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robotech_masterOkay, so there's a fellow suing MGM over what he claims is a DVD gyp. However, it's not the gyp he claims it is, but arises from his stupidity, his ignorance, or the studio's goof, take your pick.
The suit has to do with the way wide-screen movies are converted to full-screen TV releases. In the old days, movies tended to be shot with an anamorphic process (not related to "anamorphic" DVDs except in name) that took a roughly square piece of film but put a wide image on it. (The projector had a special lens that squashed the wide image back down to the right aspect ratio.) When these movies were adapted for TV, they had to have bits to the left and right chopped off of them so the screen could be filled up with what was left.
However, more recently a method of filming called "open matte" has come into vogue. Open matte shoots a full-frame-sized picture...and when it's projected for theaters, they simply block out the top and bottom of the square image to make a wide image in the middle. When these movies are adapted for TV, they simply remove the mattes and show the whole picture.
Now, as laserdiscs and then DVDs came out, consumers started becoming more aware of what cinemaphiles knew all along—that when a movie was put on VHS or TV, part of the picture tended to be lost. They began agitating for wide-screen VHS releases of their favorite films, then buying up wide-screen DVDs that came out with much better picture quality. Of course, there were always those consumers who didn't know what wide-screen was, and began returning their movies because of the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. So, manufacturers began putting images on their boxes like this:
And that's where our little problem comes in. The image, for those of you who have images turned off or are browsing in Lynx, shows a wide-screen picture of a scene from The Princess Bride, where Fezzik and Inigo are interrogating the albino, with a little "full-frame" overlay purporting to show how much of the picture was cut out.
But there's a problem—and that's what the man is suing over. As the screen-capture comparison toward the bottom of this review shows, The Princess Bride was shot in open matte. Comparing the same scene on the DVD shows that there's more picture to the top and bottom in full-frame, not to the left and right in wide-screen. That's how it's supposed to be. Clearly MGM goofed by using a cookie-cutter "don't panic, it's supposed to have the black bars" picture to explain widescreen for a movie shot in open matte.
And yet, their goof goes deeper than that. Look more closely at the "don't panic" picture...and then look at the screen captures. Notice that the backgrounds of those images are entirely different. Notice that there's a lot more space to the left of the albino in the "don't panic" picture. The reason for this is simple...they're different pictures! Rather than a screen capture from the DVD, they apparently used a publicity still that recreated it. (They couldn't use a DVD screen capture, could they? After all, it was shot in open matte, so it wouldn't look right.) In so doing, they've inadvertantly given the man more ammunition...for if you don't look closely at them, it does look like there should be more space to the left of the albino, and thus the "wide-screen" version has been "cut down" from the pan-and-scan.
What a muddle. And, of course, this being America, it naturally leads to lawsuit.
The suit has to do with the way wide-screen movies are converted to full-screen TV releases. In the old days, movies tended to be shot with an anamorphic process (not related to "anamorphic" DVDs except in name) that took a roughly square piece of film but put a wide image on it. (The projector had a special lens that squashed the wide image back down to the right aspect ratio.) When these movies were adapted for TV, they had to have bits to the left and right chopped off of them so the screen could be filled up with what was left.
However, more recently a method of filming called "open matte" has come into vogue. Open matte shoots a full-frame-sized picture...and when it's projected for theaters, they simply block out the top and bottom of the square image to make a wide image in the middle. When these movies are adapted for TV, they simply remove the mattes and show the whole picture.
Now, as laserdiscs and then DVDs came out, consumers started becoming more aware of what cinemaphiles knew all along—that when a movie was put on VHS or TV, part of the picture tended to be lost. They began agitating for wide-screen VHS releases of their favorite films, then buying up wide-screen DVDs that came out with much better picture quality. Of course, there were always those consumers who didn't know what wide-screen was, and began returning their movies because of the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. So, manufacturers began putting images on their boxes like this:
And that's where our little problem comes in. The image, for those of you who have images turned off or are browsing in Lynx, shows a wide-screen picture of a scene from The Princess Bride, where Fezzik and Inigo are interrogating the albino, with a little "full-frame" overlay purporting to show how much of the picture was cut out.
But there's a problem—and that's what the man is suing over. As the screen-capture comparison toward the bottom of this review shows, The Princess Bride was shot in open matte. Comparing the same scene on the DVD shows that there's more picture to the top and bottom in full-frame, not to the left and right in wide-screen. That's how it's supposed to be. Clearly MGM goofed by using a cookie-cutter "don't panic, it's supposed to have the black bars" picture to explain widescreen for a movie shot in open matte.
And yet, their goof goes deeper than that. Look more closely at the "don't panic" picture...and then look at the screen captures. Notice that the backgrounds of those images are entirely different. Notice that there's a lot more space to the left of the albino in the "don't panic" picture. The reason for this is simple...they're different pictures! Rather than a screen capture from the DVD, they apparently used a publicity still that recreated it. (They couldn't use a DVD screen capture, could they? After all, it was shot in open matte, so it wouldn't look right.) In so doing, they've inadvertantly given the man more ammunition...for if you don't look closely at them, it does look like there should be more space to the left of the albino, and thus the "wide-screen" version has been "cut down" from the pan-and-scan.
What a muddle. And, of course, this being America, it naturally leads to lawsuit.
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