How far can a feature film not shot in widescreen go?
 

Can it win at a film festival? Can it get nationwide theatre release?

if your film is worth winning, then it will. Shouldn't matter that much wether your film was shot in 16:9 or not

Everyday I see more and more 4:3 footage broadcasted....

I could be wrong about this, but I believe THE SHINING wasn't shot in wide screen.

Anyway, aspect ratio has nothing to do with it. If you're shooting a tiny production, than it all boils down to how much hype your content generates. Maximum hype = Maximum Distribution chances for tiny unknown productions.

Aspect ratio
1.66 : 1 (theatrical ratio, Europe)
1.85 : 1 (theatrical ratio, USA)

Kubrick shoot a non cinema wide movie? I don't think so. Maybe it was Lawrence of Arabia you were thinking of?

Blair Witch was Full Screen

What about 28 days later? That had to be shot in 4:3 because the XL1 doesn't have a true 16:9, right? I really shouldn't post things if I'm not sure, but I'm kind of doing it to find out the answers myself.

As for The Shining, there is no Wide Screen version available, that's for sure.

About the Shining, they released it in theatres in widescreen, but for the TV/VHS-version Kubrick wanted to use the whole screen. So that was one of the few times (the first?) people saw 'more' of the film then in the theatres. Film is in 4:3 most of the times anyway, but they cut of top and bottom before release. Then, for TV-release, they cut of the sides again. Kubrick thought this was a waste and wanted the whole screen. That's why you see an accidental helicopter shadow in the opening credits at the bottom of the screen, it wasn't there in the movie theater!
Gotta love imdb :)

Interesting...I've always wondered about that damn helicopter shadow lol. Good info.

Because a feature was shot on a camera that has native 4:3 chips does not mean the feature was released as such. 28 days later was edited and released wide screen.
As far as the Shinning goes the Ariflex cameras used, to my understanding don't shoot in a 4:3 ratio, unless it is being suggested that the letterboxed the sides the letterboxed again to get the 1.85:1 ratio. I really doubt this. My guess is that the "bigger screen" version is the European 1.66:1 version (the original shot) and was cropped further for 1:85:1 which is only logical.

No it was 16mm wide screen mixed with with 4:3 video portions, which were meant to look that way so they stayed their native 4:3 (what the hell was 16:9 video in 1997 anyways?). As well this was one of the first true block-busters that had video footage, and gave many of us hope in a future of video film making.

Kubrick was into full aperture 1.33 (or 1.37) filmmaking. I don't know about The Shining in particular, but it would not be unheard of for Kubrick (or any filmmaker, for that matter) to choose to shoot full screen; he liked full screen.

That's simply not true.


.

Here's an interesting perspective on the 4:3 format versus widescreen:

THE DISASTER IN MODERN FILM, TV AND VIDEO OR

OUR UNNATURAL WIDE-SCREEN FORMAT by Mark Anstendig

http://www.anstendig.org/film_tv_disaster.htm

No offense, but I can't even take that article seriously.



But there is some info from the Kubrick FAQ that I googled up, including stuff on the helicopter shot. Here's a comment about Kubrick's relationship with aspect ratio:
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/faq/#n1s1

"It seems to have been Kubrick's preference for his films to be shown in the 4:3 or "full frame" aspect ratio, because, according to his long-standing personal assistant Leon Vitali, that was the way he composed them through the camera viewfinder and if it were technically still possible to do so, he would have liked them to be shown full frame in cinemas as well."

I have several Kubrick DVD's and on the cover a couple of them say they're presented in full screen format because that's what the director wanted.

I know that 2001 is an exception however. Those shots are definitely composed for a wide screen.

"Because a feature was shot on a camera that has native 4:3 chips does not mean the feature was released as such. 28 days later was edited and released wide screen"

I guess they used a 16:9 anamorphic lens adadpter and took advantage of the full chip size.

btw. can somebody tell me where the square brackets are on a Mac with a European FCP Pro keyboard? I can't use the quote script without these... :(

Nope. See the following for a detailed discussion: http://www.theasc.com/magazine/july03/sub/index.html

"MPC believed the best results occurred with footage shot in the 4x3 aspect ratio but matted for 16x9 by the PAL XL1 (625 lines of resolution, 900,000 effective pixels over three 1/3" CCDs)"

Sure. Go to System Preferences > International and click the Input Menu button. Now click the Keyboard Viewer checkbox and the Show input menu checkbox. Now you can click on the little flag at the top righthand corner of the menu bar and show the keyboard viewer. If your keyboard doesn't have a bracket key then it will probably be available by holding down the option key, or maybe option+shift. When you do this you will see the hidden characters on the little keyboard viewer.

He did shoot a lot of movies 1.37 but they were released as 1.66. It doesn't matter what the negative was, it matters what the millions of viewers saw when they went to the theater. The final product. Which was widescreen.

The PAL XL1 was an effective sensor resolution of 300k pixels. It doesn't suddenly become a mega-pixel cam because it has 3CCD's. It's an SD cam no matter how you slice it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Canon-DM-XL1...ata/B00005QF76

If they shot with an anamorphic lens then they would get the full 300k, if it was matted it would be even lower. They did a very good job with that film. Pushing a prosumer cam to its limits. I read that it was quite soft when projected on the big screen, but it looked very nice on DVD.

That is one of the most absurd things I have ever read with regards to aspect ratio. The human eye has a MUCH greater field of vision left to right than up and down. A MUCH greater FOV.

The distance your film will travel is directly related to one issue: does it successfully connect with an audience? Period. You can argue over aspect ratios and lines of resolution until you’re blue in the face. The audience generally doesn’t care. They’ll accept whatever format you give them as long as your sound is good, your camera's in focus and the story is captivating. A boring story at 4:3 isn’t any more interesting 16:9 or Hi-Def. Don’t get distracted by techno-babble. After 25 years of scriptwriting, I’ve learned to keep one thought in mind at the front of all others: It’s the story, stupid. I keep that message on a sticky above my monitor with each script I write.

Yes, totally rediculous. 16x9 is ruining television and the sky is falling as well. I found it funny to see no author on this peice.

Cinema stopped being 4x3 some fifty years ago, so it's hardly a disaster that TV is just now catching up.

The "golden rectangle" in art is close to the 1.66 : 1 ratio.

Kubrick did not "compose" his movies for 4x3. They were composed for theatrical projection masking to widescreen (1.66 or 1.85). People who have worked for Kubrick have told me this directly. Cameras were marked for widescreen framing, editing equipment too, etc. There is a story in Ciment's book on Kubrick by the publicity exec at Warner Bros. about having to check every cinema in the U.S. to make sure that they had a 1.66 mask to show "Barry Lyndon" -- and in fact, both "Barry Lyndon" and "Clockwork Orange" were shot with hard mattes in the camera, which is why the DVD and former laserdisc versions (that one supervised by Kubrick) were in fact letterboxed mildly.

But by the time he did "The Shining" he was shooting 1.37 Academy, protecting the whole negative, but composing for theatrical. But he preferred that these last three movies be shown in 4x3 on TV. Why? Partly because he didn't like electronic matting (he didn't mind camera mattes being visible though) and because he liked the old 1.37 Academy frame and saw 4x3 TV as a way of getting that effect. But that doesn't mean he primarily composed the movies for 4x3 TV. True 4x3 composition would use the whole height of the frame for balancing objects, but his last three movies show obvious excess headroom in all of his medium shots to allow for widescreen projection matting. Of course, we can quibble over the definition of "composing" all day... but to me, if you factor in the widescreen cut-off, you are defacto composing for it. Working within a frame is the definition of composition.