I remember hearing this in the director's commentary, but I forgot. Clooney said a filmmaker recommended him to shoot in a different ratio, and Clooney replied would you have liked it if people told you what to do?
It might not actually have been 16:9 I could be wrong. What was the story behind shooting in 16:9 vs. others?
I would assume that they thought, correctly, that the TV screen would look wrong within a wide-screen cinema format.
We could have high times
if you'll abide
Then why not 4:3? Like "The Good German."
shareThat might have looked too pretentious.
We could have high times
if you'll abide
Too pretentious? How do you mean?
Some experiences are so big they change your DNAshare
I suppose he means if you use 4:3 nowadays it looks like you are trying too hard to be different, to be artsy.
Also, most viewers would get black bars left and right, and it looks very "uncinematic", and I'd find it hard to frame, especially if there are several people on screen. 16:9 sounds like a decent compromise, and the movie looked good.
It wasn't shot in 16:9 it was shot in 1.85:1, which was the generally standard theater format before "scope" (2.35/2.40:1).
It's only slightly wider than 16:9 so it's (unfortunately) common practice to crop it for 16:9 for DVD and Blu-Ray releases.
It's rare that something aimed for theatrical release would be shot 16:9 - which is a TV-specific format.
Although you did say 'generally' Eric, there never really has been a 'standard theatre format', since Academy ratio" of 1.37:1 which was used for all cinema films until 1953.
Common practice to crop 1.85 on DVD maybe, (difficult to find that sort of data with these choices often being made by the individual duplication companies that the distributors hire, and these are many), but the difference really is tiny in this case. Anything wider than 4:3 is pretty forgiving in the horizontal in terms of composition, especially as most camera movements are horizontal, my opinion is that there is not a significant aesthetic difference from 1.85 (16.65:9) to 16:9 a horizontal difference of less than 4%. Not only that but we have been watching cropped formats in multiplicity forever. What about Disney's favourite format for more than a decade,15:9 which is also the native Super 16 mm frame ratio ('Leaving Las Vegas'). These sorts of formats have always been tugged and sliced to fit various other end use formats.
Thirdly although 16:9 as a common sensor size for high def high bit rate video cameras originates because of the High definition Television standard, an increasing number of theatrical release films are shot on this format, and more and more frequently shown with digital projectors that don't have the film projectors limitation of celluloid print stock size.
What were really talking about is IAR "Intended Aspect Ratio' which what the creative team initially intended for the photography, but point being that is often changed at some later stage. This is a huge area of knowledge, based in different technologies and esoteric industry practices. What interests me and the reason I came to this thread is the psychological impacts of different compositional elements (frame format is a major one), and decisions based on that from a shooting perspective. For instance do dramas need more headspace than action movies?
About the 4:3 post, I think a big factor is the 'postage stamp effect' or 'window boxing' which means using a 4:3 framing inside a 16:9 or wider image area. Much more noticeable than in a 4:3 frame especially when used with wider images. It looks squarer and can 'say' home movie, old tv show etc depending on the footage and context.
16:9 is perfect for most films the majority of movies these days presented in scope look awful their composition is diabolical.
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