Jeffrey Dean, Pixar

• Aspect Ratio is very important to home video.
• What is aspect ratio – the ratio from the height to the width
• 2.35:1
• The image is 2.35 times wide as it is high
• Pixar uses this for half of our movies
• This is called a widescreen image
• When modified to fit your television screen
• They cut this to fit the box of your screen
• When a comparison is made huge chunks of picture is missing
• It is harder to find what is going on when these pieces are missing
• The whole is greater than the pieces themselves. If you are missing pieces – you are missing the movie
• The soul and the mood is in the film shots.
• Cutting it to fit a screen, you are losing 30% of the movie
• Why different aspect ratios?
• Film before the 1950s
• 1.33:1 Academy Standard
• There were all aspects of images though. There was no standard.
• Thomas Edison developed projecting images onto a wall/screen
• He didn’t patent it as he saw no value in it.
• Then 1.37:1 came about to add a strip of sound
• This is the same size as a 35mm film
• Around 1952 – TV comes along
• NTSC Television followed the Academy Standard (4x3)
• Once TV came out, movie theater attendance plummets
• So Film brought forth color to combat this.
• Also early 3D
• Also Widescreen was brought forth.
• Cinema-Scope
• Studios at the time made movies bigger and bigger
• There was a Napoleon movie that was actually 4x1 … really wide.
• 1.85:1 Academy Flat
• 2.35:1 Anamorphic Scope (aka Panavision/Cinemascope)
• Almost all movies are made in these two aspect ratios
• Pixar has done half in one and half in the other
• Why choose one over the other?
• Artist choice
• It is part of the story the director wants to tell
• Can we preserve the story outside of the theaters?
• TVs before 1998 – they were very square
• Now TVs are very wide
• Historical options
• Toy Story released as it was and people cut it in a way that wasn’t liked by the studio
• Pan and Scan is another option
• Cut and then scan left or right depending on where the action is
• Frame Height
• Pixar can go back and animate more picture to account for the bottom/top bars.
• You end up with more sky and more ground
• The characters seem to get lost in the picture
• You lose what the director original intended
• Re-staging
• For animated movies, you can move characters around – restage the scene.
• It is a new completely different version of the film
• This is the best possible option that Pixar came up with
• They have stopped doing this really as the demand as pretty much dropped off
• Why not 1.33 today?
• There has been an evolution of taste and demands.
• VHS is a linear item
• The focus is about portability and not about quality
• Most was pan and scan and the quality was so bad – but people didn’t notice
• DVD was introduced in 1996
• You could have more content – two versions of the film
• You could have the widescreen version and the 1.33 version
• People realized that they are seeing more of the movie with the widescreen
• High Def Televisions (16x9 monitors)
• This was introduced in 2005
• Blu-ray Disc was introduced in 2006
• This is all widescreen
• You cannot find a square TV anymore
• TVs are roughly 1.85:1 aspect ratio
• There is a change in demand
• Users are used to black bars and are used to widescreen
• Users are educated now
• What’s next for in-flight entertainment?
• High Def IFE
• Personal Electronic Devices
• 3D inflight