@apefos to be specific, the DCI chip has an AR of 1.9:1, this, combined with masking and the lens attached to said projector has absolutely nothing to do with the shape of the screen. Yes all content is letterboxed within the 2048x1080 pixels of the DCP but this has little to do with projection.

Now, image size does have to vary so when an odd bod wants 2.66 instead of cropping to 2.39 on the DCP, it's a physically smaller image, but it IS 2.66:1, not letterboxed 1.9:1 (or 1.85:1) when actually projected. Any Cinema with a true 1.9:1 AR screen is a total travesty outside of the living room.

I get your point about TV and screen real estate vs aesthetics, but Cinema is still trying to keep scope images something you can actually see at full width that you can't at home (unless you have a 21:9 TV)

Today you can do any aspect ratio that you want. half of the live cell phone videos you see are like 9:16, jej.

I will always consider the wide 'scope' ratios as beautifully cinematic, but it's not better or worse than 1.85 or 16x9.. At times, even 4x3 can be preferable to the wide screen. It just depends on all the factors mentioned by all of you above.

For home theaters you can employ a curtain or matte insert if the bars bother you that much.

As for anamorphic.. I like the look from the lenses.. it provides a unique dimensionality to the image

@vitaliy_kesselev Fibonacci here, Fibonacci there, Fibonacci everywhere

Not sure if you read the entire post @zcream, or tuned out after the first paragraph, but you'd see I don't like fibonacci. I was just acknowledging that some do, and that using it makes compositions that are inert. And Motion Pictures should never be inert.

Today I went to the theater to see a new film called "Policia Federal: A Lei é Para Todos" talking about the "Lava Jato" operation.

The screen was a 2,37:1 screen and the movie covered all the screen. This aspect ration in the cinema theater is just wonderful, but for television set the 16:9 is much better when watching a film at home. Unless you have a home theater projector in a bigger screen to make 2,37:1 to be good at home.

Is anyone gonna tell him that most theaters have full 16x9 and some ever 4x3 screens, and that they section them off with motorized curtains to accommodate whichever aspect ratio that particular film screening requires so that there are no black bars or pillars allowing the theater the flexibility to accept multiple formats for distribution, or are we gonna wait until he figures this out for himself?

Obviously, the Cineramadome here in Hollywood and other theaters of it's type that are still standing only screen cinemascope, but most theater chains allow themselves the option. If you're seeing letter-boxing in the theater either the motors are broken, or the theater itself is too cheap to bother with the curtains.

Or in some cases you have this wonderful shitshow. https://i0.wp.com/media2.slashfilm.com/slashfilm/wp/wp-content/images/dunkirk-formatguide.jpg

I guess we're spoiled here in the US

@shian yes.. I just finished an extended run of Dunkirk in 70mm interspersed with the DCP, it was nice of Warner to let us know 2 days before that it was going to be 2.20 on the DCP prompting some hurried new screen files to get a nice image. I assume every chain here in the UK just ran it cropped to 2.39, it would be impressive if they all worked to show a non-standard DCI ratio.

I also just dealt with a certain animated film from the east in IMAX and dealing with their deliverables for Xenon, Laser etc is amusing to say the least.

I'm lucky to work in a place where 2 screens still have masking, curtains, 35mm & 70mm but yeah most modern cinemas don't have them, like our 3rd, (it's actually a requisite of Dolby Cinema to have a floating screen with no masking or curtains), but to see my post previously you can still really nicely do 2.39 at full width, down to 1.33 without them. As I say it's just about setting up the projectors right. It really pains me to hear these experiences of cinemas with 16x9 screens and bad presentation. AR should be a total non conversation in the cinema space outside of celluloid as you should be able to see all of them presented to their strengths, all the way from 1:1(Mommy) up to 2.76:1 (Hateful Eight).

The whole point of my ramble is what @eatstoomuchjam is saying, good projection means the filmmakers can do whatever they want creatively and should be able to see it correctly in the cinema (if it's destined for it).

@shian nothing ever goes out letterboxed.. yuck! Yeah the right way to do it is to have your screen the width you want for scope and the height you want for flat. So on a good cinema screen (and I do include most of the chain screens) without masking, you can hit both. You do have a bit of the screen not showing picture in this case, which you would ideally mask off, but you aren't letter or pillar boxing the actual content so you don't see any black bars. Because of the hard borders you get with digital, you really don't notice the rest of the screen (top and bottom for scope and sides for flat), it just melts away, but you do notice the nice change between flat and scope (say your adverts are flat and then your feature is scope).

The chip in a DCI projector is physically an AR of 1.9:1 but you can mask it digitally with what we call 'screen files', you then have a zoom lens that moves with the macro, so all content from 1.9:1 down to 1:1 runs within 'flat' the 2048x1080 pixels (or the 4k eq) macro and all scope content runs in the 2048x858 and blown out optically to the correct width. It's seamless (with a Barco or a Christie, no comment on the others) and gives that nice big scope image and the theatre aspect of changing aspect ratios during the show. In the halls with curtains we still close them after the ads and before the feature so the curtains open out on the correct AR.

For Dunkirk we have to use the flat option, mask off the black padding and then zoom it out to get the correct 2.20:1. For 70mm it was natively 2.20:1 and did look great.

It's letterboxing in the sense that it doesn't completely fill the screen from top to bottom, but it isn't detrimental when done right. You get a nice wide image for scope using all the information on the DCP and a cracking image for everything else. Yeah ideal to have moving masking, but complexes that don't show celluloid just aren't interested.

For me letter or pillar boxing would be having a flat image in a scope container, or scope in flat. So in the extreme, using the 2048x1080 setting but running a scope movie. In this case you have pillar boxes from the whole rest of the screen on either side and actual letterboxes, so projected black bars top and bottom. And more importantly, a horrible tiny image floating in the middle of nowhere.

I've never seen any 'real' (not in the house or a church hall) cinema do this, but jeez it'd be horrible.

I did run a film that used a 2x anamorphic on 1.78:1 footage and that wasn't going to look good anywhere!

A lot of you are trying to prove or disprove the need for 2.35:1 in technical, sometimes scientific terms. We know that ratios and formats are fluid and now 2.35:1 as a standard doesn't make much logical or technical sense for films releasing directly to streaming. But this is subjective. It is about composition and fitting into a standard, ideal format designated to cinema initiated by creative reasons. So if you see a movie or show in 2.35:1 (watch the latest season of The Expanse), it's meant to look more cinematic than TV.

Also, keep in mind that an average TV show is shot differently than most films in some very specific ways. In movies, for the most part, characters are less prominent in terms of size in most shots than in TV productions because of the extra space at the sides of 2.35:1, and on a giant screen you don't need as many close-ups unless it is a stylistic decision. (Edit: even with the same composition between a 16:9 and 2.35:1 shot, you'd naturally have more content at the sides in scope, making the 16:9 a tighter shot just by cropping. Entire sections of the image is cropped for 16:9) If you do fill the screen with the actor you'd have to do an extreme close up, which, while not uncommon, is a very specific, stylistic choice. This large canvas is most appreciated on a huge screen, especially in master shots where the higher production value can be showcased. In 16:9 and for TV, actors can more easily fill the frame and on TV especially it is more important to shoot in close up, medium closeup and have tighter master shots because a TV in a living room takes up much less space in your field of view than a giant theater screen. This is another thing that differentiates TV from most big budget cinema at least. More intimate pictures usually pose an exception. So, a TV show or Netflix film will be shown at 2.35:1 because they want you to take it more seriously. This isn't the kind of TV show you're used to-- no, this one is like a film.

We shoot digital now but still use film stock emulation LUTs or color palettes that match film for theatrical releases and TV.

We shoot movies at a standard 24fps even though we can show @120hz and above and can display 120fps or above in real-time, because 24fps matches our collective idea of what cinema is from it's history. Most people will see an image in cinemascope and immediately recognize that that must be a film or something like it. If they see 60fps, it must definitely be live TV, if uncommonly well-shot.

With the exception of some big films that have premiered on Netflix lately and ruing the pandemic, movies are shown in movie theaters, and not all of them have floor to ceiling screens. Many theaters still have screens that project wider than they do vertically. I.e. a 16:9 film would show with "black bars" on the sides, and 2.35:1 would project all the way out.

Does that mean it should stay that way? Nope. We went from B&W to color, 1:1 ratio all the way to 2:1 then back to 1:1 for a few recent projects, 12fps to 24fps, the movie industry invented 3D but it didn't catch on but then it did in the 00's and now it's not that big of a deal- there is no natural law stating how cinema should look and, in fact, we should always be challenging the medium. But, I'm just thinking, trying to prove each other wrong with charts and numbers wouldn't really work because there's no right or wrong here. It's about what kind of canvas does the cinema artist want to paint on and what do audiences respond positively to. It's subjective. Were audiences ready for or wanting more of 48fps or 120fps, even though our cellphone cameras can now shoot and display up to those frame rates? Hard to tell right now. The Hobbit made money but it's earnings reduced with each sequel. It was the IP that drew audiences. Gemini Man flopped, and there was no word of mouth about how amazing the 120fps was. But some audience members DID say that the HFR looked weird and distracting. So I guess what that tells me is that most aesthetic standards are upheld more by the individual artists as well as the zeitgeist (most often) than some purely technical reason.

As for my personal preference... I'd never want to watch a 16:9 version of Lawrence of Arabia, even if it matches my screen more. There is beauty and substance on the outer edges of those shots that should never be lost. What if a modern filmmaker wants to match that level of scope? Well, the answer is they do, or most that shoot scripts with any kind of large scope. They've wanted that ever since Lawrence of Arabia.

As for my off-topic on frame rate, I'm thinking, who wants to watch a 60fps version of The Godfather? So you can see every hair on Vito's cat's fur squish around as he pets it? Also nope. The 24fps has this almost razor sharp power as the silhouettes lurk from a dark office to dark Italian kitchens, their jagged shapes jumping off the screen frame by frame. At 60fps it would look like a beautifully shot live TV program. Maybe I'm old school, but I stick to 24fps for my content as well (or, in my case 23.976).