, it usually was advertised "Filmed in Cinemascope", or "Filmed in Panavision."
shareWas probably an Open Matte frame - shot 4:3 and cropped to widescreen for cinemas.
It was 'intended' to be seen on widescreen, but many directors used this format in order for pan and scan to be avoided on TV and video releases. They would simply remove the crop (hence 'opening' the frame up) therefore showing more frame on TV.
This is not the same however as the pre-1950s 4:3 (Academy Ratio) otherwise heads would be totally cut off in close up. Open Matte filmakers would deliberately leave excess headroom to allow for theatrical widescreen cropping.
Lots of films were still made this way till the end of 35mm. Spielberg and Kubrick used it a lot, and lots of 80s comedies such as the Police Academy and Vacation films used it also.
Moonwalker and the Rocky films are also examples I can think of.
The 'opened up' version although showing more frame is not the 'proper' way to show it however. What is intended to see is within the widescreen area height wise, as often boom mics and other revealing mistakes would get in the frame on the opened up version as well as needless headroom above heads. It was just the lesser of two evils vs pan and scan..