In addition to eliminating distortion artifacts, this plays a key role in viewer immersion. The wide, curved-screen reaches into your peripheral vision giving you the illusion of being drawn into the image. The result is that viewers get a much more realistic sense of physical presence in the film.
To put things differently, we've simply been conditioned to view widescreen as cinematic because of its close association with movies, from which we get our definition of “cinematic” in the first place. And the good news is that this effect is easily achievable for any filmmaker who wants a more cinematic look.
In 1953, 20th Century Fox returned to the concept and began using the CinemaScope process to make widescreen movies, such as The Robe and How to Marry a Millionaire. Widescreen grew in popularity during the 1950s, and since 1960, nearly every American feature film has been widescreen.
But if your film will be featured in the cinema, you could shoot in a 1.85:1 or even 2.39:1 aspect ratio to give your movie a more cinematic feel. The most straightforward option is to use 1.85:1 and 2.39:1 for films that will be projected in movie theatres and 16:9 for television, web, and streaming platforms.
By the mid-1950s, more than half of the homes in the US had a television set and the movie industry worried people would stay home instead of visiting their theaters. They needed to come up with a plan to get people back in the theaters and it was at that time widescreen movies and theaters took off.
About sixty years ago, Hollywood settled on the idea that a movie with a width about 2.35 times its height, written as an aspect ratio of “2.35:1”, delivered the best experience for most content when shown on the big screen of commercial theaters.
The reason why today's standard TV is of 16:9 is because it is the geometric mean of the most two common extremes of the ratios — 4×3 and 2.39. In each time period, the aspect ratio was changed in a way to offer something new to the movie goers and to keep the movie theater alive.
From what I can recall, they are kept at 1920*800 to have an aspect ratio that matches theater aspect ratio (2.40:1). Not all devices have aspect ratio of 16:9, you know. If it were 1920*1080, it would look better on television sets or laptops but since theaters don't utilize 16:9, they just keep it at 1920*800.
For TV, the original screen ratio for broadcasts was in 4:3 (1.33:1). Largely between the 1990s and early 2000s A.D., at varying paces in different countries, 16:9 (e.g. 1920x1080p 60p) widescreen displays came into increasingly common use by High Definitions.
Most widescreen DVDs on the market will not fill the entire screen on your TV because they have been recorded in an aspect ratio that is different from your TV's. There are three common movie aspect ratios: 1.33:1, 1.78:1, 2.35:1.
What was once the standard aspect ratio of motion picture film, began to fizzle out as early as the 1950's when various widescreen formats were introduced, such as cinemascope. But even as film moved away from 4:3, television still hung on to the aging format long after.
Why is it better to watch a movie in a big screen?
Watching movies on a big screen is a completely different experience than watching on a small screen at home. The larger-than-life images and immersive sound create a cinematic experience that can't be replicated at home. One of the best things about going to the movies is the popcorn and other concessions.
This mismatch between your screen and the movie's native aspect ratio is what's responsible for the black bars that are associated with a cinematic look.
Director Darren Aronofsky presents this film in an aspect ratio of 4:3, which was the universal standard for 35 mm celluloid. Aronofsky though shot this film using a digital camera, so the aspect ratio isn't done out of respect to traditional celluloid but more to emphasize his protagonist and his weight.
Medium and large format films can capture an immense amount of detail, influencing how colors, blacks, whites, and middle grays are perceived, especially when viewed at large sizes. It is immensely hard for digital to replicate the detail that can be pulled out from something like a 4x5 or 8x10 negative.
1080p looks blurry because you're using a 1360x768 monitor. The pixels don't align because 1080 is not a multiple of 768, which means the pixels you're rendering overlap multiple pixels on your monitor. If you want to display 1080p without it looking blurry, you need to get a 1080p or 4K (2160p) monitor.
From years of watching movies and television filmed at lower frame rates, our eye expects a certain amount of motion blur and time between frames. The addition of interpolated frames can remove this. This can cause the image to appear to be too sharp, too smooth or unnatural looking to some viewers.
Hess explains that 24fps was chosen because a new modern standardization of frame rate had to be initiated due to the introduction of sound. 24fps was chosen because of math; it is an easily divided number, and editors can work out specific time cuts based on the number of frames.
Although the technology behind the CinemaScope lens system was made obsolete by later developments, primarily advanced by Panavision, CinemaScope's anamorphic format has continued to this day.
For instance, Star Wars (1977) was filmed in 2.39:1 ratio using an anamorphic camera lens, and shown in theaters using the corresponding projector lens. Since it is a widescreen film, when encoded on a widescreen-format DVD the studio would almost certainly use the anamorphic encoding process.
Check the aspect ratio of the program or movie that you're watching. Some programs aren't in full screen when produced. Some movies are in a 21:9 cinema format which will show black bars on the top and bottom when you view them on a widescreen (16:9) TV.
One of the biggest changes he noted has been the switch to digital cameras, which overtook using film stock in the early 2010s. Digital cameras can perform better in darker settings, since they generally don't need as much lighting on set to fully capture what's in front of the camera.
One second you're seeing every eyelash and wrinkle, the next it's a blurry mess. Some of this can be attributed to the lower frame rate of movies and most TV shows, which can result in a blur caused by the camera. There's nothing you can do about that.
