In a GTC magazine, Peter Ward coined the very apt phrase “16:9, the shape of a banknote”, which I thought was brilliant. I asked if I could re-run his article and it’s:

Summer 2004

Throughout film and TV history, the frame border has been altered to improve box office takings or to stimulate consumer demand for new equipment.At the very birth of film, 4:3 aspect ratio was created for a sound commercial reason.

In 1889 W.K.L. Dickson, Edison’s assistant was searching for a film strip that provided,at minimal cost, an image of acceptable quality. Dickson was an amateur photographer and he had to decide between the traditional vertical portrait format and the horizontal format of landscape used in painting and photography at that time. He settled on an negative image 1 inch wide and 3/4 inch high. He arrived at this frame because Eastman mass produced film strips of 70mm and 90mm gauge for still photography. Dickson slit the 70mm strip into two 35mm widths and then had to decide on the frame size. Some still cameras at this time produced circular images. Dickson rejected this shape and after perforations were punched in the film he had an image width of 1 inch. To match the 1 in horizontal frame he could have chosen a frame height of 1 in which would have resulted in a square frame. Instead he decided on a 3/4 inch frame height to maximise the number of frames in the fifty foot strips of film he was using. This negative frame size provided sufficient quality of image for the peepshow.

Widescreen as a patent buster

The early days of film production was enmeshed in contested patents and legal challenges to infringements of patents. One method of circumventing Edison’s patent was to film using a different aspect ratio. This involved not only widescreen film apertures but the ability to project in widescreen. Alternative widescreen aspect ratios died out by the 1910s probably because cinemas could not economically handle different aspect ratio formats. Widescreen film gauge may have eventually been agreed during the late twenties if the experiment had not coincided with the advent of sound in 1926-1927, which required expensive re-equipping of film studios and cinemas.

Cinerama

During the twentieth century, large screen displays had occurred in expositions, amusement parks and exhibitions. Cinerama was developed by Fred Waller away from the film industry and shot on three ganged cameras each covering 48 degrees of the field of view making up a composite image of 146 degrees horizontal by 55 degrees vertical. This closely approached human vision of 165 degrees by 60 degrees.

Because of Cinerama’s enormous curved screen,stereo sound and an aspect ratio of 2.77:1, many of the audience were less aware, if at all, of the edge of the horizontal frame, unlike their normal visual experience of the standard Academy ratio movie. Most of the Cinerama audience was seated so that the screen filled their field of view. Human vision uses a series of small eye motions called saccadic eye movement to scan 5 to 35 degrees of their field of view. The Cinerama screen covering 146 degrees meant the audience’s visual attention was scattered across the screen. This duplicated the experience in reality of scanning across a panoramic view. Unlike the Academy ratio movie, the audiences attention (unless you were sitting in the front seats) ,was not focussed on a single framed image. Cinerama, and later Cinemascope, attempted to reduce or eliminate the audience’s awareness of the horizontal screen border in the cinema.

Cinerama in the early fifties was essentially a marketing scheme to provide the audience with a physical experience by attempting to duplicate peripheral vision with a wraparound screen. The emphasis was on active participation by the audience similar to a roller coaster ride as opposed to the traditional audience involvement in story and stars. Cinema going in the US fell from an average weekly attendance of 90 million in 1948 to an average of 60 million in 1950 and down to 18 million by 1972. The collapse of the cinema going habit was the result of a number of social changes as well as the competition of television.The film studios quickly saw the commercial potential of Cinerama technology which substituted a visual and aural impression of three dimension.

An alternative to Cinerama

1953 was the crucial year for the studios looking for a similar widescreen format as Cinerama but without its technical imperfections. Twentieth-Century Fox made it a top priority and was in a hurry to get a film into production. CinemaScope started with an aspect ratio of 2.66:1 (later 2.55:1) projected onto a slightly curved screen with four track magnetic sound. It was advertised as 3D to distinguish it from the older 4:3 ‘flat’ screen movies but its illusion of depth was only achieved by a larger screen. True 3D (use bi-coloured spectacles) only had a commercial life of one year.

The widescreen format was promoted as a new visual experience. Darryl Zanuck repeatedly reminded his directors that they should take full advantage of the screen width by staging action all the way across the frame – in his words, ‘keep the people spread out’. He wanted the audience to experience the full width of the new screen shape. Initially it was the technology that was being promoted rather than story or stars.

Television changes its aspect ratio

In the fifties, UK television was establishing large audiences. The 1953 Coronation transmission achieved for the first time, a TV audience larger than a radio audience. The opening of the first ITV companies gave an additional boost Circular faced cathode ray tubes were used as television display screens and it was felt the maximum area of the tube face could be used if the aspect ratio of the television image was 5:4. On April 3rd, 1950, the BBC changed the screen shape to a 4:3 image which coincided with the Academy film ratio. It was ironic that this shared film and television standard aspect ratio would only last three years before CinemaScope was launched in 1953 with an aspect ratio of 2.66:1. It would be nearly fifty years before television changed its screen shape to 16:9 widescreen.

Widescreen film and television transmission

Another commercial crisis came when films were sold for television showing. Studios had originally resisted selling off their film assets for TV showings as they considered it would be the end of a films commercial usefulness once a TV mass audience had seen it. They began by selling old pre-widescreen films. Eventually, when widescreen films were sold for TV transmission, cinematographers and directors were alarmed at the way their widescreen compositions were butchered by the pan and scan process. The reframing and recutting of the film for TV transmission was completely out of their control. Many filmmakers began to take precautions against the worst excesses of this arbitrary and casual recomposing and recutting of their productions.

They had to consider when shooting a film, that if shown on TV, (as they often were), they were in effect creating a production for two incompatible aspect ratios. The simple solution would be to group any significant information in the centre of frame. This made for ugly widescreen compositions and in effect negated the whole reason for having a wider format.

During the late sixties and seventies, they devised other and more subtle ways of providing compositions suitable for the two formats. One solution was to keep the dominant subject/s in an area of the frame that could be cleanly extracted for 4:3 viewing, but to use the remaining 50% of the widescreen frame for supporting visual motifs to amplify or reinforce the main plot structure. These helped to enrich the visual images but could be deleted for a simpler television shot structure.

The disposable two-shot was another popular fudge to bridge the two formats. In widescreen the two-shot was standard framing with a foreground figure with their back to camera. When this was panned and scanned for television, the foreground figure’s back of head could easily be lost turning the widescreen shot into a standard MCU. The reverse shot of this set-up was similarly turned into a MCU.

A simpler solution would be if TV companies were willing to transmit the original widescreen format which would involve a black band top and bottom of the frame -letterboxing. The use of only a portion of their display screen was resisted by viewers in some countries, for example, some UK viewers complained to the BBC that they paid a full licence fee and therefore they wanted a full screen image! Other countries, those who were accustomed to viewing foreign programmes with subtitles inserted in this bottom black band letterbox area, were unworried by watching the whole of a widescreen feature film with no cropping. Perhaps broadcasters should attempt to educate their viewers with the truth that by filling their TV screens with a film image, they are not getting more for their money but less. When viewing on 4:3 screens, they are denying themselves up to 40% of the film they are watching.

Television seeks a widescreen format

The first developmental work on a high-definition television system began in 1968 at the technical research laboratories of Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) in Tokyo. Dr Takashi Fujio at the NHK research laboratories carried out research on viewers preference for screen size and aspect ratio and his findings largely formed the justification for the NHK HDTV parameters. The research suggests that the majority of viewers preferred a wider aspect ratio than 4:3 plus a larger screen with a corresponding increase in resolution, brightness and colour rendition. His conclusion was that maximum involvement by the viewer was achieved with a 5:3 picture aspect ratio viewed at 3 to 4 picture height distance. Normal viewing distance (in Japan) was 2 to 2.5 metres which suggested an ideal screen size of between lm x 60cm and 1.5m x 90cm. With bigger average room dimensions in the USA and Europe, even larger screen sizes may be desirable. Sitting closer to a smaller screen did not involve the viewer in the action in the same way. High quality stereo sound increased viewer involvement.

By 1980, when the NHK system of a 60Hz field rate and 1125 lines, picture was publicly demonstrated, all the necessary production and domestic equipment was available. There was widespread support for a single worldwide standard for HDTV service. The International Radio Consultative Committee(CCIR) supported a 60Hz-field rate but this was incompatible with the PAL/SECAM field rate of 50Hz and the NTSC 59.94 Hz.

On June 3, 1989, NHK inaugurated a regular HDTV program transmissions by satellite for about an hour each day. In the US, the 1125/60 format was proposed by The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) for adoption as an American National Standard. After many objections, the standard was rejected because it would be difficult to convert to the NTSC system. The same objections were made in PAL countries. A more significant reason was the concern that a world standard originated by NHK would lead to Japanese manufactures dominating world equipment supplies and it would require a completely separate HDTV production and reception service. At an international standards meeting in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia in May 1986 the conference voted to delay a decision until 1990.

Why HNHK HDTV failed to become a world standard

Throughout the following years the commercial considerations were intertwined with the technological implications of two frame rates. Also it was foreseen that the existing analogue services would be replaced by digital transmission. All parties wanted to protect their own broadcasting industry and their domestic TV services. There were two competing concepts of the future of television. The US wanted to phase in HDTV alongside its existing NTSC system. It wanted the same compatibility that had been achieved with the introduction of colour. The viewer could choose at what time they paid for HDTV. It would be available to all.

The Europeans, after developing a 50Hz HDTV system, decided to jettison the use of the larger bandwidths necessary for HDTV and instead, introduce a multi-channel, digital, widescreen service. The viewer would have more choice of channels, a widescreen but there would be no high definition system.

The banknote shape

Although there were numerous technical committees and meetings on the technology of the ‘new’ television system, the shape of the screen was usually assumed to need no discussion. Although research carried out by Dr Takashi at NDK established that most viewers preferred a 5:3 (15:9) shape, endorsed in March 1984 by the the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) in the US, very few people challenged the orthodoxy of the 16:9 shape – except the 230 members of The American Society of Cinematographers. In 1993, an ad hoc committee of the society studied the various HDTV proposals from a creative viewpoint perspective ( a rare event in the thirty year history of TV transition). They felt that either recomposing or letterboxing 35mm anamorphic (2.35:1) or unsqueezed 70mm format (2.2:1) film would require unacceptable artistic compromises. ASC president Victor Kemper commented “There is a rich artistic heritage of some 40 years of wide-screen Hollywood films, which would be compromised with a 16:9 or 1.78:1 aspect ratio” . ASC felt that 2:1 was an acceptable compromise between artistic purity and commercial realism.

Despite their collective prestige, they had little influence in Washington, D.C. against the economic lobbying power of manufacturers who, after ten years of research and development had a vested interest in maintaining the HDTV status quo.To them, the 16:9 aspect ratio was an irrevocable fact.

Why 16:9?

The supporters of 16:9 were in the majority and their reasons for changing the television screen shape to this aspect ratio usually centred on five basic points:

the shape is more ‘natural’ because human vision sees more horizontally than vertically

16:9 is a reasonable compromise between competing aspect ratios and can accommodate film widescreen productions easier. It is therefore more efficient to have a universal screen shape for film and TV

any problems that arise with the changeover to widescreen TV are ‘interim’ problems that will eventually be resolved when 16:9 reception is universally adopted.

the 16:9 rectangle is close to the golden ratio which has been the preferred shape by artists for centuries. The divine proportion has been traditionally accepted as the perfect shape.

the fierce debate and unwillingness to agree to a universal TV format indicates the fifth pressure to change. There was a huge economic incentive to re-brand and make obsolete a world-wide product.

16:9 aspect ratio is closer to human vision

Television widescreen enthusiasts usually suggest that the wider format is more closely akin to the human perceptual experience. The eye focuses on a very small segment of the total field of view such that the smallest detail of interest in the scene subtends an angle of about one minute (1/60 degrees) of arc, which is the limit of angular discrimination for normal vision. The eye jerks quickly from one point of interest to another in what are termed saccade patterns. The eye must constantly move in order to perceive an object of any size. To enhance the experience of increased depth or ‘realism’ with a two dimensional image, Cinerama demonstrated that a very large curved screen is required in order to provide the experience of peripheral vision. With peripheral vision there is an awareness of peripheral movement but no real information is collected. It is unlikely that a domestic television screen large enough to provide the Cinerama or CinemaScope ‘wraparound’ visual experience would be economically viable or desired. Average television viewing involves watching a screen which is a very small part of the field of view.Whatever the shape of the screen, it cannot duplicate the experience of peripheral vision. Human perception relies on short saccade eye movements. Television production units and viewers may prefer the wider screen television but it has little or nothing to do with human visual perception or an enhanced experience of increased depth.

The divine proportion

The golden section, golden ratio, or divine proportion is called by a number of different names but all refer to the number achieved when dividing a line so that the ratio of the whole line (a) to the largest section of the line (b) is equal to the ratio of the larger piece to the smaller piece (c).

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The divine proportion is when the value of (a) divided by (b) equals 1.61803 and the value of (b) divided by (c) equals 1.61803. If a rectangle is constructed which has the ratio of the longest side to the shortest side of 1.61803:1, it is called a golden rectangle.

The proportion to achieve this condition is 1.61803. A rectangle can be constructed which follows this ratio with its sides 14.5623:9 . A rectangle with such properties is dubbed the golden rectangle.

This proportion has fascinated mathematicians for many centuries. From it can be constructed a nest of rectangles all with the same ratios, spirals, and pentagons and pentagrams. The conclusion by some people is that a ratio which has so many symmetrical relationships must have a universal significance.

How the golden rectangle was used in antiquity

The ancient Greeks did use the ratio as a building module not because they thought it had outstanding aesthetic attraction – the most pleasing shape known to man as some advocate, but because it was a useful theory of design. The concept of it as a pleasing or beautiful shape only originated in the late 1800’s and does not seem to have any written texts (ancient Greek, Egyptian or Babylonian) supporting this claim. .

Another popular myth about the golden rectangle concerns the proportions of the human body. This suggests that the ratio of a persons height to the height of their navel conforms to the divine proportion. The height of a persons navel is a an imprecise measurement which allows the maths to work if numerical mysticism requires it to.

Engineers still have a fascination with the mathematical flexibility of the ratio. It has been suggested that it influenced W.K.L. Dickson in his choice of the 4:3 film aspect ratio which he designed in the 1890s and golden rectangle is still advanced in support of the 16:9 widescreen even though 1.777:1 is not the 1.61803:1 of the golden ratio and is not the preferred ‘most pleasing shape’ of the average viewer.

Widescreen – the shape of a banknote

The research carried out by Dr Takashi Fujio at the NHK on viewer’s preference for screen size and aspect ratio have never been properly implemented in the US or Europe. His findings did however give a quasi-scientific justification for a completely new television service. They provided a pretext for the massive re-equipping for production and reception required for the separate HDTV service set up in Japan. If a manufacturer is to persuade the consumer that their old TV set is redundant, the new replacement model has to be significantly different from ‘yesterdays’ model. CinemaScope 55 shooting on 56.625 negative but projected using 35mm prints, was sharper on the larger cinema screens but the audiences were largely unaware of the difference and the format was withdrawn.

The changeover to the 16:9 format in European television has been extensively used to market the new digital services. In Europe, NHK research into HDTV has gradually been usurped by 16:9 digital broadcasting. The quest for high definition has gradually been eroded by market forces to end up with a 16:9 digital system which is a muddle of different aspect ratios which provide lower definition (often less lines than are available) distortion of the image (viewer choice of aspect ratio to fill the screen) and due to the greed for maximum channels, sometimes excessive digital compression which causes blocking of the digital image. How have we ended up with a worse system than the 4:3 analogue system it sought to replace?

The disturbing element in this aspect ratio debate is that frequently the technical quality and economic viability is argued in detail whereas the knock-on effects of cropping and compositional distortions are considered a side issue. The justification of widescreen in the first place was it was closer to human vision, is a reasonable compromise between world wide competing formats, it was close to the ‘most pleasing shape’ preferred by most people and on its ability to engage the audience. Most of these arguments are tenuous if not untrue.

Universal standard

We are moving to a universal 16:9 shape ( but still without an agreed universal format for the exchange of programmes) not because of aesthetic, technological or even compelling physiological reasons but because of the commercial pressure to make the existing TV sets forcibly redundant by switching off the analogue delivery system. The redesign of screen shape is to provide a marketing brand to sell digital television to a public who are not interested in the hardware that provides them with their favourite programme but in the intrinsic interest of the programmes themselves. A 16:9 widescreen screen has been commercially spun into a ‘must have’ consumer product with a complete disregard of the huge back library of 4:3 productions and with a muddle of distorted images stretching beyond a supposedly ‘interim’ period until all programmes are produce in widescreen. The question the viewer should ask is, for whose benefit is this forceable transition (there is no choice) being undertaken, and at what cost to the huge back library of 4:3 TV productions on the shelves of TV companies?

The 16:9 format is the hardware – programmes are the software. It is what is done with equipment which is important, not the equipment itself, but it is the hardware which is constantly being promoted. With Cinerama, it was the format which took precedence over story or star, the content followed on from the widescreen ‘experience’.

Widescreen television is a technical toy to be played with. There are buttons to push by the viewer to distort or expand the image to fit the new shape. From a manufacturers point of view, the new product must look different (e.g. at least 16:9 – 14:9 is too similar to 4:3.). Manufacturers (and engineers) claim they simply deliver the message – someone else is responsible for the content but their motive is to re-brand an old product whilst ensuring the existing product is made legally obsolete.

The promotion of widescreen stereo television as home cinema is a misleading label. A curved large cinema screen cannot be duplicated as a viable domestic TV screen. Most people live in small rooms. TV is quite a different communication system despite sharing many similar characteristics with the cinema.

Of all the justifications for changing the shape of the TV screen the need to expand markets appear to be the most compelling. If governments can be persuaded to switch off the old analogue services, there will be a huge boom in the sale of digital widescreen TV. Until that day, the decision to simulcast programmes in both 4:3 and 16:9 in Europe does allow the continuation of a single production format.

Transitional period

The world-wide change-over period from mass viewing on a 4:3 analogue set to mass viewing on a 16:9 digital monitor, and therefore mass programme production for 16:9 television, will take many years. The transition period will require a compromise composition but the compositional problems do not end there. The back-library of 4:3 programmes and films is enormous and valuable and will continue to be transmitted across a wide range of channels in the future. The complete image can be viewed on a 16:9 screen if black bars are displayed either side of the frame. They can be viewed by filling the full width of the 16:9 display at the cost of cutting part of the top and bottom of the frame or, at the viewer’s discretion, they can be viewed by a non-linear expansion of picture width, progressively distorting the edges of the frame to fill the screen.

From a cameraman’s point of view, the biggest difficulty during the transition period is attempting to find a compositional compromise between the two aspect ratios. If a 16:9 image is transmitted in a letter-box format then all shots can be framed with respect to the 16:9 border. However most broadcasters still provide an analogue 4:3/14:9 service. There is very little satisfactory compromise that can be made in an attempt to compose for both formats at the same time.

Composition problems will continue while 16:9 and 4:3 simultaneous productions are being shot during the analogue/digital changeover. They neither take full advantage of the width of 16:9 nor do they fit comfortably with the old 4:3 shape. Possibly ten years of dual format compromise production will then join the back library and be transmitted from then on. The only safe solution is the ‘protect and save’ advice of putting essential information in the centre of frame, but that is a sad limitation on the compositional potential of the widescreen shape.

Widescreen equals spectacle

The assumption that widescreen equates with spectacle is a throwback to the Hollywood attempts in the 1950s to meet the growing competition of television with ‘spectacular’ productions that TV could not provide. Since that period, there have been many productions which have demonstrated how effective widescreen is when shooting interiors. The ‘visual fluff’ at the edge of a 2.35.1 widescreen image, as one technical commentator described it, ‘was unnecessary, and could always be cropped when transmitted on TV’. The implication of this thinking by vested interest eager to persuade the public to change the shape of their television sets, is that widescreen composition is simply 4:3 with a little bit of ‘visual fluff’ tacked on to each end of the frame.

The disturbing element in this aspect ratio debate is that frequently the technical quality and economic viability is argued in detail whereas the knock-on effects of cropping and compositional distortions are considered a side issue. The justification of widescreen in the first place was its ability to engage the audience. The practicalities of achieving a compatible widescreen/academy size television system appears to have swept past that basic point.

A Hollywood studio boss, Adolph Zukor, claimed that Twentieth Century Fox’s emphasis on technology in the 1950s, when they introduced CinemaScope, had blinded them to their chief responsibility which was to make good films. Of course Zukor at that time was chairman of rival company Paramount who had not signed up to CinemaScope.

Endnote or in a different aspect ratio NDNOT

The correct aspect ratio in film and television production is virtually ignored except by the director and cameraman who laboured over the original image. The final display of this image is in the hands of commerce whose visual dead eye only takes into consideration stars and action except, of course, when the screen shape is promoted to sell more cinema tickets or to urge consumers to buy new TV receivers.

It will never happen, but the intellectual property control of film makers concerning the correct aspect ratio for their production should be guaranteed from camera to audience display. The audience should see the image uncropped, or squeezed or aspect ratio converted exactly as the programme maker intended. Aspect ratios are not compatible if the chosen frame shape is fully creatively exploited. No programme maker should be asked/instructed to provide images that will fit different formats. To frame for several formats at once will inevitably degrade the production values and result in an inferior product. Panning and scanning destroys the craftsmanship expended on a feature film. Broadcasters should resist audience clamour for a cropped image simply to fill their TV screen. ‘Casablanca’ (1942), colourised is a different and inferior film to ‘Casablanca’ in its original black and white. ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968), when viewed on a panned and scanned TV screen is shortchanging the audience even if they want to be duped.They are not enriched by a full screen full of image. They are cheated of the complete experience of the film.

Conclusion

There is a striking similarity between the commercial considerations involved in the introduction of film widescreen in the 1950s and the national politics and commercial debate to establish TV widescreen transmissions in the nineties. It was hoped to increase cinema attendance by changing the shape of the film screen in the mid-twentieth century just as fifty years later it was hoped to sell more television sets by changing its shape. In fact manufacturers were guaranteed to sell more digital widescreen sets if they could convince governments to switch of the existing 4:3 analogue sets and render them obsolete. Now that this objective is in sight and the market will be saturated with widescreen digital receivers suddenly after being assured twenty years ago that HDTV was unnecessary we now have the return of HDTV. Widescreen is still the shape of a banknote.

NOTE: I am indebted to John Belton’s ‘Widescreen Cinema’, Harvard University Press, 1992 account of the history of film widescreen. Any inaccuracies or opinions are my own. The television history cited is based on the internet postings of the EBU, numerous other electronic engineers and the account in my book ‘Composition for Film and TV’ 2nd ed Focal Press, 2003.