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Dr. Loomis says: "Support Letterbox!"
I shall take this moment to bring to your attention the evil scourge known as "pan & scan." It's the grisly butchering process that a widescreen movie goes through in order to "fit" your square television. Pan & scan is a cancer upon the entire film industry and it should be abolished forever.
Most films are shot in a rectangular format, specially designed for movie theaters. But when the film goes to home video, the sides must be clipped off in order to make it fill the screen. The editors then pan and scan the camera from side to side across the image, showing whatever portion they deem most important for you to view at that moment. Depending on the width of the original image, as much as 50% of the full picture may be cut out in this process.
This has been a process confined mainly to VHS, while DVDs largely support letterbox format, which preserves the entire film image. But lately I have seen a disturbing number of pan & scan formatted films on DVD. I just about vomited the first time I saw one.
I first saw the original Halloween in pan & scan format. In one scene the camera pulls back from a couple of horny teenagers while some real scary music plays over the audio. It was not until years later, watching the letterboxed version that I realized Michael Myers was standing in the shot, but was cropped out on the pan & scan version.
Please observe my visual demonstrations of pan & scanning. On the left is the letterbox version showing the full image, and on the right is a pan & scanned version. Disgusting isn't it? This process is akin to buying a painting, and then tearing it in half so you can stuff it into a frame on your wall. Dr. Loomis says that it is "purely and simply evil." I implore the people of Earth to unite and eradicate this plague!
BBQ at July 20, 2002 
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what a question?
WIDESCREEN or DEATH!
Posted by: Jim at August 24, 2005 12:52 PM
