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November 1997, Week 4

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Leo Enticknap <[log in to unmask]>
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Date:
Tue, 25 Nov 1997 17:17:44 +0000
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On Mon, 24 Nov 1997 12:45:40 -0500 Tony Urban <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
 
> I've always been told that, when you see the boom mike in the shot, it
> is the projectionists fault.  They don't have the films centered
> correctly or the boom mike would be out of the picture you see.  Most
> projectionists start up the film, make sure it isn't too blurry, and
> take off to another theatre to start another film.
 
No it IS NOT the projectionist's fault, usually.  It's the distributor's fault
for not labelling their cans with the correct aspect ratio (see my forthcoming
piece in 'Cinema Technology').
 
Ever since the 'Academy Ratio' of 1:1.33 ceased being an industry-wide standard
around 1954 (i.e. shortly after the introduction of anamorphic processes, 70mm
and VIstaVision), no single widescreen ratio has replaced it.  In fact there
are three in common use: 1:1.66 (European widescreen), 1:1.85 (US w/s) and
1:1.75 (used as a compromise ratio by cinemas which choose not to support
both).
 
Widescreen works in a similar way to letterboxing in videos, except that a
letterbox-shaped aperture plate is used to mask off the black bits, and a lens
with a shorter focal range than for 1:133 is used to magnify the picture area
to fill the entire screen.  The problem for the projectionist comes when film
has been shot in the camera with a 1:1.33 gate, but with a viewfinder masked to
a w/s ratio.  Ergo the print contains 1:1.33-sized frames, but the top and
bottom of the image is not supposed to be shown.
 
But if the can does not tell you this, how can the projectionist know about it?
Experience and common sense count for a lot (for example, no-one in their right
mind would try to project a recent Hollywood feature in 1:1.33), but,
ultimately, distributors must take responsibility for not marking up their cans
and leaders properly.  Make the wrong decision between 1:1.66 and 1:1.85 and
either you see boom mikes descending from the heavens (although this can liven
up an otherwise dull film) or you get what I call the Islamic execution
syndrome, in which actors appear to be decapitated.
 
I repeat, none of this would happen if distributors did their job properly.
 
Example: "Nil by Mouth" opened last Friday; I made it up and showed it's first
run.  The print had 1:1.33 frames throughout.  On a bench examination, I could
not see boom mikes anywhere.  I seem to remember reading an article on the
film, saying that it had been shot in super-16.  That says to me 1:1.66.
Furthermore, the lab which made the print was Eclair and the film was produced
by Luc Besson.  The post-production houses credited at the end are nearly all
French.  The French film industry uses 1:1.66; hence two reasons for showing it
that way, which I did.  As the Exeter Picture House has two screens, I could
not watch out for boom mikes all the way through (I needed to do things in
screen 2), but I asked the front of house staff to keep a lookout and no-one
reported any problems.
 
This was no more than educated guesswork, which, in this case, I got away with.
It needn't have been if Fox Searchlight (the distributor in this case) had
labelled their cans and leaders properly.  Incidentally, if anyone on this list
knows Gary Oldman or Luc Besson, I'd be interested to know if I was right...
 
Leo
__________________________________
Leo Enticknap
Postgraduate Common Room
School of English and American Studies
University of Exeter
Queen's Building, The Queen's Drive
Exeter
Devon EX4 4QJ
United Kingdom
email: [log in to unmask]
 
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