The VHS copy I saw was fullscreen, but the movie was shot on film, so it´s possible that Johnny S. may have opted for a larger scope for the DVD release. Or maybe not. The DVD will be wide, or he already shot the movie with the 1.33:1 scope in mind?
Patience is a virtue, but who wants to be virtuous? 4283 Posts 4/00
Posted - Jan 3 2003 : 8:19AM
Yes. actually, it was shot with both ratios in mind. John's still old school when it comes to liking full-screen.
Me, I PREFER widescreen. I just about strangled him the other day when he was watching the DVD on our plasma screen and commenting how much he loved how the picture on our widescreen plasma TV and wished it filled up the whole screen. I pushed hard for widescreen.
BTW, the reason it was shot for both was because 1) he wanted 4:3 for the VHS/DVD 2) he needed 16:9 for a possible theatrical cut.
Then, theoretically, you can just use one of the zoom modes on your plasma TV and achieve the same thing. However, you will use some resolution.
How far did you get in looking at 16:9 DVD? Were you planning on doing an anamorphic release? Is anamorphic significantly more expensive than a non-anamorphic DVD? Do any of your existing replicators have experience in making an anamorphic DVD?
If The Fashionistas was shot 'open matte' then Buttman made the right choice by releasing it 4:3 fullscreen on dvd.
Reason ?
Films shot open matte that feature 'action' predominantly in the centre benefit from a fullscreen release because more of the picture is visible top & bottom.
A film like The Matrix benefits from a widescreen release, despite being shot open matte because a lot of visually important action occurs on both sides.
On a different note, I was very surprised (and pleased) to hear that the dvd will have 'special packaging'.
Many mainstream open matte films benefit from a widescreen release because virtually all special effect shots are done in the final aspect ratio (because of their enormous costs). Therefore there is no extra information at the top & bottom to add to the open matte release. This means that the special effects shots end up getting pan & scanned even though the rest of the movie isn't.
Going back to The Matrix, I may be in a minority but the fullscreen version (which I've got on imported VCD) is much more enjoyable than the 2.35:1 dvd. The amount of image missing at the top & bottom of the screen on the dvd is staggering. Watch all of Neo's fight scenes back to back (VHS/VCD then DVD) and you'll see what I mean.
There was a time when DVDs were relatively new that you could expect to find both the widescreen and fullscreen cuts on the same disc. Why not offer both, esspecially on a three disc set.
Patience is a virtue, but who wants to be virtuous? 4283 Posts 4/00
Posted - Jan 4 2003 : 3:00PM
Bill- I did very little RESEARCH into 16:9, because it was decided early in the film pre-production that John didn't want it.
For everyone- NOTHING important is missing full-screen or widescreen in The Fashionistas, as on the camera lens and the director's monitor, we had a special matte taped off that stopped us from shooting anything important too far left/right or top/bottom.
GoldMemeber - Take a peek at the discs next week. The movie is 4 hours 40 minutes. The extras disc has almost 4 hours of video on it. There would be no room for both versions.
In making his decision way early in 2002, John took into consideration that at rental and sales levels of mainstream, a movie that comes out in both aspects on DVD does way more numbers for the full screen version. It may not be respresentative of those of us here at ADT, but it seems to be the trend around the nation for now.
sadly, its true. People are used to what they are used to. I put a lot of blame at the feet of the studios because they have the power and the resources to educate the masses as to why OAR is better way to view films. As someone who writes quite a bit on film it is my single biggest frustration. Anyone who has not seen it and is looking for a great demo on WS vs Hack-n-Scan need look no further than FOX's 5 Star edition of Die Hard where there is a great tutorial. Best
Max Booty "If something's hard to do, then its not worth doing."
Catfished 6 - review by Captain Jack
Posted - Jan 3 2003 : 4:16AM
