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director of photography, peter gray, dp, cinematography, dop, cinematographers, lighting cameraman, videographers, dv, high definition, 24p, digital films, HDW-F900, CineAlta, Varicam, AJ-HDC27F, 70mm, independent films, lighting directors, filmmakers, filmmaking, HDW-700AWHAT YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT CinemaScope, BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK ........... the secrets of CinemaScope from a more technical perspective
What is CinemaScope anyway? It is an optical trick using special lenses. There is one lens on the camera, and another similar, complementary, lens on the projector. The trick is to photograph a scene that is much wider than can be recorded across the width of the film negative. The shape of the camera negative, after all, is only slightly wider than a square. Enter, the magic lens. It belongs to a family of lenses known collectively as anamorphic lenses. Very simply, it squeezes a wide-shaped image to fit onto a square-shaped negative. In the cinema, the projector is equipped with a complementary "un-squeezing" lens. It makes the image on the screen twice as wide as the image recorded on the film print. Hey presto, the scene has the same panoramic proportions as the original one photographed. It is that little bit of "lens magic", that gives you that special panoramic view in CinemaScope. It is about two and one third times wider than it is tall ..... the widest of all the wide-screen systems in regular use. In the CinemaScope system, the lens squeezes the scene exactly in half before it is recorded on the film. This is described as a 2:1 squeeze ratio in cinematographer's jargon. However, there is a little more to it. Anamorphic or CinemaScope lenses only squeeze the image in the horizontal plane only. The image in the vertical plane is unaffected by these lenses. In other words, it focuses an image in the vertical plane just as a normal lens would do. It is like there are two types of lenses built into one. So CinemaScope or anamorphic lenses squeeze and image in the horizontal plane only, while leaving the vertical plane alone. It is the 2 to 1 squeeze ratio that characterizes CinemaScope from other anamorphic systems. Although many other anamorphic systems exist, none of them are in common use today. There are literally scores of anamorphic systems; most of them (perhaps fortunately) have fallen into complete obscurity. Only CinemaScope, and its direct descendants, survive in all its glory. One of the wonders of CinemaScope is that it is a truly universal system. There is another special phenomenon unique to CinemaScope. Of all the 35mm systems employing a normal integrated soundtrack, CinemaScope produces the highest-quality image on the screen. This is because it uses the largest possible negative area available on the film negative ..... the bigger the negative, the better the picture. This larger negative is significant, especially compared to the other wide-screen systems that are in common use today. The other systems simply crop the top and bottom from the negative to make it appear wider, wasting around 30% to 40% of what is potentially available to record the image. You often hear of top industry cinematographers opting to shoot CinemaScope mainly because of this significant increase in image quality. Even the newer Super 35 format does not come close to the much larger area of the anamorphic negative. Once shot, the post production of a CinemaScope film is carried out pretty much as a normal movie. The producer can rest easy, as the system will not cost them a lot of extra money. The main additional cost is the increased rental cost of the anamorphic camera lenses (perhaps around 30% more). The fact that the CinemaScope image on the screen is about two and one third times wider than it is tall, is just a way of describing its aspect ratio. Using the industry jargon, this is expressed as an aspect ratio of 2.35 : 1. Your T.V. screen, by comparison, is only one and one third times wider than it is high (1.33 : 1) which is another way of saying if it is 4 units wide, then it is 3 units high. It is only slightly wider than a square, which coincidentally, is like the CinemaScope negative image on film. It has an aspect ratio of 1.175 : 1 i.e. almost a square shape. When this is stretched twice as wide horizontally, then 1.175 multiplied by 2 gives us the familiar number 2.35. This is what an anamorphic lens does, squeezes or stretches by a factor of 2. When the 35mm anamorphic format was first conceived and became popular, it was designed as a 2.35 : 1 aspect-ratio format. So CinemaScope and all its derivatives were 2.35 : 1 for decades. It has been around so long, the term "2.35" and "anamorphic" are used more less interchangeably. But more recently, the official aspect ratio was changed to something just shy of 2.40 : 1. This was done for fairly obscure technical reasons, which I wont go into here. But the point is the anamorphic format is now officially 2.40 : 1. This change however, represents an almost imperceptible difference from the audience's point of view. You hardly see the term CinemaScope any more, unless it is on an old movie. CinemaScope was a process pioneered by Twentieth Century-Fox in the 1950's and 1960's. Nor do you see Todd-AO 35 any more, which is the same thing. The Panavision process is also fundamentally the same as CinemaScope. Many modern anamorphic films in the West, especially from America, are shot using high-quality cameras and lenses from the Panavision company. Nowadays, CinemaScope has been almost completely replaced by its modern equivalent, Panavision, and similar systems from other companies. The Russians also have their equivalent, and widely-used system, known as Sovscope. Europe is awash with equivalent anamorphic systems. In Germany, there is Ultrascope, which is an older system from the Arriflex company. The newer one is called Arriscope. In Rome, there is Technovision from the Technovision company. Virtually every country with a significant film industry developed their own anamorphic system at one point or other, including Asia. But virtually all these systems are fundamentally the same thing as the original CinemaScope, only very much improved by more up-to-date technologies. Although "CinemaScope" went somewhat out of fashion in the 70's and early 80's, it has made a decided comeback. Perhaps remarkably, it is still the most universal of all existing cinema formats. It is recognized around the world, both east and west. For all intents and purposes, you could virtually say every cinema is equipped with CinemaScope projection capability. For all the other, so called, common 35mm formats, different countries have adopted different standards. Some of the most common formats currently in use are American wide-screen 1.85:1, while the U.K. is 1.75:, and in western Europe it is 1.66:1. As a matter of interest, all these screen shapes hover around that of high definition television (1.77:1 or expressed in whole numbers, 16 wide by 9 high). Their shape is close enough to be more or less compatible, sort of. CinemaScope is still too wide for HDTV, but it will fit that screen much better than our current T.V. screens. Unfortunately, international compatibility is a rare animal in the film world. CinemaScope, perhaps, comes closest to that ideal. Amsterdam, December, 1993 Postscript: It is interesting to note that the term 'CinemaScope' itself, is the first word in common usage in the English language to use a capital letter within, or inside, the word itself. In recent years, this practice has now become popular in describing computer-related companies and products. Copyright © Peter Gray (December, 1993)
Peter Gray
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