Letterboxing is the practice of transferring film shot in a widescreen
aspect ratio to standard-width video formats while preserving the film's
original aspect ratio. The resulting videographic image has mattes above and
below it; these mattes are part of the image. LBX or LTBX are the identifying
abbreviations for films and images so formatted. The term refers to the shape
of a letter box, a slot in a wall or door through which mail is delivered,
being rectangular and wider than it is high.
Description Letterboxing is used as an alternative
to a full-screen, pan-and-scan transfer of a widescreen film image to videotape
or videodisc. In pan-and-scan transfers, the original image is cropped to the
narrower aspect ratio of the destination format, usually the 1.33:1 ratio of the
standard television screen, whereas letterboxing preserves the film's
original image composition as seen in the cinema. Letterboxing was developed
for use in 4:3 television displays before widescreen television screens
were available, but it is also necessary to represent on a 16:9 widescreen
display the unaltered original composition of a film with a wider
aspect ratio, such as Panavision's 2.35:1 ratio.
Letterbox mattes are usually symmetrical, but in some instances the
picture can be elevated so the bottom matte is much larger, usually for the
purpose of placing "hard" subtitles within the matte to avoid overlapping of
the image. This was often done for letterbox widescreen anime on VHS,
though the practice of "hiding" subtitles within the lower matte also is
done with symmetrical mattes, albeit with less space available. The placing
of "soft" subtitles within the picture or matte varies according to the DVD
player being used, though it appears to be dependent on the movie for Blu-ray
disc. Early home video use of the letterbox
format The first use of letterbox in consumer
video appeared with the RCA videodisc format. Initially, letterboxing was
limited to several key sequences of a film, but later it was used for the
entire film. The first full letterboxed CED release was Amarcord in 1984, and
several others followed. Each disc contained a label noting the use of
"RCA's innovative wide-screen mastering technique."
In the cinema and home video In some countries such as North America,
almost all VHS titles were only released in pan-and-scan versions. However, most
later Laserdiscs and some VHS releases were released in their original
widescreen versions. A good amount of North American NTSC DVD releases, mainly
early DVDs, family films, and more popular titles, tend to offer both
"Widescreen" and "Fullscreen" versions on the same disc or on a "flipper"
format DVD, while most are available in separate versions. Some DVD releases of
films are in full screen only, due to whatever existing master is available or
basing on what format demographics prefer to see on a certain title. In
other territories, such as Europe and Asia, widescreen versions of films on
VHS and Laserdisc were much more common in those territories, and is almost
ubiquitous on region 2 DVDs. Movies such as The Graduate and
Woodstock that made use of the full width of the movie screen often have the
sides cut off and look completely different in non-letterboxed copies from
the original theatrical release. This is more apparent in pan-and-scanned movies
that remain entirely on the center area of the film image.
The term "SmileBox" is a registered trademark used to describe a type of
letterboxing for Cinerama films, such as on the Blu-ray release of How the West
Was Won. The image is produced with 3D mapping technology to approximate a
curved screen. Currently, with the advent of widescreen
HDTV units in almost every household, very few films are being offered in 4:3
and pan-and-scan releases today, except for older material shot in 4:3 only such
as TV shows, made for TV productions, and pre-1953 films. Some titles that
were previously released in full screen only on VHS and DVD are now being issued
in their original widescreen ratio on recent DVDs and Blu-rays.
On television Digital broadcasting allows 1.78:1
widescreen format transmissions without losing resolution, and thus widescreen
is becoming the television norm. Most television programming in the United
States, Britain and France is in standard-definition 16:9 and is
transmitted in anamorphic format on digital platforms. When using a 4:3
television, it is possible to display such programming in either a letterbox
format or in a 4:3 centre-cut format. A letterboxed 14:9 compromise ratio was
often broadcast in analogue transmissions in European countries
making the transition from 4:3 to 16:9. In addition, recent years have seen an
increase of "fake" 2.35:1 letterbox mattes on television to give the
impression of a cinema film, often seen in adverts, trailers or television
programmes such as Top Gear. Current high-definition television
systems use video displays with a wider aspect ratio than older television sets,
making it easier to accurately display widescreen films. In addition to films
produced for the cinema, some television programming is produced in high
definition and therefore widescreen. On a widescreen television set, a 1.78:1
image fills the screen, however, 2.39:1 aspect ratio films are letterboxed with
narrow mattes. Because the 1.85:1 aspect ratio does not match the 1.78:1 aspect
ratio of widescreen DVDs and high-definition video, slight
letterboxing occurs. Usually, such matting of 1.85:1 film is eliminated to
match the 1.78:1 aspect ratio in the DVD and HD image transference.
Letterbox mattes are not necessarily black. IBM has used blue mattes for many
of their TV ads, yellow mattes in their "I am Superman" Lotus ads, and green
mattes in ads about efficiency & environmental sustainability. Others
uses of colored mattes appear in ads from Allstate, Aleve, and Kodak among
others, and in music videos such as Zebrahead's Playmate of the Year. In
other instances mattes are animated, such as in the music video for "Never
Gonna Stop", and even parodied such as the final scene of the Crazy Frog Axel F
music video in which Crazy Frog peeks over the matte on the lower edge of the
screen with part of his hands overlapping the matte. Similar to
breaking the border of a comic's panel, it is a form of breaking the fourth
wall. The table below shows which TV lines
will contain picture information when letterbox pictures are displayed on
either 4:3 or 16:9 screens. Pillarboxing and windowboxing
Pillarboxing is the display of an image within a wider image frame by adding
lateral mattes; for example, a 1.33:1 image has lateral mattes when displayed
on a 16:9 aspect ratio television screen.
An alternative to pillarboxing is "tilt-and-scan", horizontally matting
the original 1.33:1 television images to the 1.78:1 aspect ratio, which at any
given moment crops part of the top and/or bottom of the frame, hence the
need for the "tilt" component. A tilt is a camera move in which the camera tilts
up or down. Windowboxing occurs when an image
appears centered in a television screen, with blank space on all four sides of
the image, such as when a widescreen image that has been previously
letterboxed to fit 1.33:1 is then pillarboxed to fit 16:9. It is also
called "matchbox", "gutterbox", and "postage stamp" display. This occurs on
the DVD editions of the Star Trek films on a 4:3 television when the included
widescreen documentaries show footage from the original television series. It
is also seen in The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course, which displays
widescreen pillarboxing with 1.85:1 scenes in a 2.40:1 frame that is
subsequently letterboxed. It is common to see windowboxed commercials on HD
television networks, because many commercials are shot in 16:9 but
distributed to networks in SD, letterboxed to fit 1.33:1.
Many 1980s 8-bit home computers feature gutterboxing display mode, because the
TV screens normally used as monitors at that time tended to distort the image
near the border of the screen, to such an extent that text displayed in that
area became illegible. Moreover, due to the overscanned nature of television
video, the precise edges of the visible area of the screen varied from
television set to television set, so characters near the expected border of
the active screen area might be behind the bezel or off the edge of the screen.
The Commodore 64, VIC-20, and Commodore 128 featured coloured gutterboxing of
the main text window, while the Atari 8-bit family featured a blue text window
with a black border. The original IBM PC CGA display adapter was the same, and
the monochrome MDA, the predecessor of the CGA, as well as the later EGA and
VGA, also featured gutterboxing; this is also called underscanned video. The
Fisher-Price PXL-2000 camcorder of the late 1980s recorded a windowboxed image
to compensate partially for low resolution.
Occasionally, an image is deliberately windowboxed for stylistic effect; for
example, the documentary-style sequence of the film Rent suggest an older-format
camera representing the 4:3 aspect ratio, and the opening sequence of the
Oliver Stone film JFK features pillar boxing to represent the 1960s era 4:3
television footage. The film Sneakers uses a windowboxing effect in a scene
for dramatic effect. See also
Active Format Description List of film formats
Motion picture terminology References
External links The Widescreen and Letterbox Advocacy
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