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How Star Wars Taught Me Ratios
- 1. HOW STAR WARS TAUGHTME RATIOS A simple math exercise…
- 2. TELEVISION Before the adventof HIGH DEFINITION TELEVISION, most television screens were somewhat square in shape, only a little wider than tall…
- 3. MOVIES IN THEATERS Partlyspurred by the growth of television in homes, filmmakers began experimenting with wider formats of film, offering a more “EPIC” experience…
- 4. MOVIES ON TELEVISION Asthe TV audience grew, but still before home media formats like VHS and DVD, broadcasters began looking for content to fill their time slots…
- 5. NEVER THE TWAIN…? Theobvious solution was to show theatrical movies, especially older ones that had finished their runs in theaters…
- 6. NEVER THE TWAIN…? However,this presented a problem. Many of the classic films of the earlier decades were now simply too big for the small screen…
- 7. LETTERBOXING The simplest solutionwas a technique called letterboxing, with the film shrunk down to fit inside the narrower screen…
- 8. LETTERBOXING While this becamesomewhat common for VHS and more so on DVD, the smaller size of most home TVs made this idea less than desirable…
- 9. A NEW HOPE PANAND SCAN became the go-to solution for movies on television. The movie fills the screen, but shifts left and right to follow the action…
- 10. THE MOVIE STRIKESBACK While this kept characters front and center, it often left the landscapes on the sidelines... Literally…
- 11. THE MOVIE STRIKESBACK Worse, if characters were too far apart on screen, either more elaborate editing was required, or half the dialogue would be an off-screen voice…
- 12. HOME BOX OFFICE WhenSTAR WARS was shown on HBO in the early days of cable, one solution to the PAN & SCAN dilemma was to switch between formats…
- 13. HOME BOX OFFICE Inan early scene of EPISODE IV, LUKE SKYWALKER spies a pair of BANTHAS through a pair of binoculars, looking for SAND PEOPLE…
- 14. HOME BOX OFFICE Thenext shot gives a first-person look through the scope. We see two large BANTHAS and…
- 15. HOME BOX OFFICE ATUSKEN RAIDER on the very edge of the screen, almost outside the view of the scope… EXCITING, BUT EXTREMELY ONE-SIDED FIGHT SCENE ensues… HI THERE!
- 16. RETURN OF THEVHS Fast-forward, as VCRs could do, a few years to the first proper VHS release of the entire STAR WARS trilogy…
- 17. RETURN OF THEVHS Now, something was different about that scene. The BANTHAS were there, but when LUKE spies the SAND PEOP---PERSON…
- 18. THE SAND WHOWASN’T THERE All we saw was the same shot of two BANTHAS side-by-side, rather than single-file, with the left and right sides of the binoculars cut off…
- 19. THE SAND WHOWASN’T THERE The EXCITING, BUT EXTREMELY ONE-SIDED FIGHT SCENE carried on, but it was puzzling we didn’t see what LUKE saw…
- 20. ATTACK OF THERATIOS When the film was put through the PAN AND SCAN process for its VHS release, the shot was centered without regard for the action… HELLO AGAIN!
- 21. ATTACK OF THERATIOS Being too young to have seen STAR WARS in theaters at that point, I only had these two home versions of the film to go on… But even my naïve, pre-adolescent brain with two working eyes could see there was a bit of a mismatch between these two versions…
- 22. REVENGE OF THEFILM NERDS WIDE SCREEN STAR WARS, like many films of that era, was filmed in an ASPECT RATIO of 2.35:1… HIYA!
- 23. REVENGE OF THEFILM NERDS 2.35 1 This meant that for as tall as the screen was, it was 2.35 times wider. So, if a movie screen was 8 feet tall, it was around 19 feet wide.
- 24. REVENGE OF THEFILM NERDS 1.33 1 Television cameras and sets, meanwhile, were made to fit a 1.33:1 aspect ratio, sometimes referred to as FOUR BY THREE…
- 25. REVENGE OF THEFILM NERDS ANAMORPHIC The 2.35:1 ratio is simply called WIDESCREEN or ANAMORPHIC, though these names and numbers are hardly universal or even widespread…
- 26. THE FILM FANAWAKENS 2.35 Movies come in all shapes and sizes, depending on the era they were made in, the director’s choice of film and cameras, or even venue… 1.85 1.33 1.77 1.66 1.17
- 27. THE FILM FANAWAKENS 2.35 Hopefully this gives you a BROADER perspective on movies, how they’re made and how they’re shown… 1.85 1.33 1.77 1.66 1.17
- 28. THE FILM FANAWAKENS 2.35 Oh, and an insight into a common, everyday use for ALGEBRA… you’re welcome ;P 1.85 1.33 1.77 1.66 1.17