Welcome to Filmmaker IQ - I’m John Hess and today we’re going to break down the
history of Aspect Ratio.
Aspect Ratio is a fundamentally simple concept with a huge deep history. Simply put, the
aspect ratio is the ratio of the width of the image to the height. This can be expressed
as two numbers like 4x3 or 16x9 or as a decimal such as 1.85 and 2.39 - which is sometimes
written as 2.39:1
But how did it all begin? Let’s turn the dial of history and look back at the very
first aspect ratio of the very first motion pictures.
We owe the first aspect ratio to one man: William Kennedy Dickson. Dickson worked at
Thomas Edison’s Lab as a staff photographer. After Eastman Kodak began mass producing flexible
film in the early 1890s, Thomas Edison wanted to put this new film to use in a device called
a Kinetescope - the precursor to the projected film. After a few years of start and stop
experimentation, they finally arrived at a working prototype. Using 35mm film Dickson
settled on an image that was 4 perforations high - resulting in an image that was .95”
by .735” - a 4 to 3 aspect ratio - or 1.33
We really don’t know why William Dickson settled on 4 by 3 but it stuck. In 1909 the
Motion Picture Patent Company (a trust of major American film companies who were all
practically under the thumb of Edison himself) declared that 35mm film with Edison perforations,
and 4x3 aspect ratio as the standard for all films that were to made and shown in the US.
This settled it - making film and projection ubiquitous across the United States.
And for a whole generation, everything stayed pretty much the same. When synchronized sound
came in the scene in 1929 and optically printed on the film itself as a strip that ran along
side of the image, there was a slight shift in the aspect ratio. In 1932, the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Science voted on and declared that the image should be masked
off on the top and bottom to reduce the image back to a 1.37 aspect ratio (so close to 1.33
that it’s sometimes used interchangeably). This image size would be called the Academy
Ratio and it remained the standard in Hollywood for yet another generation of movie goers.
The 1950s saw the rise of Film’s little brother - Television. Since everybody alive
at that time had been going to theaters and watching films in 4x3 aspect ratio- it was
only natural that television would carry over that same screen shape. But Hollywood didn’t
like this new addition to the entertainment family. Like a new sibling, TV was getting
all the attention and that reflected in smaller theater audiences.
How could film get butts back into seats? By offering something they couldn’t get at
home.
On September 30, 1952, a film premiered that sparked off a decade long war for widescreen
film formats.
Ladies and Gentlemen:This is Cinerama.
Brain child of Fred Waller, who pioneered a multicamera/multiprojector system for training
World War 2 Bomber Gunners - Cinerama used three 35mm cameras shooting 27mm lenses and
exposing 6 perforations - capturing a 147 degree view for an aspect ratio of 2.59.
Projected on a deeply curved screen using three projectors and boasting a 7 track surround
sound system - This is Cinerama, almost a precursor to the camera tests that flood the
internet, was a huge hit - running for two years at the Warner Theater in New York City.
As you might be able to imagine - there were a lot of problems with shooting and projecting
three cameras at the same time for the Cinerama process. One of them being - you had one and
only one focal length - and it was wide.
Though hugely popular as an event film format, they made tons of money road shows featuring
travelogue films, it would take 10 years, until 1962 when Cinerama would be used in
a dramatic film - only two to be precise. The Wonderful World of The Brothers Grimm
and the epic film “How the West was Won”
But Hollywood didn’t wait a decade to latch on to the widescreen craze that Cinerama started.
In 1953, Paramount released the first “flat” widescreen studio film. The film was “Shane”
- originally shot in Academy ratio - but Paramount lopped off the top and bottom of the image
to create a 1.66 wide screen aspect ratio. The result wasn’t really that much different
- perhaps more groundbreaking was being projected on a much bigger screen with a three track
stereophonic sound.
You better run back.
Can't I ride home behind you?
'Fraid not junior.
Please, why not?
I got to be goin' on.
Why Shane?
Man has to be what he is Jimmy. Can't break the mold.
Masking off portion of the frame to create wider images wasn’t an ideal process. With
larger screens, this technique enlarged the film grain making the image not so clean.
After seeing Cinerama, executives at 20th Century Fox rushed over to France to meet
with Professor Henri Chrétien, the inventor of a technique called “Anamorphoscope”
which he had invented in the 1920s. Anamorphoscope used a specialized lens that would distort
an image in only one direction - in other words squished.
Using a 2 to 1 anamorphic lens, Cinemascope, which was what Fox called the process after
they purchased it, delivered a 2.35 aspect ratio using traditional 4 perf 35mm film.
This process was first put to use in the 1953 film: “The Robe”
20th Century Fox owned Cinemascope and it set off on a PR campaign to get theatres to
equip their projectors and to get other studios to start licensing their process. Many studios
joined but there was one holdout - Paramount.
Having started down the widescreen path with “Shane”, Paramount developed their own
system - “VistaVision”. Vistavision took traditional 35mm film and turned it on its
side - literally - recording images that were 8 perforations wide for an aspect ratio of
1.85.
VisaVision’s first film was “White Chrismas” in 1954 and it would go on to be used on many
films including the epic “The Ten Commandments”. But perhaps most notable is it’s association
with Alfred Hitchcock - who shot many of his films in VistaVision including “To Catch
a Theif” “Vertigo” and “North by Northwest”
Other widescreen formats popped in the 50s: Superscope, Technirama, Cinemiracle, Vistarama
just to name a few... The Widescreens wars didn’t end with 35mm film as inventors continued
to experiment with larger formats.
Todd AO - developed by a former Cinerama associate and Broadway Producer Mike Todd along with
American Optical company was a 70mm film format that sought to do what Cinerama did but with
only one camera and one projector. Using an aspect ratio of about 2.20, Todd AO was first
used on the film version of Roger and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma in 1955 followed up by Around the
World in 80 days. Todd AO would dip back into the Roger and Hammerstein repertoire with
South Pacific and Sound of Music. And with the addition of D-150 lenses, shaped the look
of Patton 1970.
In 1954, in the midst of this rush to widescreen, a small company named Panavision started up
to build anamorphic lenses for cameras and for projectionists. Originally only working
with Cinemascope, They soon became industry leaders and started developing and acquiring camera systems.
This including the MGM 65 which used 70mm film to capture Ben Hur chariot race scene
in an aspect ratio of 2.76.
Moving 60s, as studios started finding it cheaper to rent cameras rather than maintaining
their own camera departments, Panavision became the go to camera supplier for Hollywood.
Panavision’s entry into the Big Film Format was the Super Panavision 70, similar to the
MGM 65 except it used regular spherical lenses (not anamorphic) to create an image with an
aspect ratio of 2.20. This system would be used for Lawerence of Arabia which would win
the Oscar for Frederick Young
for Best Cinematography in 1963.
So we’ve seen the original silent 35mm ratio of 1.33 or 4x3, Academy ratio of 1.37, Cinerama
with 2.59, Cinescope with 2.39, VistaVision with 1.85, and even Ben Hur and MGM 65 with
2.76.
Where did 16x9 or 1.77 come in?
We turn back to Film’s little brother Televsion. In the late 1980s, when the plans where being
drawn up for the HDTV standard, Kerns H. Powers, a SMPTE engineer suggested this new aspect
ratio as a compromise. 16x9 was the geometic mean between 4x3 and the 2.39 the two most
common extremes in terms of aspect ratio. This means that a images of either aspect
ratio would have relatively the same screen area when properly formatted in 16x9 with
letter boxes.
And so, out of a compromise, the 16x9 aspect ratio was born - the default widescreen aspect
ratio for all video products from DVDs to UltraHD “4K” formats was born.
From William Dickerson’s original 4x3 image conceived in Thomas Edison’s lab to the
widescreen explosion of the 1950s starting with Cinerama to the digital compromise of
16x9, it’s fascinating how aspect ratios have shifted and practically defined our memories
of these films. But it’s only a shape - a canvas on which you draw your story. How you
draw it, makes all the difference so use it to make something great.
I’m John Hess, I’ll see you at FilmmakerIQ.com