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Welcome to our first special feature from "Special Collector's Edition".
SPECIAL COLLECTOR'S EDITION
Yes! At last! After a lot of programs,
today is the time I'm gonna explain everybody the meaning of...
As a matter of fact, and as a homage, I've shot this episode in...
Yeah, I'm not gonna say it again, since you've been hearing it so many times...
and you'll probably gonna get freakin' pissed off about...
So, I'm not gonna say it in a while...
Scope - where does it come from?
It's an American word, pronounced "S-C-O-P-E".
But according to the dictionary, we can find this:
Reach, span, range, size, sphere of action or influence, field...
I'm still feeling the same, really.
Well, it stands for something of a big magnitude.
Dammit, it's pretty obvious, the screen's like this.
It's got a big magnitude already.
Scope also has an exact number.
You'll see it in a lot of jackets, that the movie
comes in a format called "2.35:1".
And you'll ask, ...
'Why this number?' Essentially because of the next calculation:
You take a frame and divide the width by the height,
and you'll get a number with a point.
For example, if we divided 4 by 3, we'd get the format 1.33.
If we take a frame in Scope format, we'll get a number that'll begin by 2 point something.
And in the case of "Scope", it ranges from 2 point something upwards.
So, many films in Scope get a format between
2.00 and 2.75.
Although the standard format's always been 2.35:1.
Al right, but first of all let's go for the history.
Since the beginning, film began in 4:3 format.
But, we actually called it 4:3, since the day TV was born.
And actually, before that, the format wasn't 1.33, it was 1.20.
Indeed, it was higher than wider.
You'll probably have noticed that many classics of cinema,
either silent or sound,
have many of their actors with a bit of the head cut off at the top, in some shots
and you'll say, "Crap, they sure didn't know how to frame at the time!"
That's because those films were shot in 1.20.
Later, some wise *** came by and said:
- "Durrh, black bars on the sides are ugly! Zoom it in to get it off!"
- "But boss, the actors are gonna lose half their heads." - "I don't care, I don't wanna see black bars..."
- "they make me claustrophobic!" For some idiotic reason like that.
Anyway, in 1927, French director Abel Gance
made his own version of Napoleon
and it turns out, at the end of the movie, for the first time in film history,
this guy shot several scenes with three different cameras,
and then he joined the three of 'em together resulting in a huge-*** panoramic screen.
At the time it was called "Polyvision",
and people were like, this...
And what happened? Okay, it was impressive, but...
The producer told him:
Non, non... it is l'expensive...
Abel... c'est a grand idea, mais... too expensive...
Actually a few years later, a film was shot in Scope format!
It was lost! It went missing, because the producers didn't want to release it.
Actually, only these frames survived. "BUILDING A FIRE (1929)".
Everyone ended up forgetting about that format.
What happened? Then TV appeared,
and people started going to the cinema less and less...
They went home, to see the movies from their sofas with their families, 'cause it was nice 'n cheap...
And then? Theaters went:
(DRAMATIZATION) - ARGH, we're losing attendance!
It's obvious...
They had to do something.
To get people out of their houses, heck, movies had to show new stuff...
'Cause movies were still shot in 4:3.
Oh yeah, they were in color but still 4:3.
The matter is, during those years, they'd been testing a few new formats...
And in 1952, the "Cinerama" format arrived.
Which was actually the same thing Abel Gance had done.
They took 3 cameras, the screen was completely curved...
It gave you a feel like, "Dude, it's like being there, it's too real!"
People left the theaters... orgasmized...
I've told you the story very briefly, but if you want more details
about Cinerama, you'll find them here, in the Special Edition of "How the West Was Won".
In the 3rd disc, there's a nearly 2 hour-long documentary, called "Cinerama Adventure", were they explain
its birth, development and decline.
It's awesome!
When "Cinerama" disappeared,
new formats sprouted from everywhere,
and one of the most famous was "Cinemascope".
With the lenses, they shot a narrowed movie,
in what's also called "anamorphic format",
so that later on, thanks to the projector's lenses, the movie would become stretched on the theater's screens.
It was cheaper that "Cinerama", but they managed to make people come back to the theaters.
DRAMATIZATION. - "Dude, that's a huge screen!"
Lots of Cinemascope films were made...
And someday they'd have to get a TV release!
But know what? At the time VHS didn't exist. There was nothing.
You only had two options. Either you'd go and watch the movie until you'd get sick of it,
or wait for it to be shown on the TV. And what's the problem?
What happens when you watch a Scope movie in a 4:3 TV screen?
Yes! You see 2 enormous black bars, above and below.
Why? Well BECAUSE!
The TV screen's square, the movie's rectangular...
You're gonna see black bars, up and down!
Do the math!
So then the *** came around - don't know who he was,
I hate him,
And when he saw that Scope movies were shown like that on TV he was like...
And so, they had several options... Problem was, they didn't quite put their brains to it.
1st: Leave it as it was, or 2nd: Adapt it.
And so they chose the 2nd option: "Trim the movies until they fit on the TV screen".
Whether they were old 1.20 films or the current ones in widescreen.
And of course, on many of those films, you lost a lot!
As a matter of fact, you trim a Scope movie and you lose 50% of it.
Damn, there were always newsreels at the time announcing,
"This guy has come... This is gonna happen..."
Was it so difficult to do this one?
"Dear Gentlemen and Gentlewomen,
tonight's film will be shown in widescreen format, and consequently
you will see a black bar above, and another one below. Why does it upset you!? It's the way the movie was shot, you morons!"
Yeah, but unfortunately that'd never happen, and whenever a Scope film was shown, people would say:
"Oh my God WHAT THE HECK'S THAT!? Black bars!!"
Even I, as a little kid, when I saw a movie with black bars, the first thing I said was:
"Hey, take off the black bars! I don't like them! I wanna see more picture!"
And gramps said: "But son, there's no movie under them..."
- "But I want...". - "There ISN'T!"
And actually, I had to finally realise it through this:
As I explained before, what they did was this:
Zoom the crap off the picture to change it from 2.35 to 1.33.
That process is called "Pan & Scan".
P&S, that could also mean... Picture and Saw!
And you'll ask, how do they do that? Well right here and now, on the air,
I'm gonna do a Pan & Scan from Scope to 4:3.
Give it a go, guys!
There it goes... that's right... yeah... right there... yeah... come on... right there...
Way to go!
That's it, 4:3.
Yeah, I'm in 4:3 now, but all the square feet of my apartment have gone to crap with it.
That's ok, ok, that's it guys. Fall back to standard format.
Annoying, right? That was done to practically all widescreen movies.
What happened then? That for many scenes, the shot was composed showing something on the left side,
and something on the right side. What happens when you zoom in on that?
Well, you crop it at the sides.
So, just because of that, they had to go through a 2nd cut
where the editors would go over each shot
making sure no significant info was lost at any moment on the sides.
For example, you've got 2 characters talking,
one on the left side, another on the right.
During a dialogue, if they trimmed the frames down, they'd get a conversation between nose and nose.
So what they had to do, in a really crappy way, was sliding around the shot from side to side, when someone talked.
One talked, right side. Now the other one, to the left side.
Didn't they ever think of the poor photography director?
Arriving to this point, if you wanna know more about what they actually did with all that trimming of the films,
I can recommend these 2 documentaries: "Filmmakers vs. Tycoons" and its sequel,
"Filmmakers in Action". They're *** great.
Ok, so for those shots they had it all covered,
But, what happened when everything necessarily had to show up?
They had 3 options:
1st: Take the film and flatten it down to 4:3, so that nothing would get cut from the sides.
Have I told you to do it to me?!
A good example is the one I showed recently.
So, that was one option, squeezing all the titles to keep them on screen.
And after the director appeared and the credits ended...
Gotcha! The movie changed to the 4:3 ratio.
And people didn't notice it.
But see, actually, on some VHS tapes' ending credits, the names of the people changed from this to this.
Then the 2nd option - and the more cruel one, I think.
The movie starts with the credits in widescreen. It looks good, perfect, no problem...
But right after the director appears, suddenly...
That's it, to ***' hell with it!
And the thought never crossed anyone's heads, that from that moment on, the movie had lost half of the picture.
And then there's the 3rd option, frequently used on TV.
The movie begins in Scope format, so as to not losing the credits.
And after the last set of credits, it was reduced to a half or 1/3 from the original.
All right, there you're still losing detail, but you won't lose as much. But... it still is a pain in the ***!
Then at the end of the 90's, on the sides of some VHS tapes, it started to appear:
"Widescreen Version".
Some classic films began to get released with their original widescreen format.
But all the others, mostly every one of them, still came out in 4:3.
When the widescreen display arrived at last...
Every single TV channel started showing films in their original format.
And then when DVD arrived... It was disasterrific!
All films were displayed in their original format.
Even I flipped over when I first saw some of them in widescreen.
One of the best examples was "Sleeping Beauty".
Yes, "Sleeping Beauty" is in Scope!
You were missing it, weren't you?
Yes, when I saw it I realised: "Oh, those background voices were actually on scene!"
"The problem was that they were trimmed off, and I never saw them!"
And I can give you innumerable other examples.
By the way, not all DVDs were in Scope...
And this is the end of our special feature, you can write to us right here as always,
and we'll be delighted to read your e-mails.
And to wrap it all up, something nobody's ever done before,
so I'm proud to present something never seen before in cinema:
Introducing the left and right sides of classic Scope films!
LADY AND THE *** (1955)
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS (1956)
IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963)
THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (1967)
BLAZING SADDLES (1974)
THE GOONIES (1985)
English subtitles: Enrique Corrales
Host / Written by / Edited by / Produced by
This feature is dedicated to: