Peter Octavian
New member
Friday said:
I hate to tell you you're wrong, but....
When I was working for GC back in the 80's, we used to get supplemental material on VHS along with the ad slicks and promotional material (I still have one for Willow). The idea was that, in the event that your theatre had a good relationship with some media outlet, that the stuff could be used to supplement the paid co-op advertising. Even the radio stations would use the video tapes for the audio to make promo spots when we were doing in-kind trades and ticket giveaways.
The featurettes has always been there. Sure, there's more of it done with DVD in mind now, since the market's so big, but "special feature" material isn't new with this format. Films have always had gag reels, and directors and actors have always done little documentaries during filming. As an example which many have seen, there's a wealth of "extras" for each of the Lethal Weapon films (Mel Gibson was notorious for bringing a video camera to work to do just that), and the first couple of those movies were well before DVD was even available.
Remember, most of the "extras" are probably best considered "vanity material", actors and directors documenting, "Hey, look what I did". That much of it wasn't seen was a shortcoming of the industry, which DVD and the internet have now remedied.
And don't pine too long for Cinemascope . You're watching more Cinemascope movies than you think. Cinemascope (or anamorphic) is simply an old term for "Widescreen". There are, primarily, two kinds of lenses used for projection in most commercial theatres: These days, they're called "Scope" (which is the diminutive of Cinemascope) and "Flat". In many theatres you go to, you will notice that, depending upon the film that you're watching, the curtains on either side of the screen (also called a masque) are in different places, or they may even close or open when the film begins. If the curtains are partially closed, you're watching a "flat" print (slightly longer than it is tall-1.85:1). If the curtains are open all the way, you're watching a Cinemascope print (significantly longer than it is tall-2.39:1). Behind the scenes, an "aperture plate" which is inserted into the projector also acts as a masque. (Many noob operators will forget to change the plate on the first day of a format change, and you'll see the projected image spilling off the screen.)
When either format is committed to DVD, even a flat print will come in the "widescreen" variety, since the aspect ratio for both when projected on the silver screen is greater than that of your TV.
Now, if you're going to bitch, complain about all of the people who are too daft to understand that the "black bars at the top and bottom of the TV" are put there to preserve the original image size that they saw in the movie theatre. and that watching a "fullscreen" dvd not only means enduring the "pan and scan" blur, but also missing important bits of the film which exist on either side of scanned image.
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L_G, if it's you that's got to have a cell phone when shopping for "happy" at Target, we can let that slide. It's the Gulag for everyone else, though.
