False letterboxing
 

I don't have a lot of technical knowledge on this subject (just a very general knowledge of aspect ratios) but I was wondering why many movies that come out on dvd have fake letterboxing where you actually lose more information at the top and bottom of the screen? I've noticed this with the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Return of the Living Dead recently. Is it because studios think it will appeal more to the public if it's widescreen?

for example:

<img src="http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n296/maxfrost_2006/full.jpg">

<img src="http://i115.photobucket.com/albums/n296/maxfrost_2006/wide.jpg">

Re: False letterboxing
 

I think the best known, or most notorious example of this is the butchering of John Boorman's classic 'Excalibur' movie.

Re: False letterboxing
 

It's not "false letterboxing".....the film was shot "open matte", but the intended aspect ratio is still 1.85:1 (approximately).....when they go to make a full-frame transfer, they just remove the mattes and show the whole filmed frame, but many times that reveals information that was not supposed to be there (like how it ruins the bicycle chain gag in Pee-wee's Big Adventure).....

Re: False letterboxing
 

It's not fake -- this represents what was screened theatrically. Here's an explanation that might help: http://www.widescreen.org/widescreen_matte.shtml

Re: False letterboxing
 

good explanations, thanks

Re: False letterboxing
 

Death To False Letterboxing!

Re: False letterboxing
 

wait wait wait...is there more linnea quigley nudity visible in the fullscreen version of ROTLD?

Re: False letterboxing
 

While that article may be accurate in some cases, there has even been at least one lawsuit over companies hacking up film releases and calling them 'widescreen'. The lawsuits over some of Woody Allen's movies on DVD comes to mind.

Boorman's 'Excalibur' example is one where they butchered the film, it was not a matting issue or an overscan issue.

Re: False letterboxing
 

yep! :)

Re: False letterboxing
 

All fullscreen releases don't do this, do they? Don't some, or the majority, crop the sides of the widescreen image rather than opening it up?

Re: False letterboxing
 

majority are pan and scan, what you describe above

Re: False letterboxing
 

The open matte version of Terminator 3 shows more nudity also.

Re: False letterboxing
 

Alright that makes me feel better. I've always been a fan of widescreen and especially of maintaining the director's preferred OAR, but thinking that fullscreen customers were always getting more of the picture rather than getting less of the picture actually started to make me a little sick to my stomach.

Re: False letterboxing
 

It's not always the case but "open matte" is often used for full screen versions only when the film's original aspect is 1.85:1.

The original 2.35:1 aspect in full screen is not "open matte" and is therefore pan & scanned which causes extensive loss of the picture.

Re: False letterboxing
 

National Lampoon's Vacation shows quite a bit more nudity in "open matte" fullscreen when Beverly D'Angelo is in the shower. You can also see she is wearing underwear in the shower too.

You also tend to sometimes see intrusive things like a boom mike entering from the top of the picture as well.

Re: False letterboxing
 

i'm fully aware that more nudity can be seen in other films when the open matte version is viewed...i was specifically asking about ROTLD.

also i think there was a whole thread dedicated to seeing more nudity with the open matte versions of films....

Re: False letterboxing
 

Well, sometimes the director will choose to shoot open matte, or "TV Safe", fully knowing that this is the version that will be seen on television. So for those, you don't need to feel bad about the director's preference as he was essentially filming two versions of the same movie simultaneously.

Re: False letterboxing
 

i dont recall a whole thread dedicated to seeing more nudity. rather, i recall mostly requests for which foolscreen titles had more nudity :p

Re: False letterboxing
 

This is America, the land where any idiot can sue over anything. The fact that someone filed a lawsuit doesn't mean that the case had merit.

Re: False letterboxing
 

All the right points have already been made, but let me get a little more into the artistic side for moment. Take another good look at the screengrabs you posted: the upper "fullscreen" one may have more image, but the lower widescreen one looks better. The fullscreen one has a ton of empty sky and blurred grass at the top and bottom of the image, and the widescreen one covers that up, but it forces your eyes to follow the lines created by their knees and eye-lines. The top one to me looks like a scene of a graveyard with people in it, but the bottom one looks like two people talking in a graveyard; a subtle difference but it's there.

Finally, see my sig (the first line).

Re: False letterboxing
 

I think "open matte" and nudity are often brought up in the same sentence simply because that seems to be when people notice these details.

No one says "Hey, I seem to remember this shot having less/more blue sky above their heads!"

Re: False letterboxing
 

They won.

That can sometimes indicate merit.

Re: False letterboxing
 

I was annoyed that "The King of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters" had a lot of TV footage with the top and bottom cropped- the music video compilations for Queen and Paul McCartney did this too.

Scope movies that show more info in foolscreen versions were shot Super 35- there's a demonstration of this on one of the Terminator 2 DVDs. The extra image isn't on the theatrical prints of these, they're printed as standard anamorphic.

Re: False letterboxing
 

Not really. It just means they found a dumb enough jury.

Re: False letterboxing
 

I know the original Evil Dead is one example of a movie looking better fullscreen (widescreen is very cramped to me cutting off image). Excalibur was mentioned, are there any others?