Posted by Vincent at bg-tc-ppp335.monmouth.com on August 04, 2000 at 14:04:24:
In Reply to: A technical Question for Vincent . . . posted by Filthy Peace Punk on August 03, 2000 at 21:40:13:
First off, the correct numbers you MEANT to write were 2.40:1 and 2.75:1, but I digress ;-)
Look closely at the deleted scenes, and you'll see not only black bars above/below, but black masking AT THE SIDES. This is called "windowboxing"- basically, it's done to compensate for the overscan on commercial television sets (all TV sets crop the actual transmitted image or image on a videotape/DVD on all four sides somewhat). I'm guessing the deleted scenes were taken from Betacam master tapes that were made during the production for editing purposes on an AVID system, or from Beta tapes that were telecinied off of a workprint used for test screenings- either way, for whatever reason they windowboxed these images during the transfer, but when Fincher transfered the main feature he didn't (very few films are windowboxed- usually, 1.66:1 films that are encoded in 16:9, or 1.78:1, DVDs are pretty much the only ones). If you had access to a television set without overscan, you'd find that the framelines left/right of the main feature should correspond pretty much exactly to the left/right active image area of the windowboxed deleted scenes.
Vincent
: Ok, I have a question about, I know its off-topic but your pretty much the only one I can think of who can help me: On the Fight Club DVD the movie itself is framed in the aspect ratio of 1.40:1, ok? Well on the deleted scenes its much MUCH wider, it looks kinda like 1.75:1. I wanna know if the aspect ratio in the deleted scenes is what the WHOLE movie was filmed in but released it in 1.40:1, or if they just cut it down to 1.40:1 for the DVD. Whats up with that.
: Hope, really hope, you can help me out,
: Thanks, man
: Jake