We know that a filmmaker using a soft matte exposes the entire film area when shooting her movie. The picture then fills the entire television screen and only crops a small amount from the sides of the filmed image. The success of this method depends on how the director shot the movie.
Some directors compose each shot with both the soft-matted picture and the full image in mind.
When they look through the camera, they see the entire picture exposed to the film and a superimposed rectangle indicating the theatrical aspect ratio. In this case, the main thing you lose in video formatting is visual composition. A lot of directors will use a soft matte but completely ignore what's outside the theatrical matte. If you took a full image from this sort of movie, you might very well see boom mikes, lights and unfinished sets. Also, if the movie includes special visual effects , there's a good chance they were added only to the theatrical aspect ratio portion of the image.