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Date:         Fri, 11 Dec 1992 13:31:52 -0500
From:         FAC_JCLARK@JMUVAX.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Dracula

j-man,

In speaking of letterboxing, once again I've overlooked an obvious detail
from your questions. That is, if you meant to ask what's the advantage of
letterboxing in an esthetic sense?  Or am I misinterpreting and being too
obvious, since I know there's been some discussion about this in the past
on the list by me among others.

Anyway, I'll be obvious and go ahead.  Letterboxing of course gives us
purist filmheads the more or less complete image as the filmmaker intended
when the film's a widescreen effort.  Beyond just standing on that princi-
ple (and not getting back into matters of "translation" and who-knows?
PoMo...!), with a well-composed film image you (that is, rhetorical old me
and anyone else who thinks like me) want to get the proper esthetic effect.
For humble example, just take the Indiana Jones films (which I'm doing a
marathon screening of tomorrow night for some friends if the weather
cooperates here).  Recently, all three have become available in letterboxed
format.  Though they aren't "great" artisitic films, their images were
composed for the widescreen; there, the various actions and even emotional
balances of how the charaters are framed and the space left around them,
the distance they appear from the viewer, are kept intact.  The films
"breathe" properly.  When they're cropped for TV, I usually find them too
"pushy" and in-you-face; much to wearing for a marathon of all three.
Other directors, more consistently dedicated to using the widescreen, may
absolutely demand it.  Kurosawa usually used every last inch of the screen
to its edges for placing characters or telling detail.  Polanski has done
the same with Chinatown especially.

Which brings up a related aspect of letterboxing I'll review briefly again.
Some companies are now "windowboxing" their films--that is, leaving masked
black space on the short vertical sides of the film as well as top and bottom.
The reason?  TV monitor and projectors (in the consumer world) tend to over-
scan the image so that less of it is visible on all four sides than is
actually there.  How much less, depends on your monitor or TV.  Windowboxed
films--such as Chinatown--essentially guarantee that when this happens, it's
usually going to be only the blank space at the sides of the film that
overscans... and that all those precious little Polanski details out to the
frame's edge will be kept intact. Hopefully.  I've noticed that pretty much
all of Warner Bros. letterboxed disc releases are slightly windowboxed,
regardless of the film's compositional merit.  But that's good news for me,
since I don't really want a studio deciding what film merits a full accurate
image and which one doesn't. I'd rather do that myself.

One final note on the compromise that overscanning TVs seem to create, since
you're still not getting every last inch of a film (unless it's been suffic-
iently windowboxed, too).  In most theatres, framing of the film isn't all
that accurate, either.  When conscious of this, you can notice it pretty
regularly when you attend the movies.  ONly really first-rate cinemas,
usually in larger cities, or perhaps repertory cinemas with a sense of
pride anywhere, get it right.  I've got seven cinemas in town--a quadplex
and triplex owned by the same chain--and they're no better than mediocre.

JC
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