typecase

I recently saw the Martian in Cinemark's XD theaters and paid the upcharge but was disappointed to find that they have these massive screens, they're all 1.85:1 in aspect ratio. Scope movies projected on these screens are projected with black bars, like some giant television. If they masked this this would be fine but they don't even mask anymore. I used to love going to the movies, sitting and watching a giant scope screen exposed as the curtains or masking moved to the side. I spoke to the manager about this and he said they're ripping out all their scope screens and putting in these bigger 1.85:1 screens. The spectacle of movies is gone now due to poor projection practices like this. I get a better experience watching movies at home on my CIH screen.

Anyone else notice this? With Cinemark owning about a third of the screens out there, this is not good news.

Pizza

Yep. Noticed just the other week when I saw Man from Uncle.

hanshotfirst1138

My local AMC's screens actually change shape. They'll occasionally run trailers matted, but it full features. That's the most idiotic thing I've ever heard in my entire life. CinemaScope has been around for half a century and they haven't figured out that that the screen can be that size?

Alan Smithee

A LOT of theaters built in the past 20 years have been like that- I call them bass-ackwards screens. They were at least masked from the top and/or bottom so that it wasn't so obvious to customers, but it's still wrong to have scope movies looking smaller than 1.85. I left a projection job at Regal because they forced me to have the masking stay up for their annoying advertising slides (before they added the video ads later) and then have the masking come DOWN once the film started- I simply refused to do that and quit. Letterboxing movies with no masking at all reduces the theater experience to a big TV- and sometimes even WORSE than that as some people have taken the trouble to install masking for their home projection system and have the screens be natively 2.35!

Cinemark REALLY doesn't know what the fuck they're doing. They're severely contributing to the decline of the moviegoing experience.

Why So Blu?

ArcLight masks their regular non-DOME screens with the exception of Tomorrowland but that one had that whacky 2:20 or whatever it was that you could still see bars, so they left it open.

Matthew Chmiel

Didn't we have a thread on this already? Didn't I start it?

EDIT: I did. http://forum.dvdtalk.com/movie-talk/...lazy-both.html

And Cinemark pulls the same shit now too. You think it's frustrating watching a 2.40:1 film on a 1.85:1 screen, try watching a 1.85:1 film on a 2.40:1 screen.

Paff

With movie theaters essentially being video houses now, is this a surprise?

dave94

The theater industry has gone away from moveable masking because the original point of them was that film projectors needed the dark fabric to cut off the image and create a crisp edge. With digital projectors the image is inherently "cut" where it needs to be. Sure, you can still see the unused screen but they're cutting costs where they think it's acceptable.

As for which size should be the default, it makes the most sense for the largest presentation to be the flat image. You get a wall-to-wall screen with an image as tall as the aspect ratio will allow. Then the scope image is going to be the shorter one, with top and bottom portions of the screen unused.

If they went the other route, then you end up with a screen only as tall as the 2.40 ratio allows, which is shorter, and then the flat image is an even smaller, less efficient use of the room's dimensions.

Alan Smithee

And I'm likewise cutting costs by not going to theaters anymore, since they don't give me anything different or better from what I can get at home.

Uh, no, it DOESN'T- the whole point of Scope is for a more enveloping image- the 'letterbox' effect should only be seen on TVs at home, and only then because those were designed wrong. A theater should be designed for a 2.35 screen from the start (being wider overall), these "stadium seating" theaters designed for a larger 1.85 screen are Doing It Wrong. The digital format is a joke as well, since it uses a native 1.85 frame and scope pictures are letterboxed on that. Theaters that do have proper side-masked screens have to zoom the image to fit those screens, same as a non-anamorphic DVD on a widescreen TV. Is it any wonder why I got out of the theater business?

DthRdrX

I was thinking about posting a similar thread last summer. My local Cinemark has a masking system but they stopped using it completely within the last year. I've noticed they just project new movies with black bars now.

Alan Smithee

What did they say when you complained?

Dan

You know... I completely agree on this.
The purpose of 1.85:1 was to be larger than 1.33:1.
The purpose of 2.35:1 was to be larger than 1.85:1.
Luckily, I have a few local theatres that still use horizontal masking for 1.85:1 instead of shrinking the image for 2.35:1. Not all of them do this, though, and it's disappointing when I see the vertical masking move in.

This is why I was personally adamant about making a 2.35:1 screen for my projector; I wanted big movies to look bigger.

Mr. Salty

Not necessarily. The theaters in my area use anamorphic lenses to project scope images. They are not letterboxed.

rw2516

Remember the good old days when the curtain would open to proper AOR of the movie?
After watching trailers in 1:85 the thrill when the curtain opened further to all it's full 2:35 glory.
Once in a blue moon they'd OOPS! and the sides of 2:35 would be projected on curtain until they caught on and finished opening them fully.

After the multi screens come along there was usually one screen per multiplex that was larger than the rest. This one had a 2:35 curved screen with twice the seating. Blockbuster 2:35 movies were always in this one. You couldn't wait to long because the next big 2:35 release would bump the movie to a smaller theater with smaller screen.

Mr. Salty

1.85:1, 2.35:1, not 1:85 or 2:35.

Alan Smithee

Bumping this because I just went to a new theater's first day being open and is also the last time I will ever go there. Saw "Arrival" and you guessed it- NO MASKING! This was particularly insulting because this theater was built to replace an older one that had great sentimental value to me, and used to have HUGE wide screens. I'd voiced my concern about this new theater not living up to the old one, seriously doubting its viability. I went to a showing today hoping to be proven wrong, but ALL of its screens are natively 1.85 with no masking, letterboxed scope. I'm just about finished with theaters at this point.

inri222

I remember watching The Witch at my local theater when it came out and they fucked that one up. The image filled the whole 1.85:1 screen. Watching the film I started to notice that the tops of the characters heads were frequently cut off. I thought the film was framed that way but then I found out afterward that the aspect ratio was 1.66:1.

Alan Smithee

Was that on film or digital? With film you need a different lens to show 1.66, which many theaters didn't have. I don't know how they handle 1.66 on digital, but it's likely similar to how it works on HD video (using black side bars.)