Old stuff made for TV is often in 4:3, the modern stuff is in 16:9 or even wider like for cinema. Sometimes older stuff was filmed in something closer to 16:9 and was cropped to 4:3, you can just crop it differently for a remaster without losing anything. You can see that in the picture, there’s a lot more space to the right of the characters, which unfortunately places them closer to the center instead of the side of the screen.
I really don’t get the recropping/uncropping to get 4:3 into a 16:9 aspect ratio. There’s a release of Seinfeld where they just chopped the top and bottom off the frame, which very often crops people’s foreheads out of frame and in some instances crops entire jokes out. Like, someone will react to something on a table, but the table is just out of frame for the entire scene.
If the director is very smart, it is possible to film for both, but in most cases it’s just not worth it. Aspect ratio is an artistic choice. You wouldn’t chop the sides off a painting to make it fit your wall.
I remember watching an early episode of Angel that clearly had been un-cropped, because you can very clearly see a camera man filming an action scene from a different angle.
Exactly. A lot of times there is footage to pull out that got cropped out of the original broadcast, BUT the original shot was made with the crop in mind and there was a decision made about how to crop that particular scene. Just tossing in the full frame without any thought about the result can really change the feel of a scene.
Old stuff made for TV is often in 4:3, the modern stuff is in 16:9 or even wider like for cinema. Sometimes older stuff was filmed in something closer to 16:9 and was cropped to 4:3, you can just crop it differently for a remaster without losing anything. You can see that in the picture, there’s a lot more space to the right of the characters, which unfortunately places them closer to the center instead of the side of the screen.
I really don’t get the recropping/uncropping to get 4:3 into a 16:9 aspect ratio. There’s a release of Seinfeld where they just chopped the top and bottom off the frame, which very often crops people’s foreheads out of frame and in some instances crops entire jokes out. Like, someone will react to something on a table, but the table is just out of frame for the entire scene.
If the director is very smart, it is possible to film for both, but in most cases it’s just not worth it. Aspect ratio is an artistic choice. You wouldn’t chop the sides off a painting to make it fit your wall.
I remember watching an early episode of Angel that clearly had been un-cropped, because you can very clearly see a camera man filming an action scene from a different angle.
Yeah, cropping was a pretty big issue too.
Mel Brookes probably loved seeing this.
Exactly. A lot of times there is footage to pull out that got cropped out of the original broadcast, BUT the original shot was made with the crop in mind and there was a decision made about how to crop that particular scene. Just tossing in the full frame without any thought about the result can really change the feel of a scene.