Fandango- kevin Reynolds

[stephen solar]

So i was watching this personal favorite and I read the tech specs which are spherical ,1.85 format. My question is when they printed this DI'd to dvd did they stretch 4:3 to get to 16x9?

[Stuart Brereton]

If the original film was 1.85:1, then all that would have been necessary is a slight left and right crop to reduce it to 1.78:1 or 16:9.

[David Mullen ASC]

"Fandango" was a 1985 movie so wouldn't have gone through a D.I. On DVD, you're seeing a video transfer (telecine) of the film, probably off of a timed 35mm I.P.

 

Here's a diagram showing the 4-perf 35mm format used for 1.85:

 

Back then, you would have exposed Full Aperture or Academy Aperture (both 4x3, Academy being slightly smaller and shifted to the right to make room for the optical soundtrack) and composed for cropping to 1.85. Then the projector matte would have masked the print image to that 1.85 area on the 4-perf 35mm composite print. The 4x3 TV version would have used the taller 4x3 Academy area for the transfer, perhaps doing some reframing when a mic boom or other piece of equipment poked into the shot; they would have also made a letterboxed version cropped to the 1.85 theatrical area.

 

Today, you're more likely to shoot 3-perf 35mm for a 1.85 movie (or 16x9 digital) and then go through a D.I. to create a 4-perf 35mm negative for printing. 3-perf 35mm has a native 16x9 (1.78) shape so the 1.85 area sits just inside that very snugly.

 

Here's an example from something I shot in 3-perf 35mm -- this is from the 16x9 home video version letterboxed to 1.85. You can see how little waste there is cropping 1.78 to 1.85:

 

 

The whole 1.78 area without these 1.85 borders was also recorded to 4-perf 35mm internegative for making the 35mm release prints -- the 1.85 projector matte would have then masked the image down to 1.85. You generally don't want to transfer actual 1.85 letterboxing to film for 1.85 projection because odds are high that with the slightest misframing by the projectionist some portion of the black borders would appear on screen. On the other hand, if you were making a DCP, then you'd just create a 1.85 file.

[stephen solar]

That's very interesting, as always, thanks for the detailed answer Mr. Mullen.