Tom & Jerry 7/22/01 Evening

[Sveven Dvorking]

Solid Serenade
Muscle Beach Tom
Baby Puss

[Patrick McCart]

CN should start showing CinemaScope T&J's letterboxed to pull in more viewers.

It would be interesting to see what's lost during pan & scram.

[Thad Komorowski]

You'd be surprised at how much stuff got removed from the pan-and-scanned "Muscle Beach Tom". Tom and his girlfriend are cut out in some scenes (Tom pigging out on the food, Tom digging a hole for Butch to fall in)!

-Thad:D

[TServo2049]

I've seen a couple of them letterboxed, and it just looks a whole lot better!

[Sveven Dvorking]

Is "letterboxed" a widescreen view to fit your television? If so, I think it would have black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. I never know anything is cut off unless I am told so.

[Jack]

Yes, letterboxed means having black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. You see more of the picture, and the cartoons should look a whole lot better.


Jack:D

[J Lee]

If and when they finally get HDTV going, the only cartoons that will look normal on those TVs are the CinemaScopes. The later 35 mm prints of the Warner Bros. cartoons from the early 1950s on will work passibly on HDTV, but the earlier 16 mm prints (and those from MGM and Paramount as well) are either going to have to have black bars on the sides of the screen or will have the top and/or bottom of the images cut off.

[BobChief]

The size of the black bars, Steve, depends on the aspect ratio of the picture, i.e. the ratio of the picture's width to its height, generally stated as "{some number}:1".

Others can fill you in on the more commonly used ratios better than I...

[Patrick McCart]

Here's 2 pictures of what a CinemaScope A (2.55:1) image looks like on a regular TV (4:3) compared to a widescreen HDTV (16:9):

http://cztoondb.tripod.com/untitled.gif

Later CinemaScope (B) was 2.35:1 which is now the "official" scope ratio used to this day in theaters.

The two standard theater ratios are now 1.85:1 (flat) and 2.35:1 (scope).

BTW, CinemaScope B (2.35:1) and Panavision are basically the same thing...Panavision compresses the image better than CinemaScope.

Here's a list of ratios that widescreen-era cartoons are supposed to be shown in:

1954-present Warner Bros. : 1.85:1 (matted) 1.78:1 for TV would be just fine for the cartoons.

1954-1967 Paramounts: 1.85:1 (matted) 1.78:1 for TV

1954-1957 MGM: 2.55:1 and 2.35:1 (CinemaScope A and B)

Deitch and Jones MGM's: 1.85:1 (matted) 1.78:1 for TV

Disney: CinemaScope cartoons at 2.55:1 and 2.35:1, later cartoons matted to 1.85:1 or 1.78:1

See www.widescreen.org and www.widescreenmuseum.com for more info.

[Sveven Dvorking]

If a television screen is 1.33:1 with no black bars, we must be losing a lot of picture on all those classics. Too bad:(