aspect ratios
-
Which Way is Up? On Aspect Ratio Diversity and Quibi’s Turnstyle Technology
Of all the gimmicks announced during the interminable two-year runup to the launch of Jeffrey Katzenberg’s billion-dollar video startup Quibi—from a short-form reboot of Punk’d to a Spielberg-helmed horror series that can only be watched after sundown—perhaps the most striking is Turnstyle, the platform’s unique new approach to aspect ratio. Turnstyle will allow users to rotate their phones while viewing Quibi content, triggering a real-time shift between horizontal and vertical framing. The idea was met with awe by tech evangelists and revulsion by cinephiles when it was announced in January, but more than anything it reveals Quibi’s intentions as markedly […]
by Charlie Shackleton on Mar 17, 2020 -
Keystone Cop: Why 1.66 and 1.78 Aspect Ratios Are Often Misprojected (And How to Fix That)
Jackie, Fox Searchlight’s best hope for 2016 Oscar glory, will be improperly projected throughout the world. There will be the usual projection mistakes and corporate carelessness that have become the norm in today’s multiplexes, but Jackie’s 1.66 aspect ratio will be presented keystoned more often than not: instead of a narrow rectangle that is 1.66 times longer than tall, the tops of the image will either curve inward or outward in relation to the screen. It’s an easily corrected mistake that is being ignored because of laziness. Since most projection booths are devoid of projectionists who can fix the problem, […]
by Sergio Andrés Lobo-Navia on Jan 18, 2017 -
Negative Aspects
Aspect ratios are a film’s canvas; the size of your frame determines the look of your film and is one of the essential questions that a filmmaking team faces in preproduction. Lawrence of Arabia wouldn’t be Lawrence of Arabia if it wasn’t for its incredible widescreen cinematography and sense of scale. Filmed with anamorphic lenses and screened in both 35mm and 70mm, the film was shot and projected at a 2.20:1 aspect ratio. Properly presented in movie houses, the widescreen image would be masked to remove the negative space around the image that we commonly call letterboxing. One would think […]
by Sergio Andrés Lobo-Navia on Jul 25, 2016
