Projection
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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 -
On Not Seeing The Martian, 3D Lens Misprojection and the Wretchedness of the Multiplex
In 2011, Ty Burr wrote an article on the most common scourge of multiplex projection: seeing a film projected that is obviously far darker than it should be because a 2D film is being projected through a 3D lens. This is still happening, and I want to use this website to yell about it a little bit: this is a common problem that simply should not exist at this late date. The rise of digital projection is a cost-friendly win for both studios who can save money on printing and shipping prints and movie theaters, which theoretically no longer have to […]
by Vadim Rizov on Nov 2, 2015
