# Pan and scan

Pan and scan is a film editing technique of adjusting widescreen film images, rendering them compatible for broadcast on television screens in the 4:3 aspect ratio. This technique primarily involves cropping the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects. Film editors often take a risk losing key visual elements in the scene when cropping.
To retain essential details they use "pan and scan," shifting the image to highlight important content, ensuring a suitable home viewing experience. This technique was prevalent in the popular use of VHS, before widescreen home media such as LaserDisc, DVD, and Blu-ray. The vertical equivalent is called "tilt and scan" or "reverse pan and scan", and was used to adapt older films like Cinderella (1950) for widescreen formats.
These techniques have garnered prominent criticism over the years since their inception. Critics of this technique often disapprove of pan-and-scan cropping as it can remove larger portions of an original image: up to 43% of the original image on 2.35:1 films, up to 48% on earlier 2.55:1 films, and up to 52% of 2.76:1 films. The new shots or cuts can also result in moment-to-moment alterations in intended cinematic effects including pacing, atmosphere, and suspense.
As such, in some cases pan and scan can result in the changing of a director's and/or cinematographer's original vision and intentions for the film's or a particular scene's field-of-view in addition to omitting large amounts of information from the film itself for audiences.

## History

For the first several decades of television broadcasting, sets displayed images with a 4:3 (1.33:1) aspect ratio, similar to most theatrical films before 1960. However, in the early to mid-1950s, to compete with television and lure audiences away from their sets, producers of theatrical motion pictures began to use "widescreen" formats such as CinemaScope and Todd-AO, which provided more panoramic vistas and presented other compositional opportunities.
To accommodate a wider aspect ratio, television broadcasters adopted the pan and scan technique, which maintained image quality and size but sacrificed the ability to view the entire image. A film subject to pan and scan often lost around half of its horizontal size due to cropping. Letterboxing was an alternative method of displaying widescreen films on a 4:3 screen, as it maintained the original aspect ratio by adding black space above and below the image. However, this invariably reduced the size of the image and consequently, the image quality as well.
In 1986, Voyager Company decided to make it company policy to only release widescreen films on LaserDisc in their original aspect ratio rather than pan and scan formats that were common for home media releases at the time. Many other home video labels followed suit.
In the 1990s, widescreen televisions offered a wider 16:9 aspect ratio (1.78 times the height instead of 1.33) and allowed films with aspect ratios of 1.66:1 and 1.85:1 to fill most or all of the screen, with minimal letterboxing or cropping required. DVD packaging began to use the expression, "16:9 – Enhanced for Widescreen TVs."
Films shot with aspect ratios of 2.20:1, 2.35:1, 2.39:1, 2.55:1, and especially 2.76:1 (Ben-Hur for example), might still be problematic when displayed on televisions of any type. However, when the DVD is "anamorphically enhanced for widescreen", or the film is telecast on a high-definition channel and viewed on a widescreen TV, the black spaces are smaller, and the effect is much like watching a film on a theatrical wide screen.
As of 2018, though aspect ratios of 16:9 (and occasionally 16:10, mostly for computers and tablets) remain standard, wider-screen consumer TVs in 21:9 have been marketed by several manufacturers.

## Techniques

During the "pan and scan" process, an editor selects the parts of the original filmed composition that seem to be the focus of the shot and makes sure that these are copied ("scanned"). When the important action shifts to a new position in the frame, the operator moves the scanner to follow it, creating the effect of a pan shot. In a scene in which the focus does not gradually shift from one horizontal position to another—such as actors at each extreme engaging in rapid conversation with each other—the editor may choose to "cut" from one to the other rather than rapidly panning back and forth.
If the actors are closer together on the screen, the editor may pan slightly, alternately cropping one or the other partially. This method allows the maximum resolution of the image since it uses all the available vertical video scan lines—which is especially important for NTSC televisions, having a rather low number of lines available. It also gives a full-screen image on a traditional television set; hence pan-and-scan versions of films on VHS or DVD are often known as Fullscreen.
However, it also has several drawbacks. Some visual information is unavoidably cropped out. It can also change a shot in which the camera was originally stationary to one in which it is frequently panning, or change a single continuous shot into one with frequent cuts. In a shot that was originally panned to show something new, or one in which something enters the shot from off-camera, it changes the timing of these appearances to the audience.
As an example, in the film Oliver!, made in Panavision, the criminal Bill Sikes commits a murder. The murder takes place mostly offscreen, behind a staircase wall, and Oliver is a witness to it. As Sikes steps back from behind the wall, we see Oliver from the back watching him in terror.
In the pan-and-scan version of the film, the audience sees Oliver's reaction as the murder is being committed, but not when Sikes steps backward from the wall having done it. Often in a pan and scan telecast, a character will seem to be speaking offscreen, when what has happened is that the pan and scan technique has cut their image out of the screen.

### Shoot and protect

As television screenings of feature films became more common and more financially important, cinematographers began to work on compositions that would keep the vital information within the TV safe area of the frame. For example, the BBC suggested programme makers who were recording in 16:9 frame their shots in a 14:9 aspect ratio which was then broadcast on analogue services with small black bars at the top and bottom of the picture, while owners of widescreen TV sets receiving digital broadcasts would see the full 16:9 picture (this is known as Shoot and protect).

### Reframing

One modern alternative to pan and scan is to directly adjust the source material. This is very rare: the only known uses are computer-generated features, such as those produced by Pixar, and video games such as BioShock.
They call their approach to full-screen versions reframing: some shots are pan and scan, while others (such as notably Warner Bros.' The Lego Movie) are transferred open matte (a full widescreen image extended with added image above and below; though for The Lego Movie, the transferred open matte used a widescreen image cropped to 16:9 with added image above and below to create a 1.37:1-framed Academy ratio image; this version was created for theaters that do not have the anamorphic lens projection equipment).
Another method is to keep the camera angle as tight as a pan shot, but move the location of characters, objects, or the camera, so that the subjects fit in the frame. The advent of DVDs and their use of anamorphic presentation, coupled with the increasing popularity of widescreen televisions and computer monitors, have rendered pan and scan less important. Fullscreen versions of films originally produced in widescreen are still available in the United States.

### Open matte

Filmmakers may also create an original image that includes visual information that extends above and below the widescreen theatrical image; this is known as an open matte image. This may still be considered pan-and-scanned, but it gives the compositor the freedom to "zoom out" or "un-crop" the image to include not only the full width of the wide-format image, but additional visual content at the top and/or bottom of the screen, not included in the widescreen version.
As a general rule (prior to the adoption of DVD), special effects would be done within the theatrical aspect ratio, but not the full-frame thereof; also the expanded image area can sometimes include extraneous objects—such as cables, microphone booms, jet vapor trails, or overhead telephone wires—not intended to be included in the frame, depending upon the nature of the shot and how well the full frame was protected.
A more unusual use of the technique is present in the 17 original Dragon Ball Z movies, released from 1986 to 1996. The films were displayed in 1.85:1 during their theatrical release, but this was in fact cut down from 1.37:1 animation- a choice made so that the VHS releases would be nearly uncropped.

### Adjusting cinematography to account for aspect ratios

Changes in screen angle (panning) may be necessary to prevent closeups between two speakers where only one person is visible in the pan-and-scan version and both participants seem to speak alternately to persons off camera; this comes at the cost of losing the smoothness of scenes. Inversely, the cropping of a film originally shown in the standard ratio to fit widescreen televisions may cut off foreground or background, such as a tap-dance scene in which much attention is directed appropriately at a dancer's feet. This situation will commonly occur whenever a widescreen TV is set to display full images without stretching (often called the zoom setting) on images with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 or less. The solution is to pillar box the image by adding black bars on either side of the image, which maintains the full picture height. In Europe, where the PAL TV format offers more resolution to begin with, "pan-and-scan" broadcasts and "pan-and-scan" DVDs of movies originally shown in widescreen are relatively rare, unless it is of programming broadcasts aimed for family viewing times like A Bug's Life. However, on some channels in some countries (such as the United Kingdom), films with an aspect ratio of more than 1.85:1 are panned and scanned slightly to fit the broadcast 1.78:1 ratio.

## Criticism

Some directors oppose pan and scan, arguing that it compromises their directorial vision. For instance, Sydney Pollack decided to shoot his 1985 film Out of Africa in a matted 1.85:1 aspect ratio because he was tired of having his movies, which had generally been shot in his preferred format of Anamorphic 2.39:1, "butchered" for television and home video.
In 1991, Pollack sued a Danish public television channel for airing a pan-and-scan version of his 1975 film Three Days of the Condor. The court ruled that the pan and scan conducted by Danish television was a "mutilation" of the film and a violation of Pollack's droit moral (his legal right as an artist to maintain his reputation by protecting the integrity of his work). The court ruled in favor of the defendant.
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller made two versions of The Lego Movie, one in 2.39:1 anamorphic format and another in 1.37:1 open-matte spherical format because some theaters did not employ anamorphic lenses, and also because they were tired of having their movies, which had been shot in their generally preferred aspect ratio of 2.39:1^ panned-and-scanned for TV broadcasts (and, in the case of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, its DVD release which includes both the original 2.39:1 theatrical and the cropped 16:9 versions).
Steven Spielberg initially refused to release a pan-and-scan version of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but eventually gave in (although he successfully ordered the letterboxed format for the home video releases of The Color Purple and Always). Woody Allen refused altogether to release one of Manhattan, and the letterbox version is therefore the only version available on VHS and DVD (even though one VHS release includes the typical pan-and-scan disclaimer on the cover).
The pan and scan versions of the widescreen animated shorts from the 1950s were also criticized for missing details. For example, in Tom and Jerry, the babysitter grabbing the baby out of Tom's hands near the end of Tot Watchers and the ant blowing his horn near the end of Barbecue Brawl, are cropped out.
Several prominent film critics, most notably Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, have also criticized pan and scan, and agreed with directors that movies should be presented as they were intended.