Moving Images, Understanding Media

152 Moving Images: Making Movies, Understanding Media

the meantime, producers will also ask: “What is the frame that the audience

wants to see?”

Managing the Ratio

When applied to television sets that are physically bounded by their 1.33:1

ratio screens, the wider aspect ratio posed a problem. Initially, movies were

cut to fi t into the bounds of the screen. Th us, for many decades, many fi lms

being projected on television would not show a signifi cant portion of the

true image of the fi lm. Eventually, this corruption of the actual creation

of the fi lmmakers was compensated by black bars that mask the screen to

duplicate the authentic aspect ratio of the movie and to allow the entire true

image to be seen.

Th e most signifi cant twenty-fi rst century development in the evolution

of aspect ratios has been to alter the standard size of the television set. A

half-century ago, the movie industry responded to pressure from the newly

emergent television phenomenon by making its screen bigger. Fift y years

later, the opposite eff ect has occurred. First, the signifi cant increase in overall

television size, improvements in stereo surround sound, and the sale of movies

through the medium of DVDs and BluRays transformed living rooms into a

reduced version of the movie theater. Next, technical developments such as

high-defi nition television, or HDTV, increased the sharpness of television

viewing, and along with these innovations came a push for a widened aspect

ratio. Now, it is television that has made its screens bigger with the advent of

16:9 aspect ratio high-defi nition home theater monitors, which have become

an international standard.

Not only has the moviegoing experience been shrunk to the living room

(or bedroom or bathroom or family minivan), but motion pictures are being

Figure 4-34 Watching

motion pictures on a tiny

screen. (Courtesy Kendelyn

Ouellette)

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