cinema prints.
If you shoot super35 film without any hard matting (masking)
you get dimensions of 24.89mm x 18.67mm
the aspect ratio of that is 1.3333 (a lots of 3's)
This is how a lot of TV material is shot (full frame), and a lot of spherical films.
Spherical films (1.65:1 and 1.85:1) are usually shot in camera with a full
frame of those dimensions i mentioned there.And then when you get to the internegative stage of
the intermediate process they put a hard matte on the image of the internegative
in the film printer.
So on the prints you get 1.85:1 ratio. The images are "letterboxed".But not only
on the up and down sides,but allso on the left of the image.
The image area is reduced from 24mm to about 21mm of width.
And when they make a video transfer they use the interpositive (which is not masked yet)
and they mask the image areas digitally to match the aspect ratio of the prints and put it on
a DVD.
BUT..
Often for the television releases and some DVD releases (like Kubricks's "The shining")
they put it in the television aspect ratio,the original ratio as it was in the motion picture camera.
You get full 24.8x18.7 millimeters of the image on your TV screen. And you see a lot
more image area than it was on the masked prints.
I remember some video releases had problems with microphone booms because of that.
Most of the time when you see a full screen video release it is pan scanned,
but not always,sometimes you see all from the film prinhts plus additional image
area that was cut out of film prints.
With cinemascope films this is not the case. Nothing is masked in the lab on those films.
You get 21.9 mm x 18.7 mm image area on film prints and in widescreen video,unless
it is a pan and scann edition (which really sucks with cinemascope films)
Anyway,my point is,when you see a full screen image of a non-anamorphic film next time,
don't automatically think that you are seeing less that the director intended.
Sometimes you are seeing more than he intended.