zombie84 said:
ChainsawAsh said:
Studios ignore that all the time. Do you know how many 1.66:1 or 1.85:1 movies are released in 1.78:1 (which is equal to 16:9)?
Besides, no "scope" film since 1970 has been 2.35:1 - all the Star Wars films are 2.39:1.
2.35:1 is the same as 2.39:1 and 2.40:1. 2.35:1 was changed because I think there was either a new measurement taken that discovered it was inaccurate, or some new standard came in. But they are all the same. 2.35 is still commonly used just because of its tradition. To be honest, I don't even know if anyone knows which of the three ratios is the right one, or if any of them are, but they are all interchangable for some reason.
As for determining ratios from home video, the amount of screen information is always cropped to one degree or another, so this has to be taken with a grain of salt, ultimately. Star Wars is anamorphic widescreen, so whatever version has the most amount of info is the most correct, so there is no negative cropping involved, unlike regualr or super 35mm spherical shoots.
Red5--those scans are fabulous. Where did they come from? Is there more? I remember someone here (Mielr?) tried to do some collectible-70mm scans but they sort of came out a little blurry because of the glass casings.
2.39:1 and 2.40:1 are just two ways of writing the same thing - they're interchangeable because the real ratio is somewhere in between the two. 2.35:1 is treated as interchangeable, but really isn't - as you said, it's commonly used because of tradition.
In 1957, the ratio was standardized to 2.35:1 due to the addition of an optical audio track (in the past it had been 2.55:1, as the space now reserved for the optical track had been used for visual information as well). In 1970, the standard was revised to make splices less noticeable, making the new ratio somewhere in between 2.39:1 and 2.4:1.
It was revised again in 1993 (to standardize aperture width regardless of whether the film was was anamorphic or flat), but this resulted in no difference to the aspect ratio, so it remains 2.39:1.
Honestly, it's not a big difference, and Super 35 spherical films often *are* 2.35:1, since that's just what people know as the "proper" AR and they crop it that way. But to be technically correct, any film shot on 35mm with anamorphic lenses since 1970 is 2.39:1 or 2.4:1, depending on how you round it.