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Topic: Anamorphic question

Timothy Duncan
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 150
From: Russellville, KY, USA
Registered: Sep 2014

posted December 28, 2014 08:12 PM

Could someone please explain to me what a SCOPE print is? What does it look like and do you need a special lens to project one? Is it the same as WIDESCREEN?
-Tim

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Andrew Woodcock
Film God

Posts: 7477
From: Manchester Uk
Registered: Aug 2012

posted December 28, 2014 08:26 PM

It uses the tiny super 8 frame to stretch it to almost twice the width of it's normal size to give a true cinemascope effect whilst keeping the image correct in terms of perspective.
The depth of the screened image remains the same.

It does so by the use of a special lens called an anamorphic that is placed just in front of the projectors existing lens.

Films that are shot or printed in scope appear "squeezed" without first placing an Anamorphic lens in front of the projector.

There is quite a large loss of light output by using an Anamorphic lens, therefore you would need a very bright projector to screen anything quite large in "scope"

The image ratio transfers from the standard 1.33:1 to 2.35:1 by using the Anamorphic scope lens.

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Maurice Leakey
Film God

Posts: 5895
From: Bristol. United Kingdom
Registered: Oct 2007

posted December 29, 2014 02:55 AM

Timothy
If your film looks OK and humans are not all squeezed up horizontally, you have a widescreen print, not a scope print.

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Maurice

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Clinton Hunt
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 845
From: Waharoa,North Island,New Zealand
Registered: May 2010

posted December 29, 2014 04:09 AM

I have a scope film called Born Free a 400ft colour super8,I don't have the lens needed to stretch the image but it's still great to watch,

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Cheers from me in New Zealand :-)

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Steve Klare
Film Guy

Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted December 29, 2014 05:36 AM

A 'scope film shown without the anamorphic has very interesting effects on the people on screen. Somebody of typical build will be kind of lanky, but somebody normally fat will look like they've been on a diet. People on horseback are hysterical: they look about 20 feet high! When the horse goes from a side view to a front view it will change from a stubby horse to a skinny horse.

The best test is to look for circles: wheels, clocks, planets, whatever. If you look at something you know has to be circular and instead you see an oval with the long axis vertical then you just know something is up.

I was on a video conference a couple of years ago. There were two screens on the wall: the video feed from the other end (in Russia) and our own. I looked at myself on screen and I saw I was a little...chunky. This really bothered me because I watch my weight, and obviously it was becoming futile. Then I noticed a drawing on the wall in back of me was horizontally oval when it's really circular. Problem: video was being taken 4:3 and stretched over a 16:9 monitor.

Afterwards I had a satisfying breakfast: I had dodged the bullet!

(Who could have guessed this knowledge would be generally useful?!)

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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...

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Brian Fretwell
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1785
From: London, UK
Registered: Jun 2014

posted December 29, 2014 06:14 AM

I bought a squeezed print before getting an anamorphic lens. For a few weeks I projected in with a small screen at an angle to the projector to stretch it.

The small, fixed focus Hypergonar lens I bought originally did give a 2.35:1 picture (it being a 1.75:1 squeeze lens not 2:1) but that was wrong too as Super 8 Scope is cropped top & bottom on most prints to 2.66:1, not Cineavision of course. So I had to buy another lens, for all but the home movies I had made with the original one.

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Martin Jones
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1269
From: Thetford , Norfolk,England
Registered: May 2008

posted December 29, 2014 08:58 AM

Commercial Super 8 Scope prints have a "squeeze" ratio of 2:1. Since they finish up on screen as 2.35:1 when shown with a 2:1 anamorphic they are actually less than normal width on the film (i.e. there are small black bars either side in the normal frame).

For amateur "filmers" requiring a true CinemaScope format of 2.35:1 as an end result, a !.75:1 lens is used for taking and projecting: I have one, a "Magnarama". They are relatively rare, since there was nothing wrong with using a 2:1 lens for the purpose and ending up with 2.66:1 (wider than CinemaScope, but not as wide as Cinerama).

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Retired TV Service Engineer
Ongoing interest in Telecine....

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Paul Adsett
Film God

Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted December 29, 2014 09:30 AM

I have always thought that the 2.66 aspect ratio of Super 8 Scope looks too extreme. It would have been much better to have retained the full height of the original 35mm print image and preserved the 2.35 aspect ratio. I have several S8 scope prints where tops of heads are cut off.

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Rob Young.
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1633
From: Cheshire, U.K.
Registered: Dec 2003

posted December 29, 2014 09:37 AM

"Commercial Super 8 Scope prints have a "squeeze" ratio of 2:1. Since they finish up on screen as 2.35:1 when shown with a 2:1 anamorphic they are actually less than normal width on the film (i.e. there are small black bars either side in the normal frame)."

Sorry Martin, but this isn't quite correct.

Only specially produced "Cineavison" prints are in this format.

Most super 8 'scope prints crop the top and bottom of the original theatrical version, thus providing full image width, but with some top and bottom frame information cropped.

As usual, when this topic "crops" up here on the forum, there is much confusion and deliberation over screen ratio.

Paul, whilst Cinevisions versions were specifically designed to address these issues, the results often suffered in resolution terms because additional optical intermediates were required. So you gained the full, say, 2.35:1 theatrical frame, but often with significantly reduced resolution..."horse for courses", as they say.

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Osi Osgood
Film God

Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005

posted December 29, 2014 01:09 PM

One of the slight issues I have had with most Super 8 scope prints (except for those lovely "Cineavision" prints), is that the anamorphic scope print come in on the scope image to fill the whole super 8 frame, but cut off image info on the top and botton, and while most of the time it's not too bad, sometimes, (as with, for instance, some of the DERANN issue Tom and Jerry scope prints), there is too much info lost in my opinion.

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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "

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