"Pan and scam. Literary cutting a movie." Topic

I watched Cyborg 2 on DVD.

It had obviously been cropped for a tv screen.

Apparently it was straight to video, so I guess that's the official version?

I'd assume a blue ray release may restore wide screen?

Likely it was filmed on film, likely wide screen.

The pan and scan is horrifically obvious.

In fact, I don't think I've ever really noticed it before in a film?

This movie confirmed what it is to me and makes me think what other films I have that use the technique that I haven't noticed.

People are cut in half. There are "camera" moves where they obviously slid the view to highlight important things in a scene. You swear things are going on just out of view.

In some ways I thought they were just making best use of sets and props in a low budget movie. Cramming everything into a small space. But shots are often quite sparse, but with the empty portions cut off.

This was all quite obvious and affected the viewing.

Knowing it was direct to VHS, so was likely always like this is sad.

But, a full screen release could likely be done, or have been done, from original negatives. Hopefully as an option, to retain the "horrendous" pan and scan.

Does anyone know of a similarly treated film that is so blatantly and badly pan and scanned?

I've not seen anything comparable that I can remember.

(Ed topic title note, should be: Literally cutting a movie.)

Hard to say "this is as bad as a movie I haven't seen" H Man, but I've heard some very harsh words from critics about what was done to "Gone with the Wind" and "Major Dundee" to create a full TV screen. ("Dundee" had additional problems in that the studio put together the final cut after firing Pekinpah. A major character just disappears about 3/4 of the way through because they didn't include an actual filmed scene which explained this.) Fortunately both of those movies have since been well restored.

If this one is actually on film and not digital, the clock is ticking. Film deteriorates with time and become highly flammable, and if there was no theatrical release, there's no hope of restoring lost scenes when bits turn up later in odd places. (See "Metropolis" and "It's a Mad, Mad World") It's tricky to buy a complete--or at least we think it's complete--version of the Howard/Oberon "Scarlett Pimpernel" because it was so often cut. And--trust me on this--digital records also sometimes disappear.

But don't feel uniquely picked on. Various classic radio dramas are gone or mostly gone. Entire television series are lost. I know books which lost chapters--or were padded--to fit Ace Books extremely tight word count for the old "Doubles." I can find you correspondence from authors who read their own stories and discovered editors had been monkeying with them. In many cases we don't know what the author's intent was, because only the edited version survives.

Buy a Classics professor a drink--if any classics professors survive these days--and they'll tell you sadder stories still.

Everything we create is sandcastles on a beach.

There are only 5 minutes lost from Metropolis since the discovery of the Argentinian 16mm safety print.

The restoration is amazing – of course the switch in places to the half image is a little jarring the first time it happens but one quickly gets used to it

Just to clarify.

I'm talking about when they shrink the size of the frame.

Not actually cutting up the film.

The film should survive the process in tact.

I'm not sure how they do it?

A video/film camera in front of a projection screen, or similar?

So your copy is in a new frame size.

This may somehow explain the weird scene in the arachnophobia DVD.

Where you can clearly see the mouse in the jar trick because you can see the bottom of the screen.

Likely it's the opposite, with the original negative being "square" frame, cut to wide screen for theatrical release (thus losing the bottom gag reveal) and then using the original for the home release as it's already the right size.

Some films had new and replacement scenes just for home release, especially CGI films, where they could easily move things around to fit in a new screen size.

"Though Trimark had pledged a U.S. theatrical bow, declaring that a ‘1993 Theatrical Release' was imminent on the trade poster, the sweeping and epically shot Cyborg 2 was quickly booked in with the pan and scanner in preparation for its debut as a video premiere."

link

Benny Hill did a decent segment on pan and scan. Well worth a look.

PS

Open matte is where they shoot in full (square) frame, then can add black bars for widescreen theatrical.

For the home release, the original full screen is used.

However, like in arachnophobia, you can end up seeing things top and bottom that your not supposed to, as the shots were designed with widescreen in mind.

I have a sci-fi VHS, where you can see the wooden frame under a miniature planet scape. I believe it was space hunter adventures in the forbidden zone.

Perhaps we can come up with more of these too, as you can see some cool behind the scenes (matte) stuff.

Apparently pee wees big adventure has an endless bicycle chain from a box gag.

Now I'm thinking of other films where I've seen odd gaffs top and bottom, which were just because it was wide screen designed.

It may explain a few things.

PPS

Ace Ventura (1, I think?)

When the lady is down "paying him attention" and he grabs the ceiling beam above, or such and is being moved around from below.

I always thought it odd, you can see his pants are still on.

So that must be one.

From memory, there are time you can just see a landing mat or a car ramp or car cannon, at the bottom of screen. These may be due to open matte also.

When I was a kid in the 90s this started to change. Of course TVs were all square, 4:3, hence the panning and scanning (and worse; zooming, which magnified the film grain). Then broadcast TV started showing films in their proper aspect ratio with the "black bars" top and bottom, probably initially for "arty" films in curated seasons, like the BBC's Moviedrome with Alex Cox. Possibly this was happening with better quality VHS/lazerdisc editions too.
A lot of people didn't like this as, ironically, they thought they were loosing the top and bottom of the picture.
Once you understood this was how it was supposed to look you'd see it all the time. Mostly in conversations between characters at either side of the frame. The fake panning looked different. If they were especially lazy they'd just crop the left and right of the picture so you'd just be looking at the space between the characters who now were talking out of frame.

But when you saw the difference I think you couldn't go back. I can't recall what I saw specifically, but I was an instant convert. An evangelist even. I had VHS pan'n'scan and widesrceen versions of "The last of the Mochicans" that I used to show people the difference, and usually they were converted too. It got to the point where I wouldn't watch films on TV unless they were the proper widescreen. So, often you'd watch the title and credits (which they often had to keep unaltered or the words would be cut away), and then the moment of truth would come where either they'd keep the correct shape, or the dreaded zoom in and loss of black bars would show that it was pan and scan (at which point I was out).

Eventually TVs became wider to accomodate cinema shaped pictures, and the world got a little better. So ingrained did the letterbox shape become in my mind that seeing old movies (pre 50s) in their box-ratio always makes me think they've been cut down. Now they have to have black boxes on the sides!

On Cyborg 2- from looking on Youtube there seems to be a proper ratio version somewhere, suggested by this trailer-
link

I used to game with a guy who I could never convince that letterboxing was better. I told him it lets you see the full image—the same view theater audiences get—but he kept insisting that letterboxed films were cropped and that you actually lost part of the picture. I should've just shown him the difference.

Using a small screen tv, about 12"?, I would zoom in on DVD movies sometimes to make my own pan and scan.

I didn't usually bother moving the image, but it allowed me to watch the film without all the tiny ants.

This may have been another reason for pan and scan, as many TVs were not very big.

Using half the screen for black bars would be ridiculous.

With old movies, look at a lot of modern docos that use old footage.

The Beatles springs to mind, it appears they cropped the top and bottom of older footage to accommodate wide screen.

Everyone loses the top of their heads.

AI will complicate things, already there's the dome wizard of Oz fiasco.

Adding extra to make things widescreen makes sense, as an option, so expect it to happen.

I hate the news footage of cell phone video with the annoying blurred vision duplication at either sides. It's distracting. Just black side bars, please.