MovieChat Forums > The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) Discussion > Anyone else hate phony 'wide-screen' DVD...

Anyone else hate phony 'wide-screen' DVD's?

posted 16 years ago by ccoutroulos
6 replies | jump to latest

Though I already had a copy of the VHS tape of this film, I just had to "update" it when the DVD came out, especially since I just had to have Pamela Franklin's commentary (which I liked even better than Ronald Neame's, I must say).

Comparing the tape and disc, I noticed that, though the "full-screen" tape lopped off the left and right side of the image, the "wide-screen" DVD lopped off the top and bottom!

Admittedly, in this case nothing essential was lost in either version, but I think it's dishonest for the makers of DVD's to lop off the top and bottom of the screen and then pass it off as the wide-screen version. (Whether they explicitly call it that or not, this is what the viewer is likely to assume -- quite reasonably!)

[–] orchidclub 16 years ago

It's not phony widescreen. Some movies are shot in widescreen, and some are shot in fullscreen with the top and bottom cropped for theatrical exhibition (which is how it was intended to be shown). The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is an example of the latter.

[–] TheLankyOne 16 years ago

i second that.
also i would like to throw in another example: "Back to the future".
and i'd like to add an explanation: when shooting in fullscreen, the crew may relax and not take too much care of what exactly to capture on film - i mean, vertically. for instance, if the sequence results in showing too much of floor, you can crop the floor. and in another scene you may need to crop the ceiling just the same way.

sorry for my poor english.

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[–] ccoutroulos 14 years ago

The problem with that explanation (in this case, at least) is that each version here has portions that are missing in the other. If the film were shot in "full screen" and then just had the top and bottom cropped, the parts to the left and right of the widescreen version would not be there -- which they are!!!

[–] orchidclub 14 years ago

I don't know a lot about film prints but I believe there is extra information on the sides as well that gets cropped out when they do video transfers. This is why you see a little extra info on the sides when comparing different transfers of the same film, and I've seen many instances of this. I don't think it's intentional... the film prints are probably slightly wider than the official aspect ratio. It's like a buffer.
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[–] aasoloway 12 years ago

I'm watching the DVD on a big tv. I'm not sure if it is wide screen or full screen. The picture fills the screen. It doesn't look like it's zoomed in or panning and scanning. It looks like what I saw in the theater 40+ years ago.

[–] morgana-31 11 years ago

I really hated the wide screen with Valley Of The Dolls. Huge portions of black at the top and bottom, and the film only took up 1/3rd of the screen in the centre.

But sometimes it depends on the TV itself. I had one that cut off the sides, which made sporting events impossible to watch because it also cut off the scores.

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