Pan And Scan

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Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown within the proportions of an ordinary television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects. Some film directors and film enthusiasts disagree with pan and scan cropping, because it can remove up to 45% (on 2.35:1 films) of the original image, changing the director's original vision and intentions. The vertical equivalent is known as "tilt and scan" or "reverse pan and scan".

Background In the U.S., television sets from the last several decades displayed television images with a "4:3" aspect ratio (image) in which the width is 1.33 times the height. (Internet and DVD packages refer to the 4:3 aspect ratio as a "1.33:1 aspect ratio".) When television first started to become popular in the US, the motion picture industry had to devise strategies to give people something extra which they would not get on television. Thus, "widescreen" was invented, and film images became longer, rectangular projected images with an aspect ratio greater than 16:9. Film widths are often 1.85, 2.35, or 2.39 times the height of the image, though there are other less common ratios as well.

To broadcast a widescreen film on television, or create a videotape or DVD master, it is necessary to make a new version from the original filmed elements. One way to do so is to make a "letterbox" print, which preserves the original theatrical aspect ratio, but produces an image with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Another way to turn the wide aspect ratio film into a 4:3 aspect ratio television image is to "pan and scan" the negative.

Techniques , MGM, 1954.During the "pan and scan" process, an operator selects the parts of the original filmed composition that seem to be significant and makes sure they are copied—"scanning". 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. This method allows the maximum resolution of the image, since it uses all the available video scan lines—which is especially important for NTSC television, it having a rather low number of lines available to begin with. It also gives a full-screen image on analog television. For this reason, Pan and Scan versions of DVDs are often called Fullscreen. But this method can also severely alter compositions and therefore dramatic effects.

For instance, in the film Jaws (film), the shark can be seen approaching for several seconds more in the widescreen version than in the pan and scan version. For the Star Wars opening crawl in each Star Wars film, on the pan and scan versions the viewer has to wait until a line of text of the opening crawl reaches the center of the screen to read through that whole line. On the widescreen versions, each line of the opening crawl text appears in its entirety beginning at the bottom of the screen.

In some cases, the results can also be a bit jarring, especially in shots with significant detail on both sides of the frame: the operator must either go to a two-shot format (alternating between closeups in what was previously a single image), lose some of the image, or make several abrupt pans. In cases where a film director has carefully designed his composition for optimal viewing on a wide theatrical screen, these changes may be seen as changing that director's vision to an unacceptable extent. One notable example of this technique is in the film Emma (1996 film), where a scene with Gwyneth Paltrow and Alan Cumming and two other performers, the VHS version of the movie pans back and forth across a row of people, never showing all four at any one time.

Once television revenues became important to the success of theatrical films, cameramen began to work for compositions that would keep the vital information within the "TV safe area" of the frame. For example, the BBC suggests program makers who are recording in 16:9 frame their shots in a 14:9 aspect ratio which is then broadcast for non-widescreen televisions with small black bars at the top and bottom of the picture, while owners of widescreen TV sets see the full 16:9 picture.

In other cases film directors reverse this process, creating a negative with information that extends above and below the widescreen theatrical image (this is sometimes referred to as an "open matte" composition). The Sting and Swing Shift were both filmed in this manner. Often pan-and-scan compositors make use of this full-screen negative as a starting point, so that in some scenes the TV version may contain more image content than the widescreen version while in other scenes where such an "opened" composition is not appropriate a subset of the widescreen image may be selected. As a general rule (prior to the rise of DVD), special effects would be done within the theatrical aspect ratio, but not the full-frame one (due to expense). Thus, Back to the Future, Part II (for instance) in full frame is open-matte, but the effects shots are pan-and-scanned. This can be quite distracting, as the pan-and-scanned shots are grainier, due to the technique.

The danger with this method is that information deliberately left out of shot in the widescreen version—such as cables, microphone booms, jet vapor trails, or overhead telephone wires—may appear in the TV version. In some cases (notably many of the films of Stanley Kubrick) the original 1.33:1 aspect ratio of the negative is transferred directly to the video master (although these versions also represent a new aspect ratio compared to the original theatrical release; these are not properly "pan and scan" transfers at all but are often called "full-frame" or "open matte" transfers).

Reactions Some directors still balk at the use of "pan and scan" version of their movies because they feel it compromises the very directorial vision with which their movies were created. For instance, Steven Spielberg initially refused to release a pan-and-scan version of Raiders of the Lost Ark but eventually gave in; Woody Allen refused altogether to release one of Manhattan (1979 movie). The letterboxed version is in fact the only version available on VHS and DVD. Any tampering with the original image of a film, particularly to crop it to fit a television screen, implies a compromise of the original image, and the cropping of a widescreen image to a full screen image for standard televisions requires skill by a film editor to prevent undue loss of elements of the composition.

Changes in screen angle (panning) may be necessary to prevent the situation in which, when two persons face each other in closeup, only one person is visible in the pan-and-scan version and both participants seem to speak alternately to persons not visible as they speak; 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, as in a tap-dance scene in which much attention is directed appropriately at a dancer's feet. This situation will commonly occur often whenever a widescreen TV is set up to achieve non-stretched full width (such as through the "zoom" function) on images with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 or less. The solution is to pillar box (film) 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 vertical resolution to begin with, "pan-and-scan" broadcasts and "pan-and-scan" DVDs of movies originally shown in widescreen are relatively rare.

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 imagery features, such as those produced by Pixar, who began the process with their film A Bug's Life. They call their approach to full-screen versions reframing: some shots are pan and scan, while others are transferred open matte (a full widescreen image extended with added image above and below). 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 an arguably obsolete practice, although many retailers insist that fullscreen versions of films originally produced in widescreen be made available. Some retailers seem to sell out widescreen versions of a film before the "fullscreen" versions sell out, and in the end place the fullscreen versions at heavily-discounted prices in the remainder racks.

See also

Letterbox
List of film formats
Motion picture terminology
Panning (camera)
Widescreen

External links

The Letterbox and Widescreen Advocacy Page
OAR: The Guide to Film Aspect Ratios
Example of Film Presented in Pan & Scan
List of Pan & Scan-only DVDs produced by the Walt Disney Company