Spoofer wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2019 7:01 amAfter this I'll stop contributing to the derail, but, starting with Friends, you're all right and I was wrong about the crop, as most of the time it's simply expanded, but there are indeed many a scene when I rewatched a season or so on Netflix where I've noticed obvious cropping (when they couldn't make the scene work with the extra space), which is probably what I was remembering. Though primarily it's the odd, unnatural framing that is most noticeable, due to many of the expanded shots featuring little headroom or compromised medium shots of characters, and then tons of extra dead empty space on the sides. This becomes less of an issue in scenes set at Central Perk where there's more details of value in the scene, but I digress.
Funnily enough this was actually a problem the first Ratchet & Clank game encountered when it was ported to PS3: all the in-engine cutscenes were expanded wide screen, which not only meant that everything was focused in the middle, but now clever CG tricks and things you weren't meant to see like "off-screen" characters no longer being animated were now totally visible.
Got weirder with the second and third games though: those supported widescreen, but because SD 16:9 uses stretched pixels, what we got is the 16:9 framing expanded vertically to a 4:3 frame... which was then expanded AGAIN horizontally! So now everything is far away seemingly in the middle in the frame, and now we can totally see tricks we weren't meant to, like character's legs not animating because they were hidden by the letterbox bars!
IAmTheMilkMan wrote: ↑Wed Mar 06, 2019 8:44 am
This last shot, in particular, really highlights what I'm talking about in that it is
noticeably cropped with no side-by-side comparison necessary. Shots like these occur all of the time in 16:9 DBZ, and they suck me right out of the story, making me that much more aware that what I'm watching is a hack job, something that doesn't occur when I'm watching Seinfeld.
IMO this really deserves more emphasis. DBZ is a show packed with characters that have major height differences, be it children and adults, Vegeta and Piccolo, Frieza and Goku, or Krillin and 18. And the fact of the matter is that when you crop them, one person loses their forehead and the other will lose their chin and the rest of their body.
This is why the composition of the movies is so important: because of the widescreen crop being anticipated, the shot composition in 4:3 was mindful of what would be lost, so objects and characters were arranged accordingly.
Okay this is about to get long; the spoiler tags still don't work, but I've put them in for when they do work later. Here's hoping that's soon!
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In the picture above, you can see that Vegeta and Trunks' position are laid out such that it works in both aspect ratios. Vegeta of course has an advantage with his massively tall hair, so he's placed in the foreground so the 4:3 frame works.
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Similar thing going here. Gohan and Videl work perfectly in both versions: this this were 4:3 only and then cropped to widescreen, Gohan's forehead would be gone and Videl's mouth would barely be visible.
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Another one: all the characters are arranged in a straight line to work in widescreen, but the background still has plenty of detail to make it feel relevant.
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And again: Gohan and Trunks are placed nicely, but they won't have anything important chopped away by the theatrical aspect ratio.
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And here's a similar shot from the show. ...yikes. As you can see, Goku's mouth is completely cut off, and even if you were more selective and moved the image down, you would cut into Krillin's head and most likely Gohan's. If this shot were meant to be in one of the movies, Goku would have been drawn smaller and nudged up in the frame so that he's composed nicely in a theatrical presentation.
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To round this out, here's an image I found showing IN THE PRODUCTION PROCESS how each was designed differently. Above, we have the movies, and in the guidelines you have the 4:3 framing for TV and widescreen for theaters. Note how in the close-up of Cooler, there's still enough room above and below his face for the close-up to feel correct when cropped. But in the Goku drawing below him, that wouldn't work, because his chin would get WAY too close to the bottom of the frame if you did that.
. Watching this again makes me want that 4:3 blu ray set even more now. The 16:9 blu rays are an atrocity but I like the nostalgia of the failconer score although kikuchki is my preferred track.
