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] ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama.