1 "The Beginning"double-dagger Kim Manners Chris Carter November 8, 1998 6ABX01

Great start to the season. I watched this right after finishing the movie so that was cool to see a continuation of the Alien story. Gibson is one of the most fascinating characters for the series. Have no idea why they never used him in some way for the movie as he seemed like an important character at the end of season 5 and this episode.

2 "Drive" Rob Bowman Vince Gilligan November 15, 1998 6ABX02

Another solid MOTW with Gilligan. The icing on the cake was seeing Walter White pre breaking bad

3 "Triangle" Chris Carter Chris Carter November 22, 1998 6ABX03

If this episode is any indication, this season of X-files wil go off the rails batshit crazy with some episodes. It's like Chris Carter just said 'Fuck it. lets' go crazy!"

4 "Dreamland" Kim Manners Vince Gilligan & John Shiban & Frank Spotnitz November 29, 1998 6ABX04

Duchovney and McKean were awesome. body switch episodes are usually lame cliches but this worked so well.

Was Flight to the Future the one that ended in Antarctica? I thought it was disappointing. I expected them to do something more than a TV episode on the big screen. It wasn't even a very good episode.

And it was specifically this episode that even had Vince Gilligan want to cast Bryan Cranston as Walter White.

If they hadn't cast him for this X-Files episode, it's doubtful anyone, not even Vince Gilligan, would've thought that the dad from Malcolm in the Middle would make a good Walter White / Heisenberg.

Another Gilligan connection here with McKean now in Better Call Saul.

On the Better Call Saul Insider Podcast, Vince Gilligan mentioned that The X-Files Season 7 episode "Je Souhaite" (07x21 - which is standalone episode about a genie) was his 1st time directing.

I remembered liking that episode so I decided to watch it again. For convenience, I went to NetFlix streaming to watch it instead of my DVDs. But soon into the episode, I realized the aspect ratio was off: Season 7 of the show was in 16:9 aspect ratio but this episode on NetFlix streaming was in a 4:3 aspect ratio. I then got out my DVDs to compare.

Here's a still image I took from NetFlix streaming version:



Here's the same image I took from the Season 7 DVD box set:



I'm surprised that NetFlix has it in the wrong aspect ratio and crops off the sides of the image.

How did this mistake happen?

E-mail Netflix. Mistakes like that happen a lot and they will usually fix it.

4:3 is OAR for the show; all seasons of the show originally aired in 4:3 on TV. They shot the show in 4:3, but "protected" for 16:9, and on DVD they altered the later seasons to 16:9 by opening up the mattes. So Netflix has the original aspect ratio, while the DVDs of the later seasons have an altered aspect ratio.

FOX has gone back and started remastering the whole show in 16:9 HD. Here's more info on that:
http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2014...-makeover.html
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1724830
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=236117

There isn't any chance at all that the HD remastered will be 4X3 OAR then.

It's possible they're remastering in both aspect ratios, but whether the 4:3 version ever sees the light of day is anyone's guess.

As I recall, The X-Files production switched from 4:3 to 16:9 starting with Season 5 (or was it Season 6?), but only the Season 6 episode "Triangle" was broadcast by Fox in letterbox format.

Wikipedia says seasons 5-9 were released on DVD in 16:9:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X-Files

However, the links in my previous post show that they shot the show with 16:9 protection starting with the first season.

I hope that info is correct.

Is there a side-by-side comparison somewhere online of some of the 4:3 Seasons 1-4 episodes on DVD to the Hi-Def versions that have been shown to confirm they did protect for 16:9 ?

Again, the links I posted previously have more info, including comparison screenshots.

Here's an imgur thread of HD screencaps of seasons 1-3. You can compare them with your DVDs or Netflix:
http://imgur.com/a/QCwN8

Well, I was just hoping someone did the comparison. For me to do it, I would have to know exactly which episode and at what timemark each Hi-Def snapshot is from to then be able to take a snapshot from the same episode from the DVD. That's just too time consuming for me to even attempt.

I just watched "Home" last night on Netflix. Has to be one of the best episodes of any TV show ever.

Somebody already did do a comparison, at the links I previously provided. Specifically, this link has a comparison of caps from the pilot:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...8#post19009738

This morning, I checked "Amazon Instant Video" and can happily report that this is in the correct 16:9 aspect ratio there.

Image taking from Amazon Instant Video:



So to watch the later seasons of The X-Files online, it's better to use Amazon instead of NetFlix.

(BTW, I took all of these snapshots immediately after the character on screen says "Excuse me" so they would be virtually the same moment in the episode)

It depends on your definition of "correct." 16:9 isn't OAR, even for the later seasons.

So if you prefer the 16:9 version from the DVDs, watch the later seasons on Amazon. If you want to watch it the way it was originally intended to be seen, then Netflix has the correct versions.

I honestly don't see how you are coming to this conclusion.

When they filmed, they framed it for 16:9 due to HDTV, but cropped it on the sides to 4:3 for the still prevalent NTSC broadcast. That doesn't make the cropped version more "correct" - just altered for where common TV technology was at the time. The long term plan was always to be 16:9 once that became the dominate standard and leave 4:3 behind (at least for these latter seasons of the show).

Compare that to a show like Seinfeld, which was only filmed for 4:3 and then was many years later reframed to make it 16:9 for HD. That's a show where the correct aspect ratio is 4:3 and the 16:9 version cuts stuff out of the frame.

Nope, here's the quote from Director of Photography John Bartley who started on the second episode of season one:
http://motion.kodak.com/motion/Publi...ey_ASC_CSC.htm
So they framed based on the 4:3 frame.

It's similar to how 1.85:1 and 1.66:1 movies were often shot "protected" for eventual 4:3 open matting. Just because they prepared for that eventuality doesn't mean that anything other than OAR is "correct."

Not to mention that while most of the basic photography is probably open-matted, FX shots were likely cropped from the 4:3 version, and that even when "protecting" for 16:9, errors appear in the 16:9 versions that never appeared in the 4:3 ones.

Here's a thread that talks about mistakes that appear in the 16:9 versions of X-Files episodes:
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread....30#post7538630

Chris Carter, when asked about an HD 16:9 version of the X-Files:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/commen...of_the_xfiles/
Note how he mentions that 16:9 would be a modification.

Here's an older thread talking about similar issues with other works, most notably the Buffy TV series:
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/dvd-talk/45...ml#post6747160

You are correct that Seinfeld is an example of a show shot only as 4:3 on film. However, cropping isn't the only way to modify an image. Even with Seinfeld, when they went back to the film for the HD 16:9 versions they were able to grab extra horizontal image info so they didn't have to crop as much. Also, it's not like Seinfeld, shot as a traditional 3 camera sitcom, had the tightest compositions to begin with.

Here's an article about old shows being converted to HD, with a example screencap comparison of Seinfeld.
http://notonbluray.com/blog/90s-video-hole/

"We shot The X Files in Super 35 format and framed for 4:3. We protected for 16:9, because we knew it was coming."

That's not a detailed answer from him. Was he just talking about Seasons 1 - 4 that they did this? Because seasons 5 - 9 were definitely shot differently than Seasons 1 - 4.

And Super 35 format is framed differently for aspect ratios, so no aspect ratio has all the information. Like this image from Terminator 2 (James Cameron was a big on "Super 35" back then):



When framed for 4:3 (in blue), there's more picture information above and below, but less on the sides in the image. And for widescreen (in red), there's more picture information on the sides, but less on the top and bottom. Super 35 cuts off some information no matter how it is projected.

But look at the image I loaded earlier from Season 7. All the picture information is in the 16:9 image. Only the 4:3 reframing cuts out parts of the image. That's not "Super 35" style filming to allow multiple framings, that's 16:9 widescreen filming entirely. Fox was just a network afraid to project in NTSC using letterbox, so they cut it off for broadcast. (Around the same timespan, NBC was broadcasting ER in letterbox on NTSC - a far braver network.)

And as for mistakes showing up on-screen in the 16:9 image in some episodes, that's not uncommon as TV went through the growing pains of its aspect ratio change.

And Buffy the Vampire Slayer is not at all the same. Joss Whedon has been very vocal that he only shot it in 4:3 format and he does not approve of what the studio has done in reframing the show to 16:9. (A lot of fans are unhappy about it too.)

He was DP on the show from 1993-1996.

However, the HD remasters of season 1 show that it was shot similar to seasons 5-9.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost...8&postcount=10

There's two types of Super 35 though: 4-perf and 3-perf, named for the number of perforations they use, aka their height. Super35 4-perf is what was used on Terminator 2, and typically was used for films framed for "scope" while allowing for opening up for 4:3 home video framing later. It has a native aspect ratio of 4:3, but as you point out, typically 4:3 versions didn't use the full frame.

Super 35 3-perf became popular to use for TV shows, and has a native aspect ratio of 16:9. It uses about 25% less film, and has a native ratio near identical to HD.

The book Shooting Movies Without Shooting Yourself in the Foot has the line that "by the 1990s, shooting in Super 35 meant shooting 3-perf."

It's likely that by saying "Super 35," Bartley meant "Super 35 3-perf" without specifying.

But, technical aspects aside, what's important is the Bartley said they framed for the 4:3 version, so that was the version they composed for. You can't compose for multiple aspect ratios at the same time and get an ideal shot in both; one has to come secondary to the other, and in this instance, 4:3 was the priority, since that's how it was going to show on TV at the time, with 16:9 a distant possibility.


You are correct that Buffy is different in the Joss has clearly stated a preference. However, the difference in filming wasn't different (shooting in a WS format, framing for 4:3 but protecting for 16:9). The majority of Buffy 16:9 shots have more info on the sides.

And not all fans agree with Joss's stance. I've had long arguments before on this forum about Buffy in 16:9.
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/hd-talk/546...el-bluray.html
http://forum.dvdtalk.com/dvd-talk-ar...ull-frame.html


While nobody involved with The X-Files has come right out and said "4:3 is the correct version," we have a DP for the earlier seasons stating what they framed for, and the executive producer of the show saying they would have to "modify" the show for 16:9 HD presentation.

Ok, so he was only on The X-Files for Seasons 1 - 3 and probably doesn't know about how later seasons were shot.

Similiar, but still a little different. In the SD images I took from Season 7, nothing at all is cut out in the 16:9 version - parts of the image are only cut out in the 4:3 version.

But in this group of images from Season 1, which does look really good in widescreen, there is still a bit of the 4:3 image being cropped from the top and/or bottom to reframe to 16:9. That is a notable difference.

On a show like the X-Files, figure out what the FX were composed in to figure out the truly intended aspect ratio. Those early seasons were meant to be in 4:3, not widescreen. Some episode directors may have kept the 16x9 presentation in mind when filming but it was not an overriding concern from what the evidence indicates.

True, but Chris Carter, who was show creator and executive producer for the show, states that they would have to "modify" for 16:9.

4:3 was always OAR for the series; that's how it originally aired. The 16:9 versions of later season didn't appear until the DVD releases several years later.


There's speculation that the earlier seasons were shot Super 35 4-perf "common top".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_35


The early seasons definitely were composed for 4:3. The HD shots have a lot of cropping of the 4:3 image for any SFX shot, unless they've redone the SFX. See this
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread....9#post10088869


However, it does appear to also affect the later WS seasons. Here's a shot from episode 5x01:
http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread....1#post10149931

That Blu-ray.com thread has a lot of HD comparison shots, especially later in the thread.