The Evil Television

When TV was being developed in the 30s and 40s they could have chosen any aspect ratio at all, yet they decided, in order to be compatible with movies (and existing camera lenses), they would also adopt the industry standard 4:3 "Academy Aperture".

As television's popularity increased Hollywood began to see TV as a threat. In the early 50s movie studios began trying all sorts of weird things to make sure their movies wouldn't be compatible with TV sets. Smell-o-vision, 3D-glasses, and various audio and color technologies were tried and finally they hit upon an answer - widescreen.

(Historical Note 2: Color film - not just hand tinting - was tried as early as 1906 but early technologies were expensive and unreliable. Even though by the mid-20s film companies had worked out most of the bugs only four feature films were made in color in the 20s and the technique was put aside by Hollywood until the late 40s and 50s. Did you know that versions of "The Phantom of the Opera" (1923-25) and "Ben Hur" (1925) were both shot in color?)

The Robe
In September 1953 20th Century Fox premiered The Robe at New York's Roxy Theater using a "new" technique they called CinemaScope. (In fact the "new" technique had been patented 30 years earlier by French physicist Henri Chretien (1879-1956) who invented the technique in the late 1920s.) The CinemaScope technique uses two anamorphic lenses -- one on the camera and one on the projector. The first squishes everything horizontally during filming, like a funhouse mirror that makes fat things look thin, the second un-squishes it during projection. These lenses produced an image that had an aspect ratio of 2.35 to 1.

Soon, lots of different studios started making their own versions of 'Scope' films: WarnerScope, TechniScope, PanaVision, PanaScope, and others. Later, other systems using 70mm film showed up (Cinerama, Todd AO, Polyvision, etc.) that achieved aspect ratios up to 3 to 1, but most of these films ended up being transferred to 35mm 'Scope' proportions for general release.

There were problems with these special anamorphic lenses however. First, the camera lenses were VERY expensive to rent - you couldn't buy them - and second, the projectionist had to remember to put on the special projector lens before showing the film.

In the mid 50s, some clever cinematographer who didn't want to spend the money to rent one of these special camera lenses invented a widescreen trick. Shoot a movie using regular lenses on regular 35mm film and put a rectangular mask or matte over the projector lens that cuts off the top and bottom of the projected image. You just move the projector back a little bit from the screen and ta-da, instant widescreen. Films shot this way had aspect ratios ranging anywhere from 1.66 to 1 up to 1.85 to 1.

For many years widescreen films were shot using this technique. It was cheaper to shoot and the movie theaters didn't have to have special lenses for playback. Of course, you still had to rely on the projectionist to put the rectangular mask on the projector and sometimes they forgot. Later, most studios began putting masks on the camera during shooting so that the top and bottom of the frame wouldn't get exposed.

NEXT: Going Back From Widescreen to 4:3

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