I understand that the new dvd release will be in full frame 1:1.33 aspect ratio and was wondering if the original film was as well. If it was a widescreen release it will be a shame to only have a pan & scan video release.
sharePlease read this thread: http://imdb.com/title/tt0047577/board/nest/44052836
THIS ISLAND EARTH was originally presented widescreen, in an aspect ratio of 2:1.
-J. Theakston
The Silent Photoplayer
http://www.thephotoplayer.com/
THIS ISLAND EARTH was filmed in 1:33:1 aspect ratio which is full frame for television screens. It was not made in Wide Screen process. However, it was filmed in 3-strip Technicolor!
Dejael
Filmed 1.37, and then cropped to 2:1 in the theaters, just like almost 70% of films are today. Please read my post on the other thread.
-J. Theakston
Goddamn, that's really annoying. I have a widescreen TV, but neither my TV or DVD Player has a "crop the top and bottom" option, although my digital cable service does.
shareLike you, I'm very annoyed that Universal didn't release this film in it's original theatrical aspect ratio. However, when I got the new DVD I did try affixing a "mask" of sorts across my TV screen (with some cardboard--crude, but effective)...and the movie looks FABULOUS! "This Island Earth" at 2.00:1 looks perfectly composed visually from start to finish.
A little hint if you're interested in doing the same: if you go to the scene where Cal first returns to his laboratory, there's a shot where he looks into a device on the wall to watch the commencement of his latest experiment. That shot (Cal's POV) has a rectangular-shaped 'binoculars' appearance; if you conform your homemade mask to begin just above the top edge and just below the bottom edge of that rectangle, I think you'll be very pleased with how the entire movie plays at that aspect ratio. Give it a shot.
fyi....If you really have a true widescreen TV (Hi-Def or HD-ready, 1.77 ratio), on your remote control there will be found a button Usually Labelled "zoom"...or something like that. By pressing the button three times in succession, you can enlarge the square 1.33 image in the middle of the screen, in 3 slightly different sizes, until you fill the screen left-to right with the projected image. By doing so, you have "cropped off" the top and bottom of the frame, i.e., creating a 1.85 (actually 1.77) ratio picture from a 1.33 original.
The pity of this procedure, is that you are in effect "blowing up" the video scan to fill a wide-screen aperture, and so doing, enlarging the scan lines past the point of being sharp.
The correct procedure to create a wide-screen presentation for DVD out of a full-ap original (1.33-1.37) is to create a properly framed 1.77 master in telecine, masking off the top and bottom of the film frame in the telecine transfer so that it never even goes to tape. Then, that 1.77 wide screen image is compressed to a 1.33 ratio and laid to tape. When played back on a DVD player and a wide-screen TV, if you have set up the system properly, you then set the button on the remote control to "scope", not "Zoom". The way you know you are in the ballpark is if you look at the image from the DVD and you see a square image that is squashed vertically. This means you have the entire proper composition, with no letterboxing. Then you just push the remote button until the set unsqueezes the image, and voila, you have true wide-screen quality.
If universal had been on the ball, and were willing to spend maybe about another $2 to 3,000 when mastering TIE, they would have run two passes in the telecine transfer, one full-screen at full aperture (which is the one they have done and released), and a second pass, re-framing the image for 1.77 and creating a master. (Actually, now that I think about it, I'm sure that that's exactly what they did...Mark my words, I am known as Nostrodamus around my circles for predicting these things....They sure ran a pass in HD at 1.77 at the same time, vaulted it for the future, and are just holding it to extract more $$$ from us peons when the HD discs become available.)
Thus, I believe, this is a conscious decision on the part of Universal's video management...they could have given us a wide-screen anamorphic version on the B-side, but they're greedy and just want to wait....
what do you all think...
Chris Roth
Famous Film Editor
(Killer Klowns From Outer Space)
This film was shown at least twice in the UK a few months back on Digital channel Film4.
It was an absolutely stunning colourful 1.78:1 anarmorphic (not letterboxed) widescreen
broadcast, and I'm here on this thread because I still have it recorded on my PC hard disk
(from TV), and was about to delete the file and buy the Region 1 DVD, but when I carefully
checked the specs. on Amazon I couldn't believe that the reissue DVD was 1.33:1 ratio. Now,
just because a movie is shot in 1.33:1 or 1.37:1, doesn't mean the director had this in mind as he
'framed' his image. If it was originally shown in theatres in 2:1 ratio then hopefully that is what
the director intended (and not imposed by the studio or the theatres themselves). Personally,
I believe it was.
So thank you everyone - now I'll keep that which I have...
"Oh look - a lovely spider! And it's eating a butterfly!"
'' ,,
If it was originally shown in theatres in 2:1 ratio then hopefully that is what the director intended
Cinemascope ratio is 2.35:1 I believe. Some other systems were even wider (2.55:1).
"This Island Earth" was shot in full-frame 1.37:1, but matted in cinemas (as per the studio's guide) to 2:1.
I agree with your analysis of the film. I have it on DVD from Digital TV (1.78:1 or 16:9). Great quality,
Chaptered, PAL format, region free to you.
"Oh look - a lovely spider! And it's eating a butterfly!"
'' ,,
XweAponX
2001: A Space Odyssy, was shot in 70mm Super Panavision and shown on the Cinerama screen originally. The aspect ratio was 2.2:1 !! Nice to see somebody else saw 2001 the way it was meant to be seen. I remember seeing This Island Earth at the theatre when it was first released. One of my favourites from those days, along with Forbidden Planet. And yes it was wide screen at the theatre.
What aspect ratio was 2001: A Space Idiocy? I remember seeing that in the theatre and that the screen was huge and wrapped around the theatre, you had to constantly casn back and forth to get it all. That was the most amazing theatrical experience I ever had.
If you saw 2001 on a deeply wrapped screen, it must have been at one of the few theaters originally equipped for true Cinerama, a process that used three synchronized cameras and was presented in theaters using three strips of film running on three separate projectors. The triple-wide image was projected onto a curved screen covering almost 120 degrees of arc (1/3 of a circle), which gave the effect of immersing the audience in the picture (for the first dozen rows or so, anyway). The original Cinerama process was so cumbersome and expensive that it was used for only a handful of movies in the 1950s, including How the West Was Won and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm.
2001 was NOT filmed or shown in "real" Cinerama, but in Ultra Panavision, which is 65mm film negative (70mm for projection prints). A special projector lens is used to throw the image onto the deep-dish curved screen and keep it all in focus. The problem is, you're looking at a wide, flat image "bent" to fit a curved screen, which causes distortion. Still, seeing a movie on that enormous Cinerama screen is indeed awe-inspiring, as it was for me when I first saw 2001 at Hollywood's Cinerama Dome.
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?
It took 3 years for me to see this comment but anyway.......in 1955 few theaters were cropping to 2.00. Those that were may have been using the "Superscope" system that cropped the edges of scope films and cropped flat films radically so that all films appeared to have the same aspect ratio. Naturally, many flat films were not meant to be cropped that much and the result was cut off heads and titles. The advantage was that movable masking could be dispensed with.
"This Island Earth" was probably shown in 1:66 or 1:85 in most theaters. And it could be shown in 1:33 in theaters that had not yet converted to wide screen.
Wide screen only came about after television began causing people to stay home rather than go to the cinema.
Hollywood then went to Cinemascope, Panavision and all the other wide screen formats.
If you know where to look, there's an HDTV 720p rip of this floating around that's in 1.85:1 ratio.
Looks great in that form.
I too, originally saw this in a theater in 1955. The version mentioned above is how I recall seeing it.