Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

Vandalising films

Some domestic appliances are surely a waste of technology. 
Does anyone really need a $10,000-$15,000 plasma TV screen in 
their home? (Although I stood in Bing Lee a few weeks back and 
watched a family of three — parents and child — obviously 
preparing to buy one; their only concern was getting the 
appropriate size for the space on their wall!)

On the hand, DVDs are clearly a welcome advance on videotapes. 
They are certainly more expensive (capitalists never miss a 
chance to charge more) but the image quality is so much better: 
sharper, more detailed, of higher quality all over.

Unlike videotapes, DVDs are also more likely to present wide-
screen films in their original ratio (the way SBS does with wide-
screen movies). This is actually very important, for film is a 
visual medium and should be viewed as close as possible to the 
way it was shot.

And while capitalists would have us believe that film is 
essentially an industry, it is in fact an art form (and a medium 
of education). Regrettably, its ability to draw large numbers of 
people together as a paying audience has also made it viable as a 
profit-making business.

Its business or industry role is really of secondary importance, 
except that under capitalism this role has inevitably been made 
the first consideration, resulting in the deforming of the 
greater part of world filmmaking for a century.

Nevertheless, film is primarily an art form, the only really new 
art form of the 20th century. Any perusal of the interminable 
closing credits of a modern film will quickly confirm that it is 
also very much a collaborative medium.

The artistic contribution of many people is required to make a 
film: the writer (to determine what it is about); the director, 
who determines how it is made; the cinematographer who decides 
how it will be lit and photographed (it is after all a moving 
picture show); the editor who determines how all the various 
shots will be cut together; the composer (whose job is basically 
to create and maintain atmosphere); and the actors, who interpret 
the various characters.

And they are by no means all. Each component is highly complex. 
Take cinematography, for example.

It combines all the elements of still photography (composition, 
lighting, etc) with the added elements of scale (a cinema screen 
is huge, allowing extreme detail to be seen) and especially 
motion. In a movie, there is movement of people and objects 
within the frame and also movement of the camera itself.

A good lighting cameraperson or cinematographer will use the 
whole screen for every shot. There may be no significant action 
in part of the screen at any given moment, but none of it will be 
"dead" space: it will be needed to balance some other part of the 
image, or to direct the viewer's attention in a given direction, 
or even to mislead the eye in preparation for a shock effect.

But for the bankers, moguls and other entrepreneurs of the film 
industry, the art of the film is only of value as a means of 
putting bums on seats. They have no more compunction about 
cutting the sides off a film than they have about cutting a chunk 
out of a film.

Television, with the notable exception of SBS, is notorious for 
screening wide-screen films in standard screen format. Standard 
screen has an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 (ie 4 wide by 3 high). To 
the human eye this looks more or less square, whereas an actual 
square image looks curiously "wrong".

Wide-screen films are usually shot in either anamorphic or non-
anamorphic mode. Anamorphic films, in which the image is squeezed 
on filming and then unsqueezed for projection, such as 
CinemaScope and Panavision, usually have an aspect ratio of 
2.35:1.

The aspect ratio of non-anamorphic films, in which there is no 
squeezing of the image, just masking of the top and bottom of the 
image in the camera, is usually 1.85:1 or sometimes 1.66:1.

Showing any wide-screen film in standard screen results in 
substantial parts of the picture being lopped off. Screening them 
on television without "letterboxing" them, has the same 
unfortunate, even barbarous, results.

Only "letterboxing" as SBS does, can restore a film to its 
correct ratio on television. But the film and TV industry moguls 
have no interest in giving the despised public a film in the 
ratio in which it was shot.

The filmmakers may clearly have intended the film to be seen in a 
wide-screen format, but the "industry" will prefer to chop off 
big chunks from the sides of the image in order to fill the TV 
screen from top to bottom! In this they demonstrate almost equal 
contempt for the filmmakers and for the poor long-suffering 
public.

One of the attractions of the DVD format is the way wide-screen 
films on DVD tend to be presented "letterboxed", ie in wide-
screen. The total image may be smaller, but at least you see all 
of it, and you see it as you were intended to.

The other day I bought a brand new DVD of the 1994 hit comedy 
Four Weddings and a Funeral. I was not a little miffed to 
find when I screened it that it was in standard screen, although 
the original film had been wide-screen.

There was no indication on the case that the image was 
incomplete. (Often there's a small note saying "Reformatted to 
fit your TV".)

What was the effect? Well, in one scene, Simon Callow, Hugh Grant 
and John Hannah are walking across a crowded room at a wedding 
reception, in animated conversation.

The camera holds the three of them in tight shot, and tracks with 
them through the crowd. In the standard screen DVD version, only 
one of them can be seen at a time, the other two being reduced to 
an arm, part of a torso or even a nose.

Meanwhile, all three can be heard talking, but the actual person 
talking has often passed "out of shot". This makes a travesty of 
Michael Coulter's excellent photography.

No one would think of exhibiting a painter's work with the top 
chopped off every painting, or the work of a poet while 
arbitrarily dropping stanzas out of his or her poems.

But film is under the control of capital, and capitalists are not 
going to be deterred from making a buck just because of artistic 
considerations.

Vandalism rules, OK?